Review of Batman: Arkham Origins will be interesting to many fans of this franchise, if only because the series since the first part has become a model of the highest quality. People were waiting for the continuation with impatience, but whether all expectations could be met can be found in this article. The material provides an overview of each individual aspect with a description of the pros and cons.
Concerns Under Development
In the review of Batman: Arkham Origins, it should first be noted that the project is a prequel to the main series. If the first two parts were made by people from the Rocksteady studio, then other persons worked on the second. This is what the publisher wanted, who gave the franchise into the hands of his subsidiary Warner Bros. Games Montreal. The first two games were created on ten out of a possible ten points, which says a lot. Fans closely followed the development of the continuation precisely because of the change of developers. Skeptics argued that the game would be a failure anyway, and on the other side of the barricades people continued to hope for a fresh look. The truth was somewhere in between.
Plot tie
Review of Batman: Arkham Origins, and indeed any adventure game, must definitely focus on the storyline. Here, users are offered a prequel in which events occur several years after the appearance of a person in a bat costume. The wealthy millionaire Bruce Wayne was able to powerfully declare himself as the new savior of Gotham, even though Batman’s personality remains a mystery. He managed to intervene in the affairs of the criminal authorities of the city, and this did not go unnoticed. An antagonist nicknamed Black Mask awards the head of an unknown superhero. All the famous villains want to get five hundred million dollars, and therefore a real hunt begins for Batman. Here is one of the main disadvantages of the game. The user immediately sees his enemies in the face, which instantly reduces the spirit of a detective adventure to zero. Previous games made a strong emphasis on this, but here only the crazy Joker saves the situation with his antics. He is shown at the beginning of his criminal activity, which causes some interest.
Game process
The review of Batman: Arkham Origins must include a description of the gameplay. It looks as follows. Before users opens the criminal world of Gotham, which will once again be saved. The player can move around the world through planning and a hook that clings to almost all the bulges on buildings, billboards or painfully familiar gargoyles. Users can fight enemies both through their own fists with original tricks, and using gadgets. The developers took care of the availability of special equipment like sticky bombs, the stun gun and even the hook can be used. In missions, he will be helped by a radio frequency detector, detective vision, and a evidence scanner. It would seem that there are so many possibilities and everyone looks great, but only for beginners. Experienced players will immediately see the setup in all of this, which was prepared by new developers under pressure from the publisher.
Secondary in everything
Already from the above-described gameplay component in the review of the game Batman: Arkham Origins, one conclusion can be drawn - the developers did not cope with the task. Any fan of the series will understand that the continuation almost does not add any new elements. Many people will want to remove it after the first two hours, because almost every element even in the introduction repeats the previous ingenious part. The hero again runs away from his enemies to get to the place where he will receive equipment and enter the battle. If you take the battle with the bosses, then the players will only shrug. In Arkham City, all the mechanics looked fresh, there was no uniformity. Here would be the same situation, if we forget about the sequel to the series. Any fight with a powerful opponent repeats the already known mechanics, which is a reason for sadness. This can be found in gadgets, investigations, and even moving around the game world. Such a secondary nature is so striking that no fan has missed it in its statements about the continuation. Hence the underestimated ratings from critics and players.
Some interesting ideas
Secondary in the game Batman: Arkham Origins appears at every turn, but even here there was a place for several interesting ideas. This does not apply to the new image of the Joker, because this character is exploited too much, which many have already bothered. First of all, it is worth noting the game world, where Batman feels an early era of adventure. Now the superhero has his own lair, in which the butler Alfred is always waiting for him. Compared to Batman: Arkham City, he is still not used to the image of an assistant superhero, and therefore often talks about Bruce's vacation, his free time and other topics. These dialogues bring some variety to the general way of life. The graphics were slightly improved without changes in the overall style. The developers added the ability to scroll back and forth in detective mode, creating a reconstruction of the events. The mini-game at first pleases, although it remains at the same level until the end of the game. There are few new ideas, but they should be noted against the general background.
Separate project
If you make a brief review of Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, it should be noted that a new game is opening up for users. This is a project in the genre of platformer, where the superhero of the same name will have to restore order in prison. The Black Mask rioted, and only Batman can handle the wave of violence. Moving into two-dimensional space is not very well displayed on the gameplay. The same developers tried to transfer all the gadgets, including detective vision, to their new project. It turned out not bad, but there is too little variety to solve situations. The graphic style looks attractive, but the option to port to large gaming platforms is perplexing. In a review of Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate - Deluxe Edition, it should be noted that a project was created for portable devices. It looks decent on them, offers interaction with touch panels. For a computer and consoles, this entertainment can drag on for an hour or two. This will be followed by removal in favor of more interesting entertainment.
Additions
The developers, not paying attention to the average ratings from game publishers and the same player reviews, decided to supply their project with a bundle of add-ons. Most of them concerned only an increase in the number of tests and the addition of new costumes for the multiplayer mode. In this case, the appearance of the appearance gave an increase in game parameters. Users quickly forgot about it, as well as about the multiplayer in the project. Particular attention can be paid only to the addition of Batman: Arkham Origins Initiation. A review of this content should be done if only because one interesting test has been added here. The player takes on the role of Bruce Wayne and fights with the best ninja of the Kirigi monastery. This is part of the rite of passage to the order that a billionaire must go through to gain strength. Bruce Wayne at the beginning of his journey does not own such a huge number of tricks, and therefore pass the test will be more interesting. The rest of the additions do not represent something phenomenal, for which you can change your mind about the whole project.
System parameters
It should be noted that the minimum system requirements on the Batman: Arkham Origins PC are no longer impressive. Even for 2013, they were not too high due to the quality engine from the developers of the first two parts. To run with the lowest settings, you will need 2 gigabytes of memory, a Windows 7 operating system and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a minimum clock speed of 2.4 GHz. The graphics card should pay special attention. The minimum model is the GeForce 8800 GTS, similar parts from AMD are also suitable. To feel comfortable when starting the game, you will need twice as much RAM and a newer processor model Intel Core i5-750. The clock frequency of 2.67 GHz is recommended, as well as the GeForce GTX 560 graphics card. As with the minimum parameters, AMD analogs can be used here. When installed, the project takes up twenty gigabytes of memory on the hard drive. Mandatory is the availability of at least the tenth version of DirectX software.
Summary
For all the above disadvantages, we can conclude that the Arkham Origins project is not worth attention, but this is a mistake. Fans of the series will be pleased once again to plunge into the adventures of Batman and explore this time the new area of Gotham. Familiar mechanics, the combat system, gadgets and styling can even cause a feeling of comfort. The game deserves a score of about seven points out of ten, if limited to a strict framework. The problem is that this is not the merit of the developers, but precisely those mechanics that were proposed by the previous parts. They are so perfect and interesting that even a secondary project with the same elements in a slightly different shell can be called good. If you can still join the game, then developers with Arkham Origins publishers should draft angry letters. Initially, the Rocksteady studio planned to create a trilogy, but they decided to violate its plans with harsh plagiarism of creativity. It was secondary, with almost complete absence, that caused a sharp decrease in ratings compared to the previous parts. In the end, you can only add that you should not even take on additional tasks. They will not offer anything interesting, except in a few cases.