Bat Bastards: The Left behind Arkham Games – Part 1: Arkham Origins and Cold Cold Hearts DLC Review
Developer: Warner Bros Montreal | Platform: PS3 | Playtime: 15:40
Warner Bros recently (Being November) launched the Arkham Games on the Nintendo Switch in a package consisting of Asylum, City and Knight ie the Rocksteady games. Once again Arkham Origins, developed by Warner Bros Montreal, has been left out once again – despite the fact it still remains locked to the PS3 and 360 outside of PC and would run perfectly on the platform. While I was planning on playing the game anyways, its exclusion has sparked this series – Bat Bastards, the left behind Arkham Games. It’s a shame too, because Arkham Origins is genuinely quite a good entry in the series.
Major story spoilers and moderate gameplay spoilers follow, reader discretion is advised
Rather mercifully, despite being called Origins, the game takes place roughly two years into Batman’s career. We still get our mandatory Crime Alley flashback but at this point you just grin and bear it. At this stage in the history, people aren’t sure if Batman even exists, Commissioner Gordon doesn’t trust him and the Mob runs Gotham, paying off cops and judges alike. Taking place on Christmas Eve, Batman responds to a riot at Blackgate Prison and discovers that Black Mask has hired 8 assassins to claim a huge bounty on his head. The premise is sound, arguably being the easiest of the Arkham plots to adapt to film if they could.
That is until Black Mask is revealed as The Joker. This is a rather divisive choice in the community and myself personally am 50/50 on it. This is before he reappeared in Arkham Knight and Joker fatigue started to set in. On the one hand, it’s a shame that Black Mask doesn’t get his time in the sun, but on the other hand this version of Joker is a really interesting take on the character and allows for some of the best Joker moments in the series. I think any initial annoyance might melt away after you see what happens later on, with Joker’s monologue to Harleen in Blackgate being a standout.
Something that the game does do well as alluded to above is characterisation. Batman and The Joker both have new voice actors here – Roger Craig Smith voices the former and Troy Baker the latter. Considering that they had to stand in for the legendary (now unfortunately, late) Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, they did a fantastic job. Batman sounds incredibly rage filled as a younger Batman should – “You want teeth, I want answers” is a line that goes especially hard - it really shows in some of his more argumentative encounters with Alfred. Joker on the other hand still sounds crazy but there’s a darker tinge, especially when discussing Batman. The confusion is noticeable, and sounds different before the full blown obsession later in the series.
Of course there are the other villains, this is set in a time before all the “freaks” came along so you have the likes of Penguin and the GCPD Swat. Some of the assassins include a pre venom Bane and even Killer Croc, so it’s not totally devoid of the more out there villains. Mad Hatter also appears but his section is a little too close to the Scarecrow platforming sections of Asylum. On the topic of Bane, he becomes a sort of secondary big bad to the Joker, but leaves little impact with the “Death” of Alfred. If we didn’t already know the resolution, these might have actually been some exciting stakes. To the games credit, the main story does actually use 6 of its 8 Assassins, leaving only Shiva and Deadshot to star in side missions. That does mean that the Assassins in the story don’t see much screen time, in for their own short section and out again – they could have done with some side quests or extra story stuff but alas.
All the talk of the main quest and side missions brings us onto the gameplay which is just Arkham City. As far as I can tell there is nothing in this game that wasn’t also in Arkham City in some way. Some of the more negative opinions have this as “More like DLC for City” which I don’t agree with. Boss fights are something that are brought up in Origin’s favour, but I don’t know if I fully agree. Boss fights include Killer Croc which is worse versions of Bane (AA), Copperhead which is a worse version Ras Al Ghul, Firefly, whose fight is better than its inspiration – Arkham Asylum Poison Ivy (which isn’t saying much, I despise that fight) and Bane whose fight is the climax of the story but doesn’t match its inspiration of Arkham City’s Mr Freeze. Mr Freeze in City is still the best fight the series has seen, even with Arkham Knight. There is one boss I’ve left off, because I’m unsure how I feel about it – Deathstroke. It’s a fun fight, certainly more challenging than the rest, but I think Origins is a little too janky to do it justice. Knight would have been perfect but they just copped out of that one but that’s not a relevant complaint here.
It’s strange, Origins feels like more of an open world than City, despite them taking place in a similar sized sandbox (and overlapping amount of area, since Arkham City is just walled off Gotham). It might be due to the addition of fast travel points throughout the city. To unlock them, you need to work on radio towers. The sons of bitches managed to Ubisoft Batman. The person behind these towers is none other than Edward Nigma, yet to go by the name of the Riddler. There’s still collectibles though, in the form of data packs. I didn’t bother getting them though since I didn’t care about the trophies due to the games dead Multiplayer.
That’s right, the early to mid 2010’s were the era of putting Multiplayer in everything. The player base has long since moved on but from what I can tell, the multiplayer seemed to be fairly involved. Its 3v3v2 Matches, with Joker thugs fighting Bane thugs trying to kill each other while Batman and Robin had to hunt them down. Occasionally a thug player could take control of Joker or Bane respectively. I wish it was still more populated, if only for the trophies and my plat but what can you do.
Cold Cold Hearts DLC
Playtime: 3:40
One of two DLC’s released for Arkham Origins (I didn’t play challenge map based DLC Initiation because admittedly I didn’t have much interest in it), Cold Cold Hearts takes place on New Year’s Eve and introduces Mr Freeze to the Arkhamverse. The DLC revolves around how he came to be and covers most of the plot points you’d expect – sympathetic villain, cares about Nora. Admittedly Mr Freeze in the Arkhamverse is a cool (Don’t.) character, but they don’t seem to evolve him any. His story is the same here as it is in City. At least in Knight’s Season of Infamy, there was an ending to his tale (At least until Suicide Squad inevitably digs the grave for cheap drama).
In terms of gameplay, Batman’s shock gloves (an upgrade he receives in the base game) are replaced by his thermal gloves and the frozen interiors of the DLC allow for new types of takedown like dropping stalactites or crashing through Ice Walls, but it’s more of the same. Not that that’s a bad thing of course. Cold Cold Hearts is better than Harley Quinn’s revenge from City and all the mini character DLC’s of Knight. I’d still put it below A Matter of Family or the Season of Infamy though.
I think it was IGN’s review from way back in the day that said that “Arkham Origins is like a pizza, even if it’s a bad one it’s still pizza”, or something to that effect. It’s a stupid quote and I hate that I remember it but I can’t deny that it does fit Arkham Origins rather well. It’s easy to see it as the weakest title, but it still has a lot going for it. I’d buy a remaster day 1, which might very well happen if Suicide Squad bombs. Regardless, Origins deserves to be remembered alongside its peers, not left behind to rot in the backwards compatibility abyss.
