| Title | Batman: Arkham Origins is the widening gyre of Batman games |
| Author | Brandon Cackowski-Schnell |
| Posted in | Game reviews |
| When | November 13, 2013 |
There's a point at the end of Batman: Arkham Origins where I thought the game was trying to tell me not to give The Joker what he wanted..
Read the full article"n Arkham City, it made sense for armed bands of thugs to be roaming the city. Here, not so much."
Heh, the setup for Arkham City was also extraordinarily contrived. I mean, a city prison, that conveniently allows a preposterous plot with a comical amount of villains? And I don't understand the criticism about the fighting engine -- it's literally a copy-paste, and if anything, seemed a tad more responsive than City.
It's just a bit frustrating to see City being praised as the zenith of superhero game design, and then see people trashing basically the same game 2 years later. Perhaps the new developer is making reviewers more comfortable to speak about things they previously didn't notice or care about? The lack of originality is a legitimate complaint, but the plot, combat system and setting are criticisms that should have been made against City. Your implication that City was above that, unfortunately, undermines your review.
Oh please. "Undermines his review"?
I haven't played Origins and have no desire to do so, but I know for a fact the combat system is not "literally a copy-paste" (although your assertion, unfortunately, undermines your comment). Furthermore, I know that Arkham City didn't have any of the characterization issues that Brandon raises in his review, and on our podcast, and on the Jumping the Shark podcast. That's cool if you didn't like Arkham City, but it's absurd to claim that criticisms of Arkham Origins should also be leveled at Arkham City.
See, the thing is, Arkham City attempted to explain the gameplay setup. YMMV whether it was a viable explanation, but it gives a context in which that gameplay makes sense if you accept the premise. From the sound of it, Origins makes no such attempt, so no sense is made.
Origins does attempt to explain it (snowstorm/curfew/assassins running loose), the explanation is just a smidgen less believable. Both are highly contrived.
'along the “Jim Gordon is uneasy about teaming up with Batman” story beat you’ll also get “villains wouldn’t be villains without Batman”, “Batman inexplicably saves Joker’s life, irritating Joker in the process”, “Batman is as bad as the people he fights...'
Yeah, well, what's there left to say about Batman and the Joker/et al. at this point?
In what way is the combat not copy paste? As far as I can tell, the review mentions only thee reasons -- shock gloves, "whiffing a punch" and "errant lamp posts." I'm not sure, because the review doesn't elaborate, what exactly the latter two mean, but errant lamp posts have not exactly posed a big problem in my Origins playthrough. The real criticism seems to be "shock gloves," which are admittedly a dumb addition, but they are completely optional. Is it really worth throwing the game down the toilet over?
The idea that City has Origins beat in terms of plot is just very weak. No, there's no good cops in Origins, and yes that's absurd. But it's also absurd there were no cops at all in City, despite the fact it's, you know, a prison. Yes, Origins hits every Batman cliche in the book, but City was a veritably schizophrenic Jeph Loeb mashup. The bad guy is the Joker ... now we have to stop Hugo Strange ... no, wait, it was Mr. Freeze ... no, wait, Joker just pissed Freeze off ... oh hi Ra's al Ghul ... wait shit Mad Hatter what ... oh, hi again Ra's and Talia nice of you to kill Strange ... oh shit, Clayface and Joker what is going on, to say nothing of the meaningless side plot of Catwoman dealing with Poison Ivy and Two-Face.
A "smidgen"?!
Arkham City is a district roped off and given to the criminal elements. This happens in The Wire episode called HAMSTERDAM. In the show, as in life, there is an inner city district in Baltimore that the police just do not have the resources to deal with and fix, so this is the best solution they come up with. Of course it does not work out in the story. The logic behind its creation makes sense in the context of Baltimore in The Wire, and it only makes MORE sense in the context of Gotham, which is overrun by psychopathic superpowered mass murderers. Yes, this is a contrivance, but it springs from real motivations to keep the city safer and deal with an intractable problem. It also has philosophical questions that spring from it -- such as if its right or not, and what is the role of police, and vigilantes for that matter.
By contrast, Origins contrivance is a series of coincidences: it's a snowstorm, it's also Christmas Eve; oh, and also there are 10 assassins who are out to kill a vigilante this one night only...
"Smidgen"....
Dude, I don't know if you've ever been to Baltimore, but I assure you, there is no area of the city that is cordoned off as a "prison" without police oversight. It's good that you watch TV though!
If you want to argue that City makes "philosophical arguments" about prisons, I'd like to know what they are. I have a feeling what you are trying to say is that "City makes this deep point man, about how prisons are just terrible places where we don't care about inmates or rehabilitation, man," but in that case, City offers a trite and unsophisticated "commentary" -- not a philosophical argument of any cognizable kind. (You may also be saying that modern 'ghettos' are effectively prisons, but anyone who says that has never actually been in a prison).
I think we can agree that there is more philosophical meat on the concept of "Arkham City" as a lawless cordoned-off corner of Gotham than there is on a grab-bag of coincidences (snowstorm + Christmas Eve + assassin contract out for one night only). Whether or not the philosophical implications work for you or are that interesting is a different question; at least they can exist from this.
Surely that setup is objectively "meatier" than the coincidence grab-bag?
And yeah I live outside Baltimore. Obviously Arkham City/Hamsterdam does not happen in real life. But imagine if they had an episode of The Wire where the criminals were in charge of one district only for one night because there was a curfew + snowstorm + contract out on McNulty's head for one night only?
Yes, it's definitely a meatier setup in City, but it's clear the setup was designed simply to avoid having to make a living open world, as opposed to making some coherent plot sense, or some insightful meta-commentary on prisons. To me that almost makes City worse -- it has a much more promising setting, but in the end, it's clear it's just a copout.
Arkham Origins' explanation for the dead city is obviously less creative. "Eh, snowstorm, no one in Gotham can go outside, and don't ask questions." They might as well say 'Sorry, wait until next gen for the true open world, we're lazy." But it's not like I'm sitting around saying "Man, this is such a stretch! Arkham City made total sense! I can buy a city-sized prison, but not a snowstorm!" It's just sort of apparent to me that it's a concession to gameplay, in both cases.
Anyway, all this is to say that I think the plots in these Batman games are mostly functional. City had a mission: get as many villains as possible in a small space all at once. It found a way to do that. Origins had the same mission, but was a bit more transparent about it. But neither game was a superlative work of fiction, because both narratives were slaves to gameplay mechanics.
I think both games are great, and Origins' main problem is it is identical to City in too many ways. What I'm frustrated by is reviewers dumping on Origins for criticisms that should have been made against City.
I see, I see.
Well, you'll be happy to know I dump on BOTH City and Origins as being crappy, diluted retreads of the out-of-nowhere brilliance of Asylum.
Replay Asylum and you'll see the new games have not made any huge new developments. As you say, they are slaves to the gameplay (which has only incrementally evolved, btw).
Asylum has a tight structure, logic, flow, and narrative -- and it all coheres together. City and Origins do not.
Yes, I think that is the most consistent, fair position to take. City/Origins share so many faults (and narrative tropes) that Asylum does not have. It makes total sense to me that someone would hate both City/Origins, though I like both because my standards are really low. What makes very little sense is trying to maintain that City is somehow brilliant compared to Origins, which I see a lot of people doing, perhaps because Rocksteady was not involved in Origins.
This Quarter to Three guy is a total hack. I have no idea how this garbage is allowed to get on Metacritic. I'm put about 12 hours into this game and am loving it. The open world is far superior to Arkham City and the origin story has a nice Year One feel with Gordon and Batman getting to know each other in a hopelessly corrupt city. It's got a christmas/snowy vibe which is really cool too. Please do not listen to this idiot site.
It sounds pretty sweet!
It really is dude. It's a fun and worthy sequel that clearly has had a lot of care and attention put into it. Watch the Jeremy Jahns review on youtube. That guy says identifiable, agreeable things that make sense. He justifies this whole 'criticism' thing unlike these sites that just leave you wondering what game they were playing or what exactly they're trying to do with these reviews.
I can guarantee you that the developers didn't literally copy-paste the combat. That's not how games are made. And if you're arguing the combat is the only reason Brandon "threw the game down the toilet", I suggest you read the review again.
As for arguing whether Batman: Arkham City sucks, I've made my own case elsewhere:
I actually thought the writing was a noticeable step up from the other games. I've said this before and I'll say it again here, the previous two games were far too reliant on extratextual knowledge; if you didn't know why the Joker wants Batman to be insane from another version of the character (the cartoon, the Nolan movies, a comic version, etc.) then the Joker-Batman dynamic in the games makes very little sense. Everyone rebuts me by saying, "Batman is so ingrained in the culture that everyone knows this," but that's a pitiful excuse. You don't get to wave away the responsibility of making your own continuity just because others exist, and Arkham City in particular did a bang-up job with almost every other bit of the back-story.
I think this game addresses that. The Joker isn't "irritated" by Batman saving him, he's fascinated. He's perfectly fine with dying, he's absolutely fine with not having control, but Batman won't lay down and die and won't follow anyone's plans but his own. He fears Batman, yet Batman is the only person who would be willing to save him. Batman is the only person who can push back against him and thus the only person who can give his existence meaning. Yeah, this is pretty much lifted straight from Alan Moore, but the other Arkham games don't establish this at all.
And let's not forget that Arkham Asylum, in particular, wasn't an especially well-written game. "I eat punks like these for breakfast." "It's over." "It hasn't even begun!" The fact that Batman doesn't take Poison Ivy back to her cell--which would've taken all of about five minutes--and leaves her in a greenhouse as if we all didn't know what that would lead to.
All the mechanical issues you list are entirely valid, and I agree this is the weakest Arkham title (if we discount Blackgate, which is pretty easy to do). But I'm utterly baffled by the assertions that the writing is weaker. Maybe I'm just more willing to analyze and connect the various narratives across the different titles, I dunno. But I was consistently impressed by what was done here, and I think the developers deserve some credit for their writing.
This review just further proves Tom Chick is a garbage critic. This is Jim Sterling's review, with some added false facts about the plot being irrelevant, the overall gameplay and 2 points taken off the final verdict. The writing is better in origins than it is in Asylum or City and the combat i found to be more varied and challenging with the new enemy types. Ask any goddamn fan of the series, excluding the people who refuse to play the game because of cast choises, which all did a great job with their roles. You're trying too hard to be original, Chick.
Tom didn't review this.
