The cutscenes and story of Arkham: Origins is packed together tightly and effectively, showcasing a truly awesome chain of events. Detective Mode was a good way of telling a complex story, where the player follows along with Batman's chain of thought. I absolutely loved Joker's performance, and I love this Deathstroke.
Right off the bat you get all the gadgets from Arkham City, and then you get overpowered electro-gloves later on, which takes away from it being an earlier Batman. The Riddler challenges are nothing compared their cleverness in City. They had the opportunity to give a different set of gadgets which could have been problem solving tools instead of "remote batarang", ect.
Gotham's streets are really empty and dreary. They just spammed generic thugs and the occasional group of riot police. Everyone is men and it bothers me that women were excluded from this game. Anything to avoid the implication of sexual assault going on to hold onto the T Rating I guess.
The boss battles were good in concept but their repetitive execution sucked. Interrupting someone else's cutscene, Deathstroke just fucking grapples Batman with a cable which drags him into an arena, where he choses to fight Batman with defensive martial arts, with the AI mostly standing still and waiting to brutally punish the player for any aggressive moves. The fight starts out so tense and evenly matched with AI and player countering one another's moves. It's working so well but then out of nowhere Deathstroke cracks and decides to just jump on Batman and straddle him while wailing on him with the staff?? And when that didn't work Deathstroke tries it again frame-for-frame? Batman goes for the headbutt and now Deathstroke has his helmet off and samurai sword #1 is out. The way Deathstroke uses his katana is realistic and it is just an awesome feeling to face off against a defensive fighter with a katana. But Batman is now aware of Deathstroke's greatest weakness and repeatedly, and without mercy, quickfires bat-grappler-gun to pull Deathstroke off balance and then slams him onto the floor. This happens about 20 times. Deathstroke has had enough. He pulls off an arabesque (jumping backwards with the leg extended ballet move), and, while midair, shoots a cable drone at Batman. The cable drone shoots off and connects to the nearest propane tank. Batman tries throwing a batarang at the incoming propane tank. Didn't work. Batman is engulfed in flames and now Deathstroke is shooting at him with a pistol. There is a little more katana-dancing but Deathstroke knows Batman cannot handle the cable drone propane tank arabesque and pulls it off again. Batman dives out of the way but it is futile, the explosion engulfs him again. Four more propane tanks still stand ready to be arabesqued. Demoralized and 3rd degree burned, Batman taps out.
Thus sums up the most well designed fight lol. Sometimes a game has to admit some parts are interactive movie scenes and would be better off as a spar with a quick and realistic climax. Arkham: Origins has semblance to the 2011 dubstep album Excision - X Rated, it seethes genuine coolness, but every song is legitimately half the length of its pictured runtime because each song is repeated once over.
The NPC interactions and combat mechanics are where this game has improved on Arkham City. In Arkham: Origins Batman is still urban legend, with many NPCs seeing Batman as a wraith. It makes the interactions so much more fun to play out because you have a reputation to uphold and strengthen. The gameplay mechanic of NPCs acting progressively more anxious as you ambush their partners supports this aspect of the enjoyment. This Batman's armor is more of a practical shape and his avatar feels better to control here than Arkham City in my opinion.
Arkham: Origins lets you play as Deathstroke through all the Challenge maps and they put a ton of effort into his fighting style and avatar. Just like Arkham City did with Catwoman where you can tell you have a different style of agility under control.
The Challenge maps are split between a stealth encounter and a melee brawl where you fight 100 NPC humans. Something this game gets so right is weight distribution of the human body. If you set up a cable as Deathstroke in a stealth encounter, start tightrope walking across it, and then go static, the stance he holds on that cable is unreal. It just feels so awesome to be Deathstroke overlooking his prey as he has his limbs intricately tight to that cable. He'll even let a leg hang as counterbalance if you pull out a smoke grenade in that position.
I have a Taekwondo Black Belt, and that helped me to appreciate the legitimate martial arts incorporated in Arkham City Batman's moveset. He commonly uses a back-kick in City and in this fantasy setting where you do not get dizzy and exhausted, back-kick is the best choice for Batman and puts those thick ass thigh muscles to their highest utility. Then as you are preforming combinations in City there is the Y/B availability where you can order Batman to do something that knocks a thug out of the fight, like break a bone. The Y/B moves really gave a great mixed martial arts feeling to the combat. It has bothered me that exhaustion and breathing is never a factor in the fighting, because the other elements are done so well, that is the factor that would perfect it. Fighting in sparring armor is incredibly exhausting, about 20 seconds in anyone will feel unconsciousness clawing up to drown them.
Playing as Deathstroke in the 1 vs 100 melee mode, it is clear that the WB Montreal team put their heart and soul into improving the melee experience from Arkham City. Quebec's biggest exports being maple syrup, hydroelectricity, and Cirque du Soleil, it is clear that Deathstroke is familiar with the superhuman standard of grace that Cirque du Soleil imposes on its performers. The transitions between counters and movements are so fluid. Each limb has its own physicality and the hitboxes are tight to each body in the field of play. Deathstroke dances ballet with the NPCs, fluidly going into simultaneous counters where he grabs one NPC's arm and leads his momentum into the other NPC which is about to punch. The most efficient way to engage an NPC with an assault rifle at a distance is grapple him toward you, and you then have the option to vault over his body, which causes enough forward momentum on him for him to stumble into a faceplant.
Deathstroke's go-to kicks are returning-kick and back-roundhouse, both of which are where one spins their body quickly around while extending the momentum of the spin into a kick, and holy fuck is it awesome to see what Deathstroke can pull off. It is like watching Ip Man (2008). As Deathstroke shifts gears between keeping the crowd off balance with ballet and carving through each NPC with ruthless locomotion, the player is given the opportunity to direct the next Y/B, and when Deathstroke chooses to invert a dude's elbow joint or pin someone's forearm to the ground with his knee, the skeletal breaks and dislocations are audible.
One example of the beauty of the game is, a moment where Deathstroke was pressured to the wall by two female katana wielding Al Gûl ninjas, and I executed Y, Y/B. Ninja #1 goes for the strike. Deathstroke connects his staff to the katana and counters, knocking Ninja #1 in the left side of her jaw with the staff. Ninja #1 falls to her right side onto the ground with the impact, falling toward the feet of Ninja #2. Deathstroke follows with the momentum and is falling parallel with Ninja #1 into a roll. Ninja #2 is still holding a defensive posture as Deathstroke grabs onto Ninja #2's left tibia, twisting her leg with the momentum of his rolling body and sending Ninja #2 to the floor. After both of them roll over, Ninja #2 is now belly-down under Deathstroke who is on his knees. With the weight of his upper body and action of his arms, Deathstroke snaps Ninja #2's tibia.
I played Arkham: Origins' online multiplayer mode when the game was fresh. The matchmaking was horrible. I got tossed into the field with Brazilian toddlers who were simultaneously vocal on the microphone and away-from-keyboard, and I just had to make do with existing resources. The resources being missile drone if I was Bane's gang member and nail-submachine gunz if I was Joker's, and each side gets an assault rifle. Batman and Robin act as a third team, and so it is built as 3 vs 3 vs 2. If you died you were eliminated and occasionally actual Bane and Joker were playable as overpowered units. It was fun. In the occasion where skilled players were involved on all 3 teams it was a feeling of survivalism that was unique. Close patient standoffs between survivors as they roamed around the maze while the Batman player was stalking around waiting for an opportunity to ambush. It was really satisfying shooting the Batman player to death. The multiplayer had a great dark glitchy atmosphere. The game itself was very buggy but functional enough to have great games play out. The main thing was that the matchmaking was so poor that most of its audience would deem it unplayable.
