Batman™: Arkham Origins

This is one of the most underated batman game ever. This was my first arkham game as a child. the story is fantastic the finally is so batman like. the boss battles are epic . batman is just ruthless and raw in this game so awesome. Definitely my fav batman game out of all.

Most annoying Arkham game by far. 80% of the map doesn't let you grapple which makes traversing the city a chore. Surfaces that are slightly taller than Batman are impossible to jump or climb over. I haven't noticed any upgrades for the grapple launch thing and it's borderline useless; it barely launches me higher than what I'm grappling. Combat seems to be the same as the other games. A while back I ran through the other games. This was the last on the list. I didn't get through the first mission because it felt weird and off. I didn't notice this time because it's been a while since i touched the others. I did like being able to go to the Batcave. That was a nice touch. Also, it's really stupid that I can't change my outfit until I beat the game. As if I'd be clamoring to play this again.

So many, the glitches. Can't tell you how many times I've started and abandoned this game. I want to finish it but between technical glitches like the quest pointer going missing at random, and an enviroment that doesn't let you retrace steps (doors that are essential being locked on retracing your path etc) I'm at my wits end with this goddarn mess of an excuse for an Arkham Game. Despite all my rage I am still just a bat in a maze.

Pros:
- A very good Batman story with some stellar voice acting from Roger Craig Smith, Troy Baker and Martin Jarvis
- Fun gameplay for the most part
- Probably the best boss battles in the franchise
- A+ atmosphere and music

Cons:
- There are mild tweaks to the combat when compared to Arkham City - the minions are a tad too agressive
and compared to Arkham City, it can feel a little getting used to, especially if you're looking to pull off a perfect combo.
- At times, the combat can feel unrefined - I hate evoking Arkham City, but it really felt like you could flawlessly transition
from hand-to-hand to ground finishers in a beat. For some reason, in this game, Batman doesn't understand when I want
to do a ground finisher vs. a counter at times.
- Some of the upgrades is gated behind something that's called "the dark knight system' - what this means is you
essentially can go through most of the whole game with some parts of your skill tree inaccessible unless you do certain
activities in-game. Wasn't the case in the prev. arkham games and it is a headscratcher of a decision for this game.

It might feel like I am being a bit harsh, but I think in terms of story and character arcs, this game can stand on the same pedestal as Rocksteady's efforts. Definite recommend if you're a fan of the arkham games!

Originally I skipped this game when it came out. It got panned at the time, being the first Arkham game not made by Rocksteady and being released relatively quickly after the last full Arkham game. It was cited as "more of the same". Which, it turns out, is exactly what I was looking to find when I finally picked it up years later!

It's back to basics Batman. Great story, gadgets, and action. All great performances by our hero and villains. A non stop joy to play. I highly recommend. I think it still holds up well TBH!

Great game! Nice momentos. Some bugs.

One of the most if not the most underrated game in the series, an all star cast, awesome mechanics, good story and the setting as always is brilliant, highly recommended if you haven't played it!

this game was fucking replaying on PC ngl the PC version was awesome and I miss playing as The Dark Knight again

The first time I played this game was back in 2013, immediately after
Release, and the experience was not bad if my memory serves it
right except for the fact that I could not 100% the game because
of a progress blocking bug.

The second time I played this game was back in 2020 and surprisingly
I had a blast. But as it was my third arkham game in the span of a
week, so franchise fatigue did set in and because of that I
left it off only after being done with the story.

Fast forward to November of 2024, revisiting this game for the 3rd
time being a bit more mature, older and with a different pov pointed
out all the glaring issues of the game. Yes comparatively the story
might have been better than the story of asylum, city and knight for
being an origin story and having a contained approach but now I
finally realised why origins is the most hated of all the arkham
games and why it is the black sheep of the franchise.

Don't get me wrong, despite being a poor arkham game,
it still is a very competent and well-made game and miles better
than the crap that the industry has been shitting out for the past
4 to 5 years and 10x better than suicide squad.

cons-

CLUNKY MECHANICS:

INFERIOR COMBAT:

FRUSTRATING TRAVERSAL:

DATED GRAPHICS:

LACKLUSTER SIDE ACTIVITES:

SHALLOW SKILL TREE:

This game is basically just Arkham City again with a different story, which would be all right if it weren't for all the bugs. If you're unlucky, you may get one that breaks the game and have to start over. If it's on sale for super cheap, and you think the bugs are worth tolerating to play a new Arkham City, maybe pick it up. Otherwise, you can skip this installment. The only thing new it offers to the franchise is the bugs.

By far the most underrated Batman game out of the Arkham series. Unfortunately it gets overlooked because of Warner Bros developer, but the game has a great story, great map, and very good dlc.

Its a good prequel for what it is. A lot of good takes on villains just can get buggy and cutscenes are still 720p 30fps but still decent time.

Was a good game when I played it a few years ago but since updating to a newer PC it constantly crashes, loses audio, freezes and sprites / character models disappear randomly.

I've tried various fixes as suggested in the forums e.g. disabling DX 11 and lowering other settings but nothing seems to work which is a shame as I recall enjoying the game first time round,

The Deathstroke, Firefly and Bane boss fights are pretty good in this game

A really cool game. Its a nice change of pace to see the beginnings of Batman and his nemesis. Its cool to see the how the Joker, Batman and Bane developed. I liked this part more than Arkham City, especially becauseof the way how Riddler is introduced and that there is a real reason why to collect his items. Its also the hardest game of the Batman series looking at the boss fights. I really liked this game. I can really highly recommend this game

Pretty good game. The combat is really well polished and it has a very good story that Batman fans will most likely enjoy. Totally recommend if you have enjoyed the previous games in the Arkham series. I did not really like the beginning, specially compared to Arkham City, but that is not something other players should worry about. If you are like me, and find yourself not really liking the beginning, I strongly recommend you keep playing, because this game gets very good very fast. It is a lot of fun and has a decent duration. It's good for players that are looking for a good campaign, but also for those who like to do some side missions, and collect. It really lasts as much as you want it to. Definitely worthy buying -- specially when there is a discount -- and worth playing. Have fun!

Point Counter-Point is single-handedly the most bullshit achievement I have ever tried to get. Also it's buggy and crashes pretty often. Only real fun part is the challenge mode because of its unique settings.

This was great, not quite as good as the trilogy but very close. Played the whole game on the deck and had zero issues.

there are some bugs but they aren't that major. the game is very good combat is nice im just not sure what to do after story mode

This was one of the best of four arkham games loved it so much. if you are looking for a fun, openworld, combat and amazing plot. trust me when i say buy this game and check out the other arkham games. like arkham knight, arkham city, and arkham asylum.

Game was really good. Only problem is that it is riddled (pun intended) with bugs that ranges from soft-locking you, to straight up just not functioning and forcing you to restart the game for a chance to keep playing. I loved the actors, I loved the premise, but Jesus H. Fuck this game will get on your nerves when things break for no reason. A decent 10-ish hour experience if you're only doing story stuff.

Arbitrary score of 6/10 only pick it up if you can pay >$5 in a sale like I did.

This game never deserved the hate it got, yes it has its flaws BUT is still fucking fun. Yapping and saying it has the same combat as arkham city and is just another joker story is a valid but the story is decent and there's nothing wrong with the arkham city combat, so if it aint broke don't fix it. Fits well with the other games unlike Arkham Knights and Suicide Squad 🤮

the game is perfect but there is nothing to do when you complete the story

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☐ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

although a lot of people hate on this game, i loved the whole batman begins story it was very cool to get a backstory and more lore to the series!!!!!!

Attention to Detail, nice combat style, favorable Story mode, and I still didn't complete it 100% yet.

Batman Arkham Origins is a prequel to Arkhan City. The brawler and predator modes feel great - and I think Arkham Origins is the most polished of the Arkhan series, featuring the best boss fights. If you're a fan, don't miss this one.

its a good game but it really overstays its welcome. the main story feels padded out, the usual riddler stuff is a few hours by itself, and after beating the main story theres an extra like 90 minutes of one of the most pointless post story missions ive ever seen i mean seriously i was down to 10 blackgate prisoners left to capture beating my head against the wall cause i just wanted to be done with it. the feeling of padding content is on par with arkham knight imo but at least arkham knight had the excuse of being the last in the series at the time. if you like the series you're gonna like this game but it suffers from the same stuff that people complain about with the rest of the series. also as a personal preference i prefer the combat in arkham city, they changed something with the counter timing in this game that really threw me off from time to time. idk this review is coming off as negative but its because my expectations with this series are so high i feel the need to nitpick. its a fun game but i doubt most people will finish it because it just stretches itself out so much

A non-Rocksteady ‘prequel’ to the Arkham series. A fine one at that, even if it wasn’t received too positively at its release. To be fair, it came out after what is considered to be the best Arkham game, so the shoes were quite big. Gameplay is also very Arkham City-esque, with some questionable additions (or replacements), but nothing too major. Steam achievements have quite a bit of padding considering we need 3 whole playthroughs to get all the achievable…achievements (if anything fishy is noticed on my profile, please keep my secret 😊). The online mode was discontinued, so all the related achievements are hard-locked, unless you get into private servers. So that will be considered into my final rating.

The story was pretty good, although has some temporal discrepancies with the interactions of some characters. The most noticeable is the Joker-Harley story piece. **MILD SPOILER AHEAD** I totally get why WB Montreal absolutely wanted to do a rendition of Mad Love here, and they did do a pretty good job with it too imo, IF its clash with the established Arkham Asylum tapes is to be ignored. But I’m not mad in the slightest here, I loved the section **MILD SPOILER ENDS**. The major characters of the story – Batman, Joker, Alfred, Bane and Gordon – were all pretty well written. Batman and his relationship with all of the major characters mentioned felt pretty organic and his own demeanour and characterization in his 2nd year as a vigilante was pretty well done as well. However, with the decision to include at least 9 members of Batman’s rogue gallery comes with it, the problem of screen-time allotted to each of them. While some like Deadshot and Electrocutioner don’t really need that screentime, but some like Black Mask and Anarchy could have been much better with some more. All in all, it was a pretty solid story and mostly works as a proper prequel to the Arkham series, even with some lore discrepancies.

The gameplay is, as mentioned, very City-esque. However, the replacement of REC-gun with the Concussion Detonator is a very huge downgrade. Even not considering the REC-gun, the Concussion Detonator was almost unusable for me in New Game Plus and I am the Night modes due to the sheer chaos it generates. The shock gloves for me are a net positive addition to the game. It is even better since it actually plays quite a significant part in the story, organically involved too. I personally loved it during custom maps when I just don’t want to repeat the same maps again for an achievement. But there can be an argument as to whether it diminishes the difficulty of combat as a whole. I personally don’t think so as the charging time kind of offsets it pretty well. However, the control scheme in KBMS system makes it so that quick Attack > Counters automatically activates it, and activating it mid-combat otherwise is pretty unreliable unless done within a counter/takedown animation. I don’t recall this being a problem with the controller back when I played it at release on Xbox. The Dark Knight Challenges are okay, but can be very easily hard-locked out of the first playthrough if not played effectively. Side note - Deathstroke, the playable character in challenge maps, is a very well-made character. He feels heavier than Batman, physically stronger but a wee-bit slower – perfect.

Exploration is leaning heavily towards the negative. The Riddler ‘trophies’ are nothing but a chore. I haven’t replayed Arkham City, so I might need to play that next to better compare. However, compared to Arkham Asylum, where there are some actual riddles, this game has zero ‘riddles’, only gadget-locked collectibles, i.e. Riddler trophies, no riddles. Anarchy’s tags are the exact same thing, but with no ‘Riddler Map” if you get my drift – so even worse. The same can be said for a couple of Most Wanted faction missions, specifically those of Penguin and Black Mask. Penguin’s Weapon Caches and Black Mask’s drug stashes are basically the same thing – and I’d argue it is the exact same as Riddler’s Handlers. And these take up the majority of exploration, excluding Riddler’s extortion data. Cyrus Pinkney’s journal entries were very nice and builds the world through the very well-hidden side quest. The detective case-files were also pretty nice. There aren’t a lot of them, but that is good as it does become rather repetitive. Traversing in the map is pretty okay. The fast travel points are well-spaced, but the forced cutscenes are not at all welcome for the 259th time through 3 separate playthroughs.

__________________________________________________________________

DLC - Initiation

Nothing much to say. It is a longer challenge campaign with a minor story about Bruce's training pre-Batman. It has a good Shiva fight , which I would say is actually better than what is in the base game. It does have multiple endings based on how good you are during your playthrough - which is actually neat.

__________________________________________________________________

DLC - Cold Cold Heart

A short campaign introducing Mr. Freeze into the mix. It is actually a very well-told story, and doesn't overstay its welcome. The map is smaller, with some portions (thankfully) blocked off. It also has the only in-game Wayne Manor map in the extended Arkham games iirc. The Anarchy tags are absolutely horrendous and totally unneeded here. Seriously, this was the worst collectible set in the base game, and it reappears here. The frozen victims were a tad less tedious, only because they are detectable through walls - but they are just as shitty of a padding as the Anarchy tags. However, if you are playing Arkham Origins, you should not skip this DLC. The story is solid - short, but solid.

_________________________________________________________________

DLC - Black Mask

Just some challenge maps - don't buy this.

_________________________________________________________________

Recommendation? Yeah, it is a good time. But not for the completionist. I know Arkham City is arguable worse for the completionist. But that doesn't excuse this game. And again, you need to have 3 playthroughs for all achievements - one of which needs a no-death run. Even though the game is far from being difficult even in its highest difficulty setting, you only need to mess up the bridge counter during the Firefly fight, or fall into electrified water once to ruin your otherwise perfect playthrough. I myself have fallen into electrified water, but I know how shitty that bridge counter in the Firefly fight can be courtesy of my many failed attempts during the NG+ run. So take that as you may. And...as you might notice, it is actually impossible to 'complete' the game, owing to online achievements.

I would say it is a 7/10. But considering the online thing, I'll give it a 6/10. Harsh - but hard-locking completion should not be excused.

The Dark Souls 2 of the Arkham games, Origins does some things really well, but wowieee is it by far one of the most unoptimized and buggiest games i ever played. Physics bugs, graphics bugs, audio bugs, gameplay bugs all the good stuff. The fact they patched the most gamebreaking ones but there are still tons left is telling.
Thankfully the gameplay still holds up (a bit easier tbh thanks to a certain gadget or two) and the story is my personal favorite of all the Arkham games, along with the pretty fun boss fights. Definitely in need of a remaster though to polish some rough edges, and fix the myriads of bugs and glitches.

My favorite arkham game. story: 8/10 gameplay: 7/10 challenge mode 7/10 DLC: 8/10 Map 7/10
Only complaint is that I had to restart after i clipped through the floor in GCPD.

Underrated AF! There is tough competition between the other three but it still has one of the best pacing comparatively. I had a fun time playing it. Although the mid-game villain reveal was alright.

really fun game not as fun as batman arkham city but still very fun

Arkham Origns felt insanely good to play and come back to after a long Hiatus highly recommend playing on controller if possible as the PC controls can be a little finicky at times. really good experience playing the game however a tad Annoyed that Achievements needed to 100% are tied to an almost extinct multiplayer mode. if this doesn't bother you would highly recommend Arkham origins.

overall: 8/10

great story but the gameplay can be buggy at times pretty short for an arkham story though

This game is so over hated. With the Steam reviews it doesn't seem to be as hated as other places but somehow this is widely considered to be the worst game in the series, in my personal opinion this is my second favorite game in the series. While yes the story is kinda meh I loved the game play, setting, and the arc that Bruce was in during this time period. A grounded, vengeful, young Batman is my favorite kind of Batman which also explains why I love the 2022 movie so much. If you enjoyed City and Asylum, play this!

Pretty fun spin-off Prequel.
I would suggest playing these games in the order they were released, otherwise, this will feel like a bit of a step down from Arkham Knight.

The Arkham series of games is hands down, one of the best superhero series, and definitely the best DC games that exist.

Although gameplay isn't the best, it's not so bad. The story is amazing.

Its a fun and interesting take on batman 2 years run , interesting villians and setting , although they misused black mask. which was one of the major disappointsments in the game every else is great.

My first game ever completed on PC and I don't know why I picked this game since i completed it on console, I should've picked a classic like Portal or Half Life. And this game still holds up today, the graphics are great. The plot is exciting and new from the Arkham games. A mysterious figure that hired eight assassins to kill Batman? Hell yeah. But my only problem with the plot is that is no longer becomes exciting when Joker is introduced in my opinion. He's been done SO many times. He is my favourite Batman villain but I would've liked Black Mask to be the big bad, since he's not as known as Joker, Riddler, Bane etc. The gameplay is fun since new gadgets are being constantly introduced and the shock gloves. The skill menu also makes the game fun. The open world is nice, it can feel a bit tight in some bits but it is cozy with all the snow. 8/10, also follow my Serializd: TheTrueDetective if you have the app lol.

This game is very fun. It is very similar to city, but has some good additions. I would highly recommend this game and the arkham games in general.

i like this about game story and boss fight and most important thing is combat moves

Really Fun!! little bit Slow on the movement in combat but otherwise Really fun!!! if you have not played any of the Arkham games would recommend!!

Honestly, I really enjoyed the game and the overall experience it offered. I definitely recommend it to anyone who loves action and mystery. The graphics, storyline—everything is perfect. I'd give this game a solid 10/10!

It was good enough to finish, but it was the first Arkham game I didn't 100%. If you have finished City and Asylum, and still want more, check it out.

Even with same formula as rocksteady games, I still find myself enjoying this game. The new gadgets feel fun especially the electro gauntlets feel so satisfying

love how it takes part during christmas time and love the music and the story line of the beginning of batman and the joker and how it came all together in the arkham universe

Overhated game, its the best in the saga. The cutscenes and bosses are some of the best in any game I've played.

TL;DR: It's Good, but nothing more.

Coming to this after Arkham City influenced a lot of my opinions, after finishing the game it felt like a mod fro Arkham City, damn good mod tho. The story is good, the gameplay is a'ight, but again it just felt like a diet AC. Whoever the bosses where a mayor highlight. And Madhatter's section was definitely better than AC. Overall, it's good. Some say it's underrated and for good reasons, but Arkham City is still the best one... although I got to admit, I haven't got to Knight.

ps. Which side you on? "Man: Ham Oranges", or "Man: Ham Orgy?"

I'm not sure why people don't talk about this Arkham game, because it's pretty good! Being the first one chronologically, it does a good job as a jumping in point for the series. Yeah, sure, Kevin Conroy isn't here and Bruce is instead voiced by Roger Craig Smith. But hey, Roger knocks it out of the park and does an excellent job. I don't have a ton to say, because it really is just more Arkham. If you love Arkham and don't mind playing a prequel, this one's totally worth your time.

My big issues are that it didn't necessarily blow me away. It's a great game, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to be singing to the masses about Arkham Origins if you get what I mean. It's also extremely buggy and I often had to reload checkpoints or go in and out of the main menu in order to fix things. Not great. And those bugs persisted in the DLC of Cold, Cold Heart as well.

I guess I'll talk about the DLC as well to expand on this a bit. Cold Cold Heart is okay. It's just more Arkham Origins, and that's fine. It's around 3-4 hours long with a mostly linear story with only 1 and a half new areas. There's only about 7 missions total (going off IGN's walkthrough listing - I'd say it's more around 5 maybe?) and the cryo enemies are really annoying to dodge. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if this game was just not meant to be at a high fps, but those cryo enemies were really difficult for me.

I guess that also brings up something I want to mention. I love WB's "Flowmotion" combat a ton. It's really fun. But I've always had an issue with how it functions whenever you throw enemies at the player that have abilities that disrupt the flow of it. Having enemies that require Batman to stun them are annoying when you have to counter an enemy behind you as you're hitting the stunned enemy, for example. I think Shadow of Mordor and War handle the flowmotion much better.

I also take issue with the stealth. Stealth Takedowns are nice, but it feels very... one-note. I suppose the best comparison I can make is Spider-Man, where I actually love the stealth. And Spider-Man very obviously takes tons of inspiration from Arkham. One thing I love about Spider-Man's stealth are the Perch Takedowns. Arkham Origins has Perch Takedowns but you can only do 1 per perch, and then the hitbox for allowing you to do so is very small. What I'm trying to say here is that I wish there was a little more variance to the stealth gameplay because it feels dull at best and lackluster at worst.

The times the stealth combat feels like its at its worst are during the final bosses of both the main story and the DLC. Both of these bosses are anti-climactic unfortunately since you have to utilize the stealth gameplay to defeat them. They both form lukewarm conclusions for their finales, which is ultimately disappointing.

That said, I think Arkham Origins came out at a weird time because it doesn't really have any right to be so overlooked. It's a good game, but it is very much simply "more Arkham but it's a prequel". At the time this game came out, the PS4 and Xbox One launches were only around 2 weeks away, and it wasn't going to launch on those platforms, unfortunately. That definitely feels like part of the reason it flew under the radar.

Great game, but unfortunately I have to give it some flak for the bugs and some design decisions.

Score: 84