Arkham Origins is set in the early days of the Dark Knight. At this point in the story, Batman has only been in action for about two years and is encountering some of his more infamous adversaries for the first time, the Joker being one of them. Hamill officially retired from the role after Arkham City, so for this installment the part of the Joker is given to Troy Baker (who voiced Two Face in City). Although, to Baker's credit I honestly thought it was Hamill the first time I heard him speak, and laugh. Baker actually got the Hamill laugh down! I was impressed. Some of the mechanics from the previous game carried over, as Rocksteady gave WB Montreal their source code to build on, so those familiar combat mechanics, glide mechanics, and other certain things carry over well.
The story itself isn't too exciting, and is actually very flat. Although, being that it is Batman, it can be argued that story is kind of a secondary feature. After all, most of us only really want to be Batman so we can punch bad guys in the face. So as long as that is maintained, it's is easy to forgive other oversights. A brief synopsis of the story is essentially as such (spoiler!):
"Grr I'm Batman, where's Penguin?"
"Grr, I'm Deathstroke. I hate you, Batman and I want to collect the bounty on your head!"
"Grr, I'm Bane and I want to kill the Batman!"
"Grr, I think Black Mask isn't really dead, but who did this?"
"Woohoo! Joker! (grr)"
"Grr, I'm Bane and I want to kill the Batman!"
"Grr, Who the fuck is the Joker?"
"Grr, Master Bruce! You're an asshole!"
"Grr, I'm a rich asshole that writes your paychecks, old man!"
"Grr, I'm Bane and I want to kill the Batman!"
"Grr, I'm Bane and I can't remember where the Batman went!"
"Grr, I'm Black Mask, die Batman!"
"Grr, I'm Batman and you're finished, Joker!"
That's the whole game in 13 lines.
Some of the gadgets used are different from the previous games, but essentially serve the same function. For example, in Arkham City after fighting Freeze, we gained a freeze bomb that could be used to temporarily paralyze enemies. In Origins, it is subbed with a glue grenade that does essentially the same thing. After the Deathstroke fight, we gain his claw gun, which essentially replaces the zipline but adds extra functionality in that it can be also used to wrangle enemies, or attach them to explosives to stun them. Combat mechanics are essentially the same and haven't changed at all. There is a slight continuity issue in the gadgetry in that we still have access to the Grapnel Boost Accelerator. But wait a minute, wasn't that device in its prototype stage in Arkham City? Why yes, it was. So how is it that in a game that takes place before this device was prototyped, we have access to this device immediately? That's just a small snippet of WB Montreal's oversights/carelessness.
Rocksteady published Arkham City in 2011, and immediately began working on Arkham Knight. They already knew, from the time they published Arkham Asylum, that they were doing a trilogy and that they wanted the third installment on the next gen. This means they were going to need a minimum of three years to develop the third title. In light of this, someone along the line at WB got worried that we wouldn't want to wait three years for a quality title, or that their pockets weren't filled with enough of our cash to wait. So they got this brilliant idea to create an in house studio to develop an intermittent title to hold us over until Rocksteady drops their masterpiece. Thus, WB Montreal was born. Rocksteady is a UK based developer, and was too busy being badass to worry about babysitting a Canadian development team. So they handed over their source code, said "best of luck" and went back to being the badasses they are.
The result? Sheer sadness.
Arkham Origins launched in 2013, so I mean really what's another year? But I digress. This game, despite its Bat-ness, is riddled with bugs, glitches, freezes, and multiplayer. Multiplayer. Multiplayer.....
One of the things I've always respected Rocksteady for is they are one studio that doesn't believe every game has to have some kind of multiplayer shoe horned into it. None of their Arkham games (including upcoming Knight) have multiplayer. But why? Everything is multiplayer these days! Multiplayer is the word! No, it's not. Bird is the word. Rocksteady and I have a similar stance on this in that I think multiplayer is a modern standard that really shouldn't be a standard, and they don't want to take time and resources away from building an awesome single player experience simply to build a multiplayer platform that isn't even necessary in a game about a hero who prefers to fly solo. WB Montreal's stance? Put muliplayer in it! But I think that's as far as their thought process went into it. Seriously. You have to load a second disc for the multiplayer, and once you get into multiplayer finding a lobby is a nightmare. Matchmaking? Forget it. It was waaay too easy to be a level 1-15 player being stuck in lobbies with people who are level 60 or higher. And of course, they wipe the floor with you. This then leaves you frustrated, and you never play again. Now the already desolate lobbies are even more desolate.
That's as far as I care to go with the multiplayer discussion. So back to the campaign and its slew of troubles. I was fortunate enough to have minimal bugs/glitches in my experience. Many folks were not so fortunate. People reported issues of not being able to finish the campaign because their game was stuck at one certain checkpoint where every time they loaded the game, they would fall infinitely through the map, unable to play or progress. I think I fell out of the map once, and much like the other problems I had, luckily rebooting the game was enough to fix it. Again, I was luckier than most. There were also situations where the claw gun picked up from Deathstroke wouldn't latch to surfaces it was supposed to in order to lay down a zipline, including immediately after defeating Deathstroke. That is of course problematic because you need the zipline to escape after defeating Deathstroke! Again, I was luckily able to fix it with a simple reboot, most were not so lucky.
It was also evident that the game was having trouble loading data (i.e. it was overloaded) because sometimes environments would take time to load in, or combat sequences wouldn't be able to finish because enemies were unable to engage you for some reason, and your punches never connect. Predator situations got the worst of it. If you've seen my YouTube playlists you know I'm a HUGE fan of Predator mode. I can't tell you how many times, both in the campaign and challenge mode Predator scenarios I found myself unable to complete the challenges properly because an enemy would somehow get stuck in a wall and I couldn't take them down, or complete a medal. Those of us who bought this game essentially paid full price for half a game and WB Montreal wasn't in a hurry to fix it. Sure there were patches, if that's what you could call them.
And as far as unlocks go, the trophies and concept art that were typically unlocked in these games never unlocked appropriately either. My game finally got a 100% status after one of the patches, but my game stats page said I had 48/47 character trophies and 119/120 concept art pieces.
WB Montreal robbed us of that healthy healing process.
Initiation didn't even have any trophies listed on the PSN Trophy list, it's achievements were in the Xbox Live Achievement list before the content launched. But after meeting the requirements, no achievements were triggered. After much raging, Googling, and more raging, WB Montreal released a statement that they were aware of the issue because the content was published without the flags/milestones for the achievements/trophies and that they would simply insert them with the next (third) patch. They continued by stating that people who had already met the requirements for the achievements could trigger them post patch by simply replaying one challenge map in each of the challenge modes. It of course didn't work, or the flags weren't actually added to the patch. This caused more raging internet wide, followed by WB Montreal releasing a statement that they would not be releasing any new patches at the time, they were no longer going to focus on non game breaking issues, when (and if) they did release a patch it would only be to fix game breaking (read "progression blocking") issues. The reason they were ceasing fixes? They were focusing their time and resources to release the Mr. Freeze DLC on time.
They were more concerned with publishing add-on content for you to spend more money on than they were fixing their half-assed game that was a total slap in the face to an awesome franchise that Rocksteady had built with two titles using nothing but the blood, sweat, and tears of their developers. I can't tell you if anything ever developed beyond that, because that's when I had enough and walked away. WB Montreal has apparently taken their cues on customer service and quality control from EA, because I now will never financially support either of them again. I refuse to buy another title that is endorsed by either company. They won't miss me, and the feeling is mutual.
They could take a cue from Gearbox if you ask me. They get a lot of flack about some pretty minor (and sometimes major) stuff from their customer base. Sometimes they even lose their cool on Twitter or similar sites, but they always do what they can to maintain a quality product (at least when it comes to Borderlands titles. Some of their other titles haven't been so fortunate). The solution isn't always pleasing to the customers, but at least they have the integrity to fix it. On the flipside of that, they are also fond of trolling us. Turnabout is fair play.
That having been said, the best I could give this game on a ten scale is a 6, that even seems too high.
I'm so relieved for Arkham Knight. I really need Rocksteady to bring me back to this franchise.
No comments:
Post a Comment