I was hugely excited for Arkham Origins but also somewhat cautious about picking it up. Reviews had been mixed and generally focused on the fact that the game didn’t do much different than Asylum or City that came before it, but they also strongly argued that more of a good thing isn’t always bad. With that in mind, I still grabbed it on launch day and spent as much time as I could with it over the weekend. There’s a lot to like here, as the game has a lot going for it — good story, excellent combat mechanics, great voice acting, and a game style that is just as fun and engaging as it’s ever been.
Two weeks later, though, and I’ve pretty much lost interest and decided to stop playing. Unfortunately, nothing in the game stands out as being worthy or exciting enough to keep me coming back for more. What’s most frustrating about Origins isn’t that the game is bad — it’s not, in fact it is probably the best Batman game we’ve had to date. My issue harkens back to the original reviews I read (and ones I should have listened to) in that there nothing is new or fresh in it. Warner Bros. Montreal simply took Arkham City, added some new levels and a plot and released it out into the wild as a ‘new’ game, when frankly, it feels more like DLC than anything else. To be fair, Arkham City was a masterpiece, and it would have been difficult to top or improve it, but some sort of effort to do so would have been appreciated. And it’s because of this derivative nature of the game, that I’ve effectively quit and will soon be trading it in.
Maybe if I had unlimited free time, I would finish, but I simply don’t have enough time as it is, and what little I do have to play games, I don’t want to waste on something I’ve already spent 20 hours doing before. Don’t get me wrong; there are tons of games I can immerse myself in for hours doing the same things over and over again (Disney Infinity, Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat), but it’s because those games are built to be replayed in that fashion. This is one reason why I’m not a COD or Battlefield fan; every new one is a clone of the previous iteration just with a fresh coat of paint and a new weapon to play with. In that same sense, Arkham Origins is lazy, and simply a rehash of what came before, and as much as I enjoyed them, I’m not interested enough to go through it all again.
Specbot also wanted to chime in about the lack of originality in games, so here are his thoughts as well:
Specbot: Assassin’s Creed. Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed. Man, I want to play through that series so badly, but I stopped about halfway through Brotherhood and I haven’t been back in a long, long time.
The problem is the first three games (and maybe first four, I haven’t played Revelations yet) are way too similar. The second one tried to be different, didn’t it? New setting, new character…same everything else. Then they took that slightly different spin on the series and ran with it for three more games. I totally understand, not all of Desmond’s ancestors can be important, so it would be weird to have a series of 6 or 7 games with different main characters in different time periods…but that’s the fun of the series, and I’m willing to suspend my disbelief in the name of that. It’s wasted potential to spend so much time on Ezio when you’ve already got a main character in Desmond. He’s our vehicle into the Assassin’s Creed world. Change things drastically with every game, because what other series can do that and get away with it? Where’s Victorian London? Feudal Japan? 1950’s New York?
It sounds like I’m ranting, and I am. Any of you that are caught up on the series know that the developers are starting to do exactly what I’m talking about. (I really want to be a pirate.) The problem is as a gamer playing the series, I’m stuck in the past. With roughly 20 hours per game, I’ve got to do so much work to get to the point where the innovation starts. It’s difficult to find the time, and I would hate to skip ahead. Getting through a game series should feel like devouring a TV show, not like mowing the front lawn. Game developers shouldn’t be playing it safe. Grab our attention, take risks often, and show us something new. Because we’ve seen mediocrity before, and it isn’t worth our time.