It was with this in mind that I've pretty much ignored all information that's come out about the new game Arkham Origins, to the point where I only just realised this morning that it's actually due in a couple of weeks. It wasn't out of malice or anything, I just genuinely didn't care, I was completely indifferent to City during my playthrough of it and since then I've slowly realised all the little things about it I hated and after recently attempting to give it a second try I rage quit it almost instantly. So I thought I was done with this franchise, but with the new game being in the hands of the developers, a prequel to the other games and all the other things I've heard about it I'm actually intrigued.
The biggest weakness of City was the story which pretty much jumped the shark on its premise alone and continued to be an incoherent mess from there. Even with Batman and a colourful cast of his more beloved villains running around the game fell flat because there was just all this "stuff" going on. That was sort of the idea, to have the City be a big playground for all of Batman's villains and their dudes to make him feel out of his depth, but in the end just turned out to be a meaningless cluster of sound and motion that I can't comment too much further on because my brain has wrapped all the specific plot elements into a little ball and tossed them out my ear due to disinterest. It was dumb though, I remember that much.
However Arkham Origins on paper alone sounds like it has more going for it in the plot department. Sure the writing doesn't seem much better with one of the trailers having the Joker unironically use the line "nice of you to drop in" and Batman screaming "HOW MANY PEOPLE DID YOU JUST KILL". I know neither of these lines are out of character but COME ON. Anyway, even Asylum had a crap ending and not particularly wonderful dialogue so we'll let it pass, what's interesting is the premise for a video game.
Black Mask is pissed off at Batman and has hired 8 dudes and dudettes to deal with The Dark Knight...and that's pretty much it. Sure it's not the most complicated plot in the world, but games like No More Heroes and Crackdown have shown how fun this simple premise can be when used properly as the main characters develop and grow through a series of colourful and memorable boss encounters. It means you'll always have a clear objective and an overarching sense of being threatened as baddies lurk in the shadows. Plus Batman's main skill is punching things and this gives him a lot of dudes to punch so shut up.
Black Mask is pissed off at Batman and has hired 8 dudes and dudettes to deal with The Dark Knight...and that's pretty much it. Sure it's not the most complicated plot in the world, but games like No More Heroes and Crackdown have shown how fun this simple premise can be when used properly as the main characters develop and grow through a series of colourful and memorable boss encounters. It means you'll always have a clear objective and an overarching sense of being threatened as baddies lurk in the shadows. Plus Batman's main skill is punching things and this gives him a lot of dudes to punch so shut up.
Another thing I don't like about either Arkham games is the general mix of gameplay, both the stealth and combat sections worked and were fine but neither were fun to play for extended amounts of time. City made this problem even worse by giving you respawning dudes to fight all the time and adding 10 million gadgets that completely failed to integrate in the game intuitively and spread the game even more thinly.
So far Arkham Origins seems to have a strong combat focus and has made the actual fighting more complex than hammering the square button and occasionally the triangle button when one of the enemies gets gassy and starts emanating stink lines. Being a prequel the game SHOULD have less stupid gadgets to break up the actual fun parts of the game, so if the combat and stealth get a lot more polish and are the main connecting elements between awesome boss fights with the assassins then this game could be a lot stronger than its predecessors in the gameplay department.
So far Arkham Origins seems to have a strong combat focus and has made the actual fighting more complex than hammering the square button and occasionally the triangle button when one of the enemies gets gassy and starts emanating stink lines. Being a prequel the game SHOULD have less stupid gadgets to break up the actual fun parts of the game, so if the combat and stealth get a lot more polish and are the main connecting elements between awesome boss fights with the assassins then this game could be a lot stronger than its predecessors in the gameplay department.
The boss fights will be the deciding factor in my opinion, if they're all unique and memorable on par with the awesome fight with Mr Freeze from City then this game will almost certainly be the strongest of the trilogy. However, if the designers slack and waste all their time animating the snow effects and Santa Claus on his sleigh in the skybox and have Asylum style boss fights where you trick them all into running into a wall then it'll be a waste of everyone's time. So no pressure Warner Bros. Interactive Montréal.
Not that I'm PREDICTING it'll be good, it's going to be a story focused game based on comic books and a sequel to a game I don't like at all so there's still a lot of room for doubt. I'm just saying it sounds interesting to me so...if it sounds interesting to you...then, ermm cool...
END OF BLOG GO AWAY
No comments:
Post a Comment