Batman: Arkham Origins - Black Mask Challenge Pack (DLC)

I came into Arkham Origins expecting a cynical stopgap, and left surprised by how much the story earned its runtime. WB Games Montreal inherited Rocksteady's free-flow combat engine essentially intact, and the honest question going in was whether there was anything else to justify the game's existence. The answer, it turns out, is a firm yes, but only in the places critics were least generous about in 2013. On a mechanical level, the criticism is fair: this is Arkham City with the serial numbers lightly sanded. The freeflow combat returns, the Invisible Predator sections return, the Riddler collectibles return under the thin disguise of Enigma extortion files, and the expanded Gotham map is largely a doubled version of City's layout navigated via Batwing fast-travel rather than anything fundamentally new. The Case Files detective system, where you reconstruct crime scenes holographically using Detective Vision, sounds more exciting than it plays. Batman does the interpretation for you, which drains most of the puzzle satisfaction out of the process. New enemy types like Martial Artists, who can block and reverse your combos, do add friction to the combat in a way that keeps veterans honest, and the electro-gloves give you a useful option in heavy crowd fights. But if you are hoping Origins pushes the series forward the way City pushed Asylum, you will be disappointed. Where the game genuinely earns its place in the series is the boss fights and the central story. The roster of eight assassins sent to kill Batman on Christmas Eve, Black Mask's bounty driving them all into Gotham, sets up a series of confrontations that are among the best boss encounters the franchise has produced. Deathstroke demands precise countering with almost no margin for error. The Bane fight uses stuns and timed beatdowns in a way that feels distinct from the ambient brawling. Each fight has its own logic. The story, meanwhile, takes clear inspiration from Batman: Year One and The Long Halloween to build a raw, early version of the Batman-Joker relationship, and the writing holds up. Roger Craig Smith and Troy Baker voice Batman and Joker respectively with enough conviction that the absence of the franchise veterans barely registers after the first act. The Christmas Eve setting gives Gotham an atmosphere the other games never had, snow-covered and tense. The technical state deserves an honest note. At launch in 2013, the game shipped with significant bugs across all platforms, corrupted saves on Xbox 360, progression locks, and falling-through-world exploits that stopped mission completion cold. Most of those issues have been addressed by patches in the years since, and players coming to the game today will find a substantially more stable experience than launch-era reviewers did. The online multiplayer, a 3v3v2 mode pitting Joker's gang against Bane's crew with Batman and Robin playing the predator role, was shut down in December 2016. What remains is single-player only. New Game Plus and the punishing one-death "I Am The Night" mode give completionists plenty of extra mileage after the credits. The bottom line is that Origins sits comfortably in third place behind Asylum and City in the franchise rankings, which still means it is a good action-adventure game. First-timers to the Arkham series should start with Asylum, but if you are working through the catalogue, Origins rewards patience. The story alone, and specifically the Joker-Batman dynamic it builds, justifies the runtime.

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