Batman: Arkham Origins - Blackgate

My first reaction when I heard 'Arkham game done as a 2.5D Metroidvania' was genuine excitement. The mainline Arkham titles were basically 3D Metroid playgrounds anyway, so shrinking that structure into a side-scroller sounded like a natural fit. What arrived on PC as the Deluxe Edition is something more complicated: a game with a clear vision that keeps colliding with its own rough edges. The setup is solid enough. Three months after Arkham Origins, Blackgate Prison has exploded into chaos, with Joker, Penguin, and Black Mask carving the penitentiary into three rival factions - Cell Block, Industrial Area, and Administration Offices. You can tackle those bosses in any order, and the game actually features different endings depending on who you face last, which is a genuinely clever touch for a spin-off. Catwoman works as your inside contact throughout, and the motion-comic cutscenes that tell the story look genuinely striking, styled like hand-drawn panels with strong voice work from Roger Craig Smith, Troy Baker, and the rest of the Origins cast. Where things unravel is in the second-to-second experience. The 2.5D combat tries to replicate the free-flow system the Arkham series built its reputation on, but translating it into this locked-camera side-scrolling space causes real problems. Batman can whiff attacks because enemies shift between foreground and background planes, combo strings break unpredictably, and stealth sections that should feel slick instead feel claustrophobic and unreliable. The gadget progression - Batarang, Batclaw, Explosive Gel - gates off areas in classic Metroidvania fashion, and that part works reasonably well. The map, however, is a genuine problem. Navigating Blackgate's interconnected corridors without a clear, readable layout turns routine backtracking into a frustrating wander. On top of that, the detective-mode scanning mechanic requires you to sweep almost every surface to reveal interactive points, which drags the pacing to a crawl whenever you hit a new area. The boss fights against Joker, Penguin, Black Mask, and bonus encounters like Deadshot and Bronze Tiger are where the design genuinely shines. Each encounter mixes pattern recognition with environmental problem-solving rather than just inflating enemy health, and they give a decent taste of what a more polished version of this game could have been. The runtime is lean - around six to eight hours depending on how lost you get - so the whole thing does not overstay its welcome even when it frustrates. This is a game that lands differently depending entirely on what you bring to it. Completionist Arkham fans who want every corner of the Origins timeline covered will find it tolerable and occasionally enjoyable. Metroidvania fans hoping for tight map design and satisfying exploration will be disappointed by the navigation and the neutered combat. Anyone new to the series should start somewhere else entirely. As a PC port the 60fps performance is its clearest technical win over the console versions, but that alone does not fix the structural problems carried over from the original handheld release.

Alex · Scout Team

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