'Arkham Origins' is the third part of darkly realistic' Batman: Arkham' series. Since this is a prequel, knowledge of the predecessors are not necessary in order to understand the plot. You can tell that the story takes place at the beginning of Batman's career: The bat does not have any allies except butler Alfred and is little more than a rumor, and the figures are considerably younger.
Who knows the predecessor, will feel in Gotham City like home, because nothing has been changed on the basic gameplay: The city is freely accessible and is waiting to be explored by Batman, either on foot or by Bat-grappling hooks and Bat-Cape gliding. Important buildings are in the same place as in 'Arkham City', in addition to the districts known from the predecessors but are still a few to come. In order not to have to walk across the huge city every time, there is now a quick trip function via Batwing unless you sabotaged in side missions radio towers.
Batman is the same repertoire of options as in the previous available, where he still performs the movements depends on the context. The same action is always started with the same key, the concrete reaction is left to the Dark Knight. To land on narrow protrusions or ropes is automatic. Thus, the gameplay is indeed extremely fluid, occasionally performs but to the fact that Batman automatically performs an action that was not intended to end up with a Gleitangriff on a railing is very popular.
Additional possibilities in the exploration and in battle provides the contents of the Bat-belt. For the history-related equipment to play freely during the game; Accessories that are not essential, but makes life easier, you get as a reward for side missions. Much has changed not at the Bat-gadgets: Batarang The serves as a long-range weapon, the adhesive grenades replace cyro, but work the same and with Explosivgel blows to brittle walls and enemy groups. Another new feature is a kind of flashbang (the predecessor could only be used in Robin) was modified the line launcher. This now works only at certain points, but can also be used to pull opponents at viewpoints and thus turn quickly.
Arkham veterans will quickly cope with the complex control because it almost 1: 1 was taken over from the predecessor. Beginners will need a little break-in period and just sometimes press the wrong button at the beginning because each button is assigned, in some cases repeatedly. If you look at but once recorded, the control allows a smooth gaming experience.
Due to a curfew Gotham is populated only by criminals and corrupt police officers, so people who scream bat beating after a costume. The fights run just as easily as the rest from control: down the attack or the lock button at the right moment and Batman decide whether a set he missed the opponents head warm, or pounding his head against the nearest wall. During the game the battles are more difficult because the opponents are upgrading and have to defeat only with certain techniques. It is nice that there are more standard than the previous opponents.
The second type of fights are stealth missions where you have to turn off possible unnoticed several heavily armed enemies in a row. This makes the numerous possibilities a lot of fun: to sneak up on and off the enemy silently is just as possible as an attack from a duct or the opponent to hang on a lookout.
As opposed to the fighting acts of detective mode, early detection in the Batman enemy, pursue traces and can be generally show interaction points.
The graphics are somewhat better than in 'Arkham City', the voice output has remained at the same high level. With David Nathan as Batman, Jürgen Thormann as butler Alfred, Bodo Wolf as Joker and Dennis Schmidt-Foss as Enigma, to name just a few, have been mostly repeating the same speaker as in the predecessor who deliver here again high-quality work and match the figures. Unfortunately, the speech also ensures that a certain surprising turn comes unsurprisingly, unless you know the predecessor. While the story itself is still filmreif but straightforward than in 'Arkham City'.
Playing time is about twelve hours for the story mode, but then you have only seen about one third of the game. Who wants to get all the medals in the training programs, collect all Enigma data packets and all side missions to complete (eg arms deals penguin thwart or the killer do that did not make it into the main storyline), should count on at least 35 hours.
There are two things, however, which interfere with the game. On the one hand the numerous bugs. It is more common that the game completely freezes that Batman somehow gets into a wall and there is no longer comes out that opponents are running up or stuck in objects or that you can not interact with opponents. In these cases, only the loading from your last save point helps. Luckily, the game saves automatically periodically, so you need not worry that two hours of play for the birds were.
The second point is the loveless implementation was tailored to the Wii U. While the previous close attention to the possibilities of the gamepad, you realize in 'Arkham Origins' clear that this is just a port. After all, one has, thanks to the Gamepad always a card in mind, without having to switch the screen. Scanning the evidence at crime scenes acts against placed; that would work well on the normal screen.
Due to these two weaknesses comes 'Arkham Origins' not quite 'Arkham City' approach, but is still a good game, in which you really like Batman feels on patrol again.
Comparable with: Batman: Arkham City, Assassin's Creed III
