He is the terror that flaps in the night! He is the hang nail that annoys the finger of crime! He! Is! Batman! And wouldn’t you know it, he’s back for a threequel prequel in the Batman: Arkham series, which I think is safe to call the greatest superhero video game series of all time. Batman: Arkham Origins once again puts us deep into the mind and fists of the Dark Knight with an awesome story, a bigger playground and even a new multiplayer mode. But things are a little different this third time around. Original series developer Rocksteady is gone, replaced by Warner Bros. Montreal. The change isn’t noticeable, though, because Warner Bros. Montreal does not fix what isn’t broken – for good or ill.

Batman: Arkham Origins doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it just gives us more of that awesome Arkham action  we love.

Game Rating: 9/10 – Great!

Batman: Arkham Origins has been our for two weeks now, and I know my review is late to the game, but I wanted to get my thoughts down anyway. This gives me the opportunity to reflect on what other reviewers are saying, and a lot of them are complaining that Arkham Origins doesn’t do anything new to move the series forward in any significant way. I completely agree with that statement, but I don’t think that makes for a bad game. Far from it. Warner Bros. Montreal took everything that worked in the previous two games – Arkham Asylum and Arkham City – and just keeps the ball rolling.

Batman: Arkham Origins follows the same fun rules of sequels to superhero movies. The first games established the world and the mechanics, and Arkham Origins gets to play around in them. And considering how much fun it is to play around in the Arkham games, what more could we really ask for? How does one improve upon perfection? Just throw a new coat of paint on it, add in a few neat Easter Eggs, and it’s off to the punchfest!

Join me after the jump for my full review. There will be plenty of SPOILERS for the game’s storyline, which, personally, I consider to be the best of the series so far.

The critics are right when they say that Batman: Arkham Origins is a lot like Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. The game is made with the same physics engine, and Batman moves, fights and glides exactly as he did in the first two games. The thugs you beat up are the same. The stealth segments are the same. And most of the puzzles are the same.

But I really don’t care. All of that stuff remains as wickedly fun today as it did when Arkham Asylum came out in 2009.

He’s back, baby!

Should I want new innovations and features? Yeah, probably. But when you’ve already made the best Batman gameplay possible, what else can you do? The free-flow combat system, which sees Batman careening from one thug to the next in an epic punch and kick competition, is still incredibly fun, intuitive and extremely rewarding when you pull off the perfect flow. The Predator segments, which see the Caped Crusader sneaking around an open room using stealth and fear to take down one henchman after another, are just as challenging and exciting as they were before. These are gameplay elements that Rocksteady perfected in the first game, and there’s no reason to take them away now.

Would you take away Sonic the Hedgehog’s speed?

All of the gameplay mechanics that make the Arkham games so much fun are still around, with a few tweaks and additions, like the electro-gloves, which give Batman the upperhand in bigger fights. Traversing the expansive Gotham City is still fun. They’ve doubled the size of the city this time, and while it all pretty much looks like the same ugly jungle of black buildings, it’s still a blast to run, glide and grapple your way across the rooftops.

I’m also finally playing in HD

The great gameplay has been set since 2009, so what Warner Bros. Montreal needed to worry about was the story – and they do a spectacular job. In fact, I think the story in Batman: Arkham Origins is the best of the three games. At the very least, it puts its characters, villains and plot to the best use, making the most out of the idea that Black Mask has hired eight assassins to kill Batman on Christmas Eve.

It’s good to know Deathstroke is getting steady work

In any other game, this premise might lead to nine levels where you take on the villains one-by-one until you reach Black Mask as the game’s final boss, but Arkham Origins is far too clever for that. Only about half of those assassins are part of the actual story, while the rest are mixed in with a few other classic villains to provide an almost overflowing amount of side quests. And all of the villain encounters make sense in the context of the game. There’s no Second Act Twist where it turns out Ras al Ghul randomly has a Lazarus Pit buried underneath Arkham City just so that he can make an appearance.

Batman: Arkham Origins is stuffed to the gills with things to do, and I love it. A lot of times, I found myself focusing more on the side quests than the main storyline, because there’s no way Batman’s going to let someone like Deadshot or the Mad Hatter get away with murder. Both characters get fun side quests. Other standouts include Deathstroke, who probably has the best fight in the game, pushing the free-flow combat system to the next level, and Bane, who holds his own as one of the biggest players in the story.

But while I do love the story, it’s also my biggest gripe. And here there will be SPOILERS!

About halfway through the story, you find out that it wasn’t Black Mask who hired the assassins to kill Batman, it was actually the Joker disguised as Black Mask. I’ll give the game credit where credit is due: I did not see that twist coming. And the big scene where Joker is revealed is fantastic. The voice-acting is superb.

But c’mon! Joker again!?

I should have known better than to get my hopes up

The Joker was the main villain in both previous games. Does he really have to be the main villain for the third one too? There isn’t anyone else they could have used? Why not legitimately use Black Mask?

I understand that the entire point of doing this origin story prequel was to tell the first meeting of Batman and the Joker. That’s a fine and noble goal. But making the Joker the chief villain is getting old. Why not tell the origin of Two-Face? Or Batman’s first meeting with Ras al Ghul? Anything! It’s especially troublesome because all Joker stories end the same way: with some silly reason why Batman doesn’t just kill the Joker.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m firmly in the camp that believes Batman is under no obligation to kill the Joker. But Arkham Origins went out of its way to rub that in our faces. At one point, the Joker was hurled off the top of a tall building, and he would haven fallen to his death, except Batman dove after him, falling dozens of stories to save him from going splat. That’s a very Batman thing to do, but from there, the Joker went on to MURDER hundreds of more people and brought Blackgate Prison to its knees! That’s on you, Batman!

Take a lesson from Batman Begins: Batman won’t kill him, but he doesn’t have to save him.

Why can’t I just end you!?

There’s also a quick scene where Commissioner Gordon has his gun drawn on the Joker. Gordon doesn’t hesitate to shoot and probably kill two of Joker’s henchmen, but Gordon won’t pull the trigger on the Joker himself. Gordon is a cop. If he can justify killing henchmen, he should be able to justify killing that mass murdering psychopath.

But nope! We’ve got to keep him alive for all the righteous moralizing. I bet those henchmen had families!

Anyway, that’s my biggest gripe with the game. I think we’ve seen too much of the Joker and he should let someone else enjoy the spotlight. Black Mask would have been a perfectly fine antagonist as far as I’m concerned. But I suppose they want to sell games, and Batman vs. Joker is the thing everybody knows. So the fourth game in he series will probably also star the Joker. There’s probably nothing I can do about it.

Ostensibly, the story of Arkham Origins was supposed to be about a younger, more inexperienced Batman, but I never really felt that way. He seemed like regular Batman to me. His voice work as fine, even though legendary Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy didn’t return. Everyone on the cast was fantastic, including big roles for Alfred and Gordon, and fun cameos by Harley Quinn, Harvey Bullock and Barbara Gordon.

Admit it, we’ve all got things for redheads

In my opinion, the single player of Batman: Arkham Origins can’t be beat. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with both previous Arkham games. So what about the brand new multiplayer?

Online multiplayer is brand new to the Arkham series, and it is pretty ingenious in its execution – if only it weren’t so short and riddled with problems. The Arkham Origins multiplayer starts out like your usual map-based shooters. There are two 3-person teams of henchmen (either Bane thugs or Joker thugs) who must run around an enclosed map capturing certain control points, while killing each other with various guns and explosives. It’s all over-the-shoulder third-person shooting, the kind you see in a lot of games. That part is fun enough. But where Arkham Origins thinks outside the box is by adding two more players as Batman and Robin, who use all the tools and stealth tactics of the main game to sneak around the map taking out players from both teams of henchmen. It’s a brilliant idea, and it works very well. If you’re playing as a henchman, you’ve got to have eyes both in back of and on top of your head.

Did someone say Robin-based DLC?

Unfortunately, multiplayer is restricted in a few unfortunate ways. There are only four maps, and they’re all pretty much identical in layout. There are also only two gangs to choose from: Joker or Bane. The character customization is pretty awesome, letting you design the look of your henchman with a wide variety of options. But I would love it if a few other villain gangs were added through DLC. Riddler, Two-Face, Mad Hatter, the League of Assassins; the list is endless, and would make multiplayer just that much more fun to play. As it stands now, this version is kind of like a prototype. The developers seem to be trying it out before they really sink their teeth into it.

Also, because this absolutely needs to be said: the match-making in multiplayer is horrendous. You can’t start a match until you have 8 players, but there doesn’t seem to be any way of gathering these 8. You’ve just got to sit in an open game lobby and wait for 8 people to randomly be placed in your lobby, then hope and pray the first 7 don’t decide to quit for whatever reason before the match actually begins. You may have to wait upwards of 10 minutes or more for the game to randomly assign you 7 other players. It’s maddening!

Insane Clown…something or other

Both through single player and multiplayer, Batman: Arkham Origin shines. It may not be a revolution in gaming or even in the Arkham series, but it’s a wildly entertaining game, once again putting us in the big, badass shoes of the Caped Crusader. Warner Bros. Montreal did a fantastic job taking the baton from Rocksteady. They’ve tweaked a few gameplay elements, added some new bits of fun, wrote an incredible story and went so far as to add a unique and enjoyable multiplayer mode. And multiplayer has a ton of room for expansion, so I hope WBM is planning some big DLC, or at the very least, making it even bigger for the fourth Batman: Arkham game.

Will there be a fourth? I sure hope so. Will it still feature the same combat and game mechanics as the first three? It damn well better!

And please, more Robin!