Every young gamer had one dream. Just one. A co-op arkham game starring the batfamily, completely playable front to back in seamless multiplayer. Nothing ever really scratched the itch. Justice league heroes, no. DC universe online, no. Batman Arkham Origins multiplayer? … yes, but you had to pray to Jesus and God combined that you and your bro would get to play as Batman and robin. But when you did there was NOTHING I repeat NOTHING even 1% as fun in any videogame ever programmed.

In arkham origins multiplayer, two people would be batman and robin while the rest of the players would be standard goons fighting each other in a gang war on behalf of i think bane and joker. But you could be rushing to the frontlines to get more kills, and suddenly there’d be a shadow flying overhead. Instinctually, you shoot the sky where you saw it. You feel the paranoia. Your buddies are dropping like apples from a tree. And here come the fruit bats. You try to focus on shooting some clown henchmen as you’re suddenly and silently taken down… fuck. You finally understand the henchmen. But I don't wanna be a henchman. Did you go out to recess and pretend to be a henchman on patrol? No. You pretended to be batman, and nightwing, and batgirl, and red hood, and robin, and batwoman, and orphan, and spoiler, and the question, and the signal. EVERYONE wanted to be the signal. But as we grew older and playing outside became cringe, we were forced to play as henchmen and then as no one… when arkham origins online went offline.

Fade to black.

CUT TO: INT. DC Fandome. 2020.

Elkmane: Oh man! I can’t wait to play that game!

Elkmane’s friend: Me too

Elkmane: I hope it’s basically batman arkham knight but multiplayer

Elkmane’s friend: Me too

Note their unearned optimism. Their complete disregard for genie’s law. If something is your wish, it will be granted to you in the most twisted, dramatically ironic way possible. You’ll get your co op batfamily game alright. But first of all, it won’t be in the arkham universe. SECOND of all, batman will be dead.

Elkmane: But how? Batman ‘died’ in arkham knight. Why would you make a second universe just to use the same setup?

Shut up! Third of all, it’s gonna control terribly. It’s gonna be designed for controllers. Keyboard will make it weird for grappling and fine movement.

Elkmane: Why the fuck would I use a controller?

Exactly. Fourth of all, the customization will be fucking strange. Your armour will be one outfit, you can customize certain parts of it and the colour but if you have one style you like you’re gonna have to hope to find a high level version of it.

Elkmane’s friend: Can we at least get a transmog system?

Yes.

Elkmane’s friend: Oh thank god!

BUT it’s gonna be completely uncostomizable and each suit style will have the absolute ugliest colours and detail choices possible.

Elkmane: Whatever, i’ll just use the basic comic accurate suit. You at least have THAT, right?

Sure!

Elkmane’s friend: Aw yeah!

Just gotta pay 30 dollars for the DLC pack.

Elkmane: Whatever man! I don’t care! I don’t care if I look cool, I don’t care if the game is fun, I don’t care if it’s the most repetitive pile of dogshit in the world! Just let me enjoy this as a co-op game where the bat family can play off each other.

I mean, okay? I guess you can have two guys together during open world and the missions. But I’m gonna make it so that only the host shows up in the cutscenes, only the host can open doors, only the host can start missions, only the host can-

Elkmane’s friend: Wait wait wait, what? Only one person shows up in cutscenes?

Yeah

Elkmane: I thought this was a co-op game?

It is. The non-host just pops in after the cutscene ends. Ok i’m gonna end this script bit now. Every single turn I took in this game baffled me. Firstly, the structure. It isn’t like arkham or even other open world games. It operates on a strict nightly basis. Which is actually really cool. There’s only a set amount of crime that happens every night, it wont just infinitely repeat like spiderman or whatever. And it creates a unique loop where you go on “patrol” for the night. We’ve all had fantasies of going on patrol with others, just doing acrobatics across rooftops, sitting on the sides, having deep conversations while waiting for crime to happen. But when you’re out on this patrol, you can’t switch your weapons to anything that you find. You can craft as much as you like, mind you, but you can’t switch them out. So if you have an underleveled weapon, and you loot a high level one, you won’t be able to change. You can change your style. You can’t change into stuff you craft. It’s so, so, so needlessly odd. And I wanna expand on the transmog system. It completely defeats the point of having a transmog system. The only style I like for red hood is the style called year one. It’s basically a bog standard comic accurate red hood suit with the mask and the brown jacket and the black shirt and the red logo. I did not unlock the transmog for it. Even if I DID, it would have a black jacket and a brown shirt (???) so I just used this level 18 armour to when I was level 30 because I wanted to look cool and the game was really easy. There’s a red robin transmog for robin, but the colours are all wrong. Okay. Whatever, who cares about this miniscule clothing miscrap? How about the open world activities? The crimes?

Well, crimes all happen in set locations. Every time. Just different factions occupy them. The observatory always has a criminal stronghold, this park structure always has an organ harvesting thing, yada yada etc. It gets VERY old and repetitive, but for some odd reason me and my friend continued to do every single available crime every night. No clue why. It wasn’t fun. The combat isn’t really fun. The stealth is godawful. The stealth makes the combat look like sekiro. “Don’t treat it like arkham” they say. Why not? It’s just a much worse version. I’m willing to overlook so much, but the stealth layouts and combat design are so awful and your blueprint was RIGHT THERE. I would’ve been fine if they tried something new and missed. They just made a much blander version of arkham. The counters that kept the momentum going are replaced with easy as shit dodges to super telegraphed attacks. Combos are not emphasised, you should just pick an element and put all the weapon mods you want to make it build faster and hit them until the electric meter or ice meter or poison meter or fire meter gets full and they take big non lethal fire damage. Honestly, all the characters play the same mostly. They have different cooldown abilities which I forget exist half the time. That seems to be where they put their money on. The abilities, the skill trees that do shit like “10% more chance for a critical hit” or “7% increase of defense when your health is 60% or higher” like, ok man. In Arkham Asylum I can spray paint a wall with a bat symbol and wait for someone to walk by and then explode them. I can’t do that here. Arkham asylum came out in 1989.

I do wanna be a little easy on them tho. There is no chance in hell anyone is touching the arkham games. Those were lightning in a bottle. I have to keep reminding myself to be grateful that I exist at the same time as those games and can replay them whenever I want. Genuine marvels in every single way. Sure, there’s games like that everywhere now. But c’mon. I love insomniac spider-man as much as the next guy but none of those are EVER touching an arkham game. I don’t think anything ever will.

And to their credit, they got the batfamily dynamic and writing down. The story is pretty lame and the court of owls plotline is like, completely wasted, but when the batkids and alfred were talking and hanging out was pretty great. Each character has a personal quest, where they do their own little journey that isn’t really about fighting but about a little something called character development and emotions and love. Babs’s was my fav. The quest touches on a big theme of the game, succession. A lot of staple bat-things aren’t here anymore. No batcave, no batmobile, no batman, no commissioner gordon, no leslie thompkins. But we have to make room for the new guard. It also hits really hard during the current conversation around characters like spider-man, who seem to be stuck in a rut and not allowed to develop or grow past 23. The villains are ancient societies trying to cling to the past and extend their lives. This game has fun ideas, especially how unlike most batman adaptations it’s not afraid of the supernatural and goofy end of the comic world. Jason has magic lazarus jumps. Yes. He’s a superhero. Ok? He can do that. He came back to life with magic lazarus juice and now he has magic lazarus jump. It’s sweet. That’s why it’s such a shame you and your friend’s character couldn’t interact in cutscenes during missions. That’s my #1 absolute biggest complaint. I mean, okay, you’re saving resources or whatever. But how many combinations are there between 4 characters? How much dialogue does the partner character need? Host could have all the lines, at LEAST have the other guy in the background, completely mute. I felt bad for my friend. Sometimes we got different cutscenes with our own characters in it and we had to tell each other what our character said. It's so, so weird. It’s not like they skimped out on the amount of lines. My friend was AFK once while we were in the belfry, and there was CONSTANT conversation about the cases we were taking during our place in the game. It was so natural. It was like an unscripted discussion between two dudes talking about the game and what they should do next (albeit taking it a little seriously). And I only saw it because my friend was urinating. They put that there so it wouldn’t feel hollow when you were just chilling out in there. There’s so much effort put in certain parts of this game and absolutely none in others.


For example, this is a looter game. You get loot from chests and enemy drops. But there wasn’t any point I wasn’t able to craft every single blueprint I had. I always had up to date gear, I just had to go to the belfry and craft and equip the new stuff. The armour mods make it so low level stuff can still work higher levels if you want it to. So why even make it a looter if the looting mechanics are so … automated? I don’t even know what word to use to describe it. It’s like, if I wasn’t told that there were all these crafting materials I wouldn’t even know. I would just see the crafting menu as the stuff I unlocked. It’s so oddly designed. But on the other hand there’s awesome stuff, like the side quests. Clayface, Harley, and Mr Freeze. You have to investigate their shit in the open world and do these scripted quests that are like DCUO on duty missions and these scripted segments were a lot better than most of the rest of the game. Chasing Clayface through the streets as he sticks onto passing trucks, or multitasking through Harley’s crazy ass panic inducing games, it’s just so AWESOME sometimes. That’s why although it seems like i’m ripping this game apart, I just can’t say I didn’t like it.

At the end of the day, when I see two enemies and I say to my bro I’ll take the one on the left, and we both do synchronized stealth takedowns, do you really think you’ll be worried about all the other shit? All's right with the world. Everything is gonna be okay.

Elkmane’s friend: You can say that again.

Elkmane: I hope you elksters enjoyed the review. I may be retiring soon, so enjoy it while you can.