When I first heard about Chants of Sennaar, I wasn't really interested in playing a puzzle game, but the idea of a game about translating languages sounded intriguing. Since I was in need of a break from my Batman Arkham saga playthrough and had it promptly available, I decided to give it a shot after hearing some positive feedback from people. I'm glad I did so, because this was a very fun experience, more enjoyable than I expected, and that hooked me within its first 30 minutes.

The concept for this game is simple: Inspired by the story of the Tower of Babel, you must translate the languages of the people living in the tower to solve their problems, reconnect them with their neighbors, and to solve puzzles to keep moving upwards. I've never heard of a game like this before, and as someone that enjoys learning and understanding how languages work (Even if I only really know two 😅), it was an easy sell. And sure enough, this idea is what moves the entire gameplay and "plot" forward.

As expected from a puzzle game, the gameplay mechanics by themselves are very simple, you just walk and interact with objects. There are a few stealth sections throughout the game, they're fairly easy but sometimes annoying. It all comes down to the puzzle solving (Duh), and I believe this game has some very well made and intuitive puzzles, hard enough to make you think, but not too hard so you'll give up or resort to trial and error. It all revolves around gathering contextual clues found through searching the environments and interacting with the people of the tower, and then after translating their languages, to use this knowledge to solve more traditional puzzles to open the path forward. It's not completely flawless, some of the clues for the words feel a little arbitrary and there's a lot of backtracking required, which can be tiresome and sometimes a little annoying if you don't know your way around, as there is no map. But thankfully, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives.

At first, it's hard to know if there's even a plot going on besides learning the culture from each of the peoples of the tower, but as you climb and learn about them, you come across nuggets of lore through environmental storytelling. It's all very carefully built to not only give you a better understanding of each society in there, but also how they interact with each other (Both before and after you intervene) and how the dynamics between them changes once you help them find common ground. And with the true ending (No spoilers), the environmental storytelling pays off greatly. Very interesting to see how a game with technically almost no narrative was capable of building a world so interesting, and that made me want to learn as much as possible.

I will admit, at first (As in first half an hour or so) I was unsure if I liked the art style, I can't pinpoint why (Possibly because of the slightly visible lines on screen and cel shading). But as I kept playing, the environments changed my opinion, from the vastness of the desert surrounding the tower, to the towering buildings and old halls, there's quite a few "wow" moments. Characters still look a bit off, but that's probably a byproduct of the simple animations, but it didn't bother me because my attention was on how they dress. Each society has different clothing standards, some of them even denoting hierarchy through them. It makes every person from every people of the tower more unique.

As for the audio parts of this game, in terms of quality there isn't much to say, it's good with nothing annoying sounding. But the way it was used deserves some proper credit; while the people of the tower unfortunately don't actually use spoken words for us players (Not a critique! The devs already went above and beyond by making multiple written languages), they do make noises while communicating, and how they sound can be a clue to what they're trying to say or how they react to things. Sound is also used as an audio cue for when you solve a mystery, find a secret or for when there's a hidden object nearby, helping on keeping the flow of the game. Also, quick shout-out to the "not always present but lovely when it is" soundtrack, the music in this game is great, even if not super frequent, and it really helped elevate some moments, besides being a core component of the culture of the tower.

Overall, I deem Chants of Sennaar yet another hidden "indie" (It's published by Focus Entertainment) gem, and with the 9 hours or so that it took me to beat it with every language fully translated and getting the true ending, I could have easily played at least twice as much. It's not a perfect game, and I'm not sure if it qualifies as one of the best puzzle games ever, but it does qualify as one of my favorite puzzle games. A one-of-a-kind experience that I am not aware there's anything similar to it, so the best I can do is hope for a sequel. If you like puzzle games, art games, or even just learning languages and different cultures, Chants of Sennaar is the game you were looking for, and I can't recommend it enough.

SCORE: 8.5/10

Ever since I started my Arkham series playthrough, this has been the moment I anticipated the most. Arkham Origins was my first Batman Arkham game ever, and one of my favorite 7th gen games, and the last time I had played it was back in 2019. And now, many years later, with renewed critical thinking for my reviews compared to how I was back then, and after getting more knowledge about Batman as a character, I've come to the conclusion that this game is... just as good as I remember. Sure, there might be some bias involved, but who cares, it's great!

This game is unfortunately very underrated, with much more lower end scores than it deserves, and there's a couple of reasons for that. First, this wasn't made by Rocksteady, but instead Warner Montreal. They also recycled some things from Arkham City, which is understandable in its short development time from a studio that had not made a proper game before. Other reasons are the inclusion of the rather unnecessary multiplayer mode, a change in Batman and Joker's voice actors, and in rarer instances the change of pace and tone of the story compared to the previous entries. And yet almost none of that was a problem to me.

This game plays very similarly to its predecessor. The combat feels pretty much the same, although with slight improvements in fluidity, and with the addition of the shock gloves. The stealth gameplay is similar but has some new options thanks to new gadgets. Speaking of which, the gadgets are probably the best of the series up to this point. It's funny how in a story set very early on Bruce's career as the Bat it's where Batman feels the strongest he's ever been, and with all his might and versatile arsenal, I dare say this is the most fun game gameplay-wise from the franchise so far.

And for a bigger and better toy box, there must be a bigger sandbox. This game more than doubles the map size from Arkham City, but at the same time it's a little less "dense" than City is, activities and collectibles are more spread out. Speaking of collectibles, which were one of my few complaints about City due to sheer volume, Origins turns the dial down a bit in both difficulty to obtain them and to find them. With that, I made sure to get every one of them. The other world activities such as murder investigations (More on them below), crimes in progress and sidequests were great too, also made sure to do them all.

One of Batman's many aliases is "the world's greatest detective", but previous games barely did justice to that. In Asylum, you would - at most - follow a trail of something around the asylum. In City, there were some very simple deductions Batman would make, like following a bullet trail. In Origins however, Batman is a proper detective. You analyze a crime scene step by step to discover the truth, and reconstruct the crime to help with deduction. After determining the killer's ID, you go after them to bring them to justice. This is one of my favorite aspects of this game, which I greatly missed in Asylum and City.

As for the story, it is not better or worse than City's (Though I believe both Origins and City are superior to Asylum in that regard), but a sidestep. City had a grand spanning, super high stakes adventure, with all the most dangerous enemies from Batman's rogue gallery. Meanwhile Origins is slower paced, as Batman unfolds a scheme that is putting him and Gotham in danger, and he must stop it. It also serves - as expected from an origin story - as the introduction to Batman for some of his most well known nemeses, such as the Riddler, the Penguin, Bane, Harley, and of course the Joker (More on some of them later), and his initial relationship with his biggest allies, like Alfred, Captain Gordon and his daughter. Not only that, but it introduces to the Arkham series some of the missing (And for some of them, lesser known) villains, such as Anarky, Shiva, Deathstroke and Firefly. This is my personal favorite story from the series so far, but that is down to personal preference, as City's narrative is also great and on par in terms of quality. I just love the more grounded feel compared to Asylum and City, having gangsters and a few supercriminals as antagonists instead of superhuman threats (Like Ivy or Ra's Al Ghul in Asylum and City respectively).

From the entire cast of villains in this game, some of them absolutely shine bright above the rest, in no specific order. First one is the most obvious of them, the Joker, but he also was a highlight in the previous games, and as a character that very much has a soul on itself, it's no surprise that he's great here too (A wonderful performance from Troy Baker in Mark Hamill's place). Second one is Enigma, the first moniker to the man who would become the Riddler. Here, instead of riddle addicted sociopath, Enigma is a highly skilled egomaniac hacker that wishes to uproot Gotham's institutions through blackmail and data theft. I really like this version of him, it has all of the defining characteristics from the Riddler proper while also adding some new flavor to him as a character and to the gameplay loop in the form of radio towers and network relays. And last but not least, Bane. This is one of the best renditions of Bane, it really shows he's much more than just a meathead, he's a master tactician that coordinated moving an entire mercenary band into Gotham and managed to do what almost no other character could (No spoilers!).

Visually, keep in mind that this is a 2013 game, so a very late but still 7th gen game. Either way, it looks pretty good even to this day (Except for facial animations), and it's a very impressive work considering the consoles it was made for (Quick sidenote, but it's unfortunate how this game is stuck in the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U), the character models and their clothing are great, especially Batman's suit. The art style in this game is grayer, less colorful than the previous game. This is not necessarily a negative, it's down to preference, and I think it fits with the darker tone of the game overall. Other than that, not much to add. As for the soundtrack and sound design, it's just as good as its predecessor, maybe a tiny bit crispier, but overall very similar.

Batman: Arkham Origins remains - rather controversially - as my favorite Arkham game. It plays better than City, has a more grounded story which shows how the current dynamic of Gotham's heroes and villains came to be, and it is better in the technical aspects. I also played the DLC for the first time, I didn't even know this game had DLC, and in my opinion it is MUCH better than Harley's Revenge in every aspect. I don't think Origins is enough of a jump in quality to justify giving a different score than City, but whether City or Origins is better is down to preference in my opinion. Once again, a must play for Batman fans, and a very good offering if you like action adventure games.

SCORE: 9/10