The first thing to say about Arkham Origins is that it is not an origins story, and there is no Arkham. There are signs that it is meant to be a prequel, with a couple of cut-scenes suggesting so along with Batman’s slightly hotter temper. It makes you feel a bit cheated when you look back at some of the trailer releases of the games, which gave us glimpses of Bruce Wayne growing up a turning from an orphaned boy to the crime-fighting vigilante. The aim of the game seems to really be to squash as many of Batman’s famous foes into one storyline, which makes it all a bit messy and disjointed.

With your main enemy, Black Mask, having gone and hired eight assassin’s to “kill the bat” in the one evening with a rather large cash sum ($50 million) being the reward, you’d think you would go and beat up the assassins in some bad-ass way and run around the city for a while in-between, right? No, you get constantly side tracked so that they can include even more known enemies for Batman and try to tie it all in.

With so many characters being squeezed in it gives way to some bad acting (the Penguin’s British accent is something to be desired) and writing, the only appeasement of this is the Joker, with Troy Baker taking on the role. It is a very convincing portrayal with very little difference from Mark Hamill’s version. Roger Craig as Batman also has some very strong moments when entering some of the cut-scenes.

Everything about Origins seems recycled, it’s a recycled map, recycled villains with Bane appearing yet again and a recycled combat system. However, I will let them off with the combat system because it is still incredible. Batman maintains his arsenal of gadgets, many of which were introduced in the previous games, and many more can be unlocked as you level up and spend you skill points. There are some new puzzles and collectibles to be found around the city, which are reminiscent of the Riddler’s challenges.

The main variation in Origins is the introduction the characters Deathstroke and Firefly. Deathstroke brings along with him a new enemy type as you must counter his martial-arts-like combat which gives something extra than just hitting them over and over. The boss fights are the best part of Origins. They are difficult in their own way, but can sway toward quick-time territory; however their unique animations make it excusable.

As you run around the snow covered map you soon realise that, although being massive, it is very bare, a problem that was also present in Arkham City, with very few civilians to be found and only clusters of gangs hanging around that you tend to swing your way over anyway. The only time you really get involved with the gangs comes during the side missions, where you pound them down and claim your prize, and then repeat in the next side mission.

It soon became obvious that these side missions haven’t been completely worked out, with an array of bugs occurring. A few times the mission had to be restarted because a criminal couldn’t be interrogated, or that you were even killed off by something invisible whilst working your way over to the mission. These are just bugs that I encountered, but many others have been reported.

A new feature to the Arkham trilogy is the quick travel aspect which saves you from having to swing yourself over the same bridge for every mission which just screams bad map design. You have to work to allow the quick travel though, as you need to unblock signalling towers which becomes a distraction from the main storyline which is lacking anyway and can even make you forget about the eight assassin’s after you.

For a visual addition they have created a crime-scene investigation view that asks you to zoom in on a highlighted area as the evidence is analysed in order to reconstruct the scene. It does look great, especially as the scene is then played out in front of you, but the controls meant I was slipping into it when I really didn’t want to.

Batman: Arkham Origins does come across as a badly written version of Arkham City. You would hope with a new team, new writers and Warner Bros. Montreal being such a huge development company there would be a better direction. It is too much of the same, and there seems to be a reason that Rocksteady avoided any sort of origins ties with the previous Arkham games. Batman: Arkham Origins isn’t a terrible game, it just isn’t what everyone was hoping for.