A waste of an Arkham game really. It was stupid to make an Arkham Game like this, though the idea was somewhat interesting as they brought in one or two extra characters, however to turn a sandbox into a side-scrolling 2.5D game is crap and it seems Assassin's Creed is doing the same, sadly.

It doesn't work too well with the scanner, forcing you to scan everything and then all of a sudden, I was stuck in a locked room where there was a pile of crap that was meant to hide an entrance yet there was nothing to do, no prompting of buttons and leading to a deadend. Glad I didn't spend anything much on this as it was given to me via a bundle.

When I started this game I found myself not hating it at all; I thought that while it was a little generic it was functional and had pretty serviceable level design. The further I got, though, the cracks started to show like Sigourney Weaver's in Alien and by the end it became my mortal enemy. Without a proper experience system, combat is completely superfluous and boils down to braindead button mashing like many people misconceive the mainline games' to be. The level design becomes very formulaic and heavily reliant on the more automatic mechanics like grappling and the Line Launcher, and that makes the eventual backtracking you'll have to do fucking insufferable. The obnoxious sequences of scripted events and preschool patterns that I hesitate to refer to as bosses are its biggest faults, at least if you're not considering you have to play the piece of shit THREE TIMES to 100% it. Arkham Origins proper is without a doubt the weakest of the main games, but even that didn't feel as repetitive and half-assed as this, which is such a shame because this really could have been good. It's not though, so don't bother.

I really don't understand why this game was made in the first place. The average Arkham Fan probably isn't clamoring for a side scroller version of Batman in a series that has only done this type of movement in literal Scarecrow NIGHTMARE segments. The game is pretty bad, even as some random novelty in the series, it's super lame and I don't understand why this was ported to consoles and PC after being on the 3DS.

As far as positives go, I do think this game is... competent? There's a clear sign of effort here, with the inclusion of case files for some reason, and some parts of the story like Batman's early interactions with Catwoman are cool to see for this universe, but it's about as good as a "3DS Version of Batman Arkham Asylum" sounds. If you also want to Platinum or 100% Complete the game, you need to play it three times. THREE. TIMES. There aren't even any wacky modifiers or gimmicks, it's just the exact same game three different times but the last half hour or so changes depending on which main villain you defeat last.

You can also spam the Cape Stun to maintain a combo forever, and the Blackest Night suit makes you completely invulnerable to any damage. This game is garbage.