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As a young studio best known for porting Batman: Arkham City to Wii U, WB Montreal must have been desperate to prove that it belongs in the same conversation as series creator Rocksteady Games. To its credit, it's hard to tell that Batman: Arkham Origins isn't one of its sister studio's earlier releases. That's some achievement, but it's also a mixed blessing.To begin with, the set-up is as economical as Arkham Asylum or Arkham City. Batman is thrust into Gotham on Christmas Eve after Black Mask puts a $50 million bounty on his head and invites eight super-villains to town to compete for the spoils. As with previous Arkham games, that simple set-up then evolves as Batman races to keep up with events.
Arkham Origins doesn't leave the strongest first impression though. After a CG cutscene and a short playable prologue in Blackgate Prison, Batman is dumped into a sparsely occupied Gotham that looks tiny on his Batcomputer map compared to some of the open-world playgrounds we've run around in lately. You're free to travel across it all from the start, but players used to maps dripping with icons may be surprised at its cold emptiness.
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