Batman: Arkham Origins

Spending Christmas Eve with the Dark Knight is not the exhilarating experience you might expect in Batman: Arkham Origins, a largely and tiring tedious retread on what used to be unique and energizing ideas.

Batman games are like pizza: even when they’re not very good, they’re still pretty good. Next to Arkham City, Arkham Origins is a bit of a disappointment in its lack of new ideas and use of win buttons, making it the least interesting of the trilogy. But as excuses to dive back into the excellent free-flowing combat and predator takedowns go, this story isn’t bad.

Up to a point, this isn’t a problem. Arkham Origins is a prequel to Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, and while it doesn’t quite venture into Batman: Year One territory, it has a story arc featuring a young and still relatively unknown Batman, a mysterious gangster known as Black Mask and a crew of villains who haven’t yet developed prior history with the dark knight. Set on Christmas Eve in an often snowy Gotham City, it offers a twist on the town we saw in Arkham City, along with different looks for Batman and many of his foes. Some opinions differ, but to our minds it’s a sharp-looking game, where stronger lighting and some good art direction make everything look crisper and more detailed than it did in Arkham City. And while we’ve heard some reports of bugs in the PC and Xbox 360 versions, we’ve yet to encounter worse than the odd jerky moment on the PS3.