Arkham Origins for the iGreed
I love Batman. Who doesn’t? He’s been one of the most enduring comic book characters of all time. He’s gotten brilliant treatments on the screen and in the comic. He has evolved with the maturity of his audience, and the writing in his various forms has delved beyond simple entertainment into a study of humanity and mental illness. And his video games are superb. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are two of the best games released on the last generation of consoles, and two of my favorite games of all time.
Arkham Origins is coming out next week, and unfortunately for me, Megan is one of the few people I know who is a bigger Batman fan than I am, so she’s snagged that particular review. I thought I’d give the iPad companion game a try this week to see if it was worthwhile. The short answer: no.
The basic schtick of the game is that you are Batman (obviously) fighting against Black Mask and his thugs. It’s not REALLY a fighting game, however, as you fight one thug at a time, and neither the thug nor Batman moves around. Instead it’s slightly more of a rhythm game – you tap the screen rapidly to punch the thug, then swipe quickly in different directions to do combos. That’s pretty much it.
There are four sections of the city you can travel to in order to fight thugs and try to beat Black Mask’s bosses. In addition, as you fight, you earn Upgrade Points that can be spent on either unlocking new Batsuits, improving your Skills, or improving one of the stances you can assume while fighting. Each of the stances has it’s own bevy of special moves, such as healing or extra damage. In addition to Upgrade Points, you can also buy Wayne Points for real money. Wayne Points let you unlock things just like Upgrade Points, so if you’re willing to drop a pile of dough, you can make the game extremely easy for yourself.
This is a tried and true method for earning money in a free apps, and it’s not one I object to. You can get pretty much everything you can get via Wayne Points with Upgrade Points just by playing the game, but if the game gets a bit tedious or frustrating, you can spend a few dollars to make it easier. No problem there. The REAL problem comes in with the Stamina mechanic.
As you fly around the city in the Batwing to fight thugs, for some reason you spend your final resource – Stamina. I guess the Batwing is powered by bicycle pedals in the cockpit or something. Anyway, you start the game with 10 bars of Stamina. Each mission takes two bars of your Stamina, pass or fail. Special missions can take more. You get one Stamina bar back every 10 minutes of real time, OR you can buy them back for Wayne Points. A mission generally takes about one to two minutes to complete. That means you can play the game for about twenty minutes without spending money JUST TO KEEP PLAYING THE GAME. Otherwise you can do one regular mission every twenty minutes, or one special mission every thirty.
GOTHAM IS NOT FUCKING FARMVILLE. This mechanic can work in building and growing games, where time itself is a resource within the game. Batman is not that sort of game. Batman does not get winded and have to lean up against the wall in an alley and think about how he needs to stop smoking. Batman is the fucking darkness. He kicks ass, no matter how hurt or tired he is. I do not play a Batman game because I want to beat up 5 thugs and then have to wait for a half hour. Or worse, lose to a boss and feel like I’ve wasted the next thirty minutes of my life while I wait for my Stamina to recharge.
I wish I knew if the story for the game was any good, but I don’t. In fact, I don’t even know if there IS a story. I wasn’t able to play enough to find out, because I don’t have enough Stamina. This is a terrible model for an action oriented game, and a terrible model for a Batman game. It’s literally the old joke about “Please deposit 25 cents to continue this call.” Batman don’t need no payphones, and I don’t need this game.
