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A bad handheld adaptation of a beloved superhero franchise

Originally released as a handheld game for 3DS and PS Vita, Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate takes everything that made the other Arkham games fun and tries to adapt it into a 2.5D Metroidvania game, but with none of the things that made the series great to begin with and isn't even good on its own merits.

Starting with the combat system, which was a lot of fun in the other games but is terrible here. Moves are limited to a basic punch, cape stun, redirect and counter. No special takedowns, no quickfire gadgets and no upgrades - what you have at the start of the game is all you get. There's no XP system and no levelling up, which also makes the combo system completely useless so there's no incentive to improve or master the combat whatsoever outside of one achievement that requires you to get a x100 hit combo.

Attacks don't have any impact, either. In the other games, you could feel every attack with satisfying sound effects and knock back to give that feeling of being a superhero. But here, it just feels like plastic dolls fighting each other. It's also really difficult to target the enemies you want which only happened occasionally in the other games but it happens all the time here.

Contrary to popular belief, enemies do in fact respawn once you leave an area and return to it later. This might seem like it makes backtracking a bit more interesting since you have to engage with the combat mechanics, but since the combat is boring and uninteresting it only adds to the tedium of the experience. You're also required to defeat all enemies to progress as the screen locks during combat so you can't just skip past them either.

Stealth is incredibly simplified and shallow, to the point where they may as well not even exist at all. You only get silent takedowns and the occasional ledge takedown; some predator rooms have distractions like lights and alarms, but even then, it's nothing compared to all the stuff you were able to do in the other games like breakable walls or knockout smashes. There aren't even any enemies with mines or jammers, so these sections barely evolve past the beginning.

The graphics aren't very good either. It's about on par with an ugly PS2 game, with the character models looking like they're made of plastic and a lot of the textures appear very blurry and there are barely any graphical settings at all. Outside of that, the PC port is fine. Even when run at the highest resolution supported (1920x1080) the game ran at 60FPS with barely any slowdown or technical issues, and is the best way to play this game so none of my issues come from the port, but rather the game itself. I never ran into any bugs or glitches, but that on its own isn't impressive in the slightest.

The cutscenes are interesting at the very least. They use a cartoon art style and it works well as its own thing, along with some pretty good voice acting for the most part. While the story is nothing special, the cutscene presentation and voice overs are some of the very few redeeming qualities this game has going for it and is a step above certain other handheld games that only used text and/or character portraits to tell its story.

This game does just about everything it can to make itself longer and pad out the length of the game. Unlike the other games where you could use gadgets on environmental objects whenever you wanted without breaking the flow, in this game, you have to enter Detective Mode, use the analyser and scan objects manually before you're allowed to do anything with them which takes about two seconds each time. You also cannot move while scanning. None of these issues existed in the other games.

This is especially an issue with the backtracking as well. Multiple times, the game will constantly have you going back to previous areas you've already been in which is a standard for Metroidvania games, but lacks engaging gameplay as all you do is hold run and the direction you want to go almost the entire time, to the point where they put spikes to hurt you if you don't roll over them just to keep you awake while playing, but this game has regenerating health and you take so little damage you may as well run through them.

There are upgrades to find in crates, but aside from armour which increases your maximum health, they're all completely useless. I have no idea how Rush mode works in combat, nor do I know what it does to enhance combat in any way. Same with the gauntlets - they're supposed to increase melee damage, but I never noticed the difference compared to my starting power, so collecting upgrades isn't satisfying at all.

What could've been a 3-4 hour game without the padding quickly turns into an 8-10 hour game. Even worse is that if you want to 100% this game, you have to play through it 3 times, with each playthrough saving one of the bosses for last and you get a slightly different end-game "distraction" that adds even more backtracking right before the final boss and each one plays out the exact same way with a slightly different ending depending on who you beat last, which makes me wonder why we couldn't just do all of these or a combination of each in a single playthrough, especially when New Game Plus doesn't do anything to make the game more difficult nor do any of your gadgets or upgrades carry over.

The bosses were the highlight of Arkham Origins, but in Blackgate, they're by far the worst bosses the series has seen. Most of these are very basic and require little strategy. The Joker is the best fight in the game and makes decent use of the Line Launcher. The Black Tiger fight is re-used for both Catwoman battles and it's almost the exact same every time. Deadshot has an interesting idea that's underdeveloped, while Solomon Grundy can be easily beaten in 30 seconds. Black Mask is easily defeated with a single takedown. By far the worst part of the game is The Penguin, who has an incredibly frustrating stealth section.

If you loved the challenge maps from the other games, they are also nowhere to be seen in this game. Not that I would want them with combat and stealth this simple and repetitive, but it also means there's not nearly as much content as the other games, which is a huge letdown. Once you're done with the main story, that's pretty much it.

Obviously, this was a handheld game so it might not be reasonable to expect the same level of quality as the main series games on home consoles or PC. However, there are plenty of good handheld games. Resident Evil Revelations on the 3DS and GTA Vice City Stories on PSP are two such games that were made with the limitations of a handheld in mind but still retain a lot of what made the main series' games good to the point where they still felt right at home on the big screen when they got ported to consoles. These games also had plenty of content to keep players busy for a long time, so being a handheld game isn't an excuse for this game to be as bad as it is.

There are also much better designed Metroidvania games on Steam that respect your time a lot more, with Ori and the Blind Forest, Islets and Yoku's Island Express just to name a few. Even if you're looking for a Metroidvania game where you play as Batman, Arkham Asylum is right there - go play that instead:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/35140/Batman_Arkham_Asylum_Game_of_the_Year_Edition/

Unless you're a massive fan of the series that has to fully complete every single Arkham game, you can skip this one. It's not even worth picking up on discount as it only ever goes on sale when all the other Arkham games do as well. This game isn't just bad, it's boring, and I would much rather play a bad game like Superman 64 over a boring one like this. Stick with the real Arkham Origins and avoid this one.