Wooooooooooooooooo! So excited for this! Played Arkham City to death on PS3 back when it first came out.

Origins has the best, most grounded story, and the boss battles are much more brawler-y, instead of City's focus on specific gadget for each setpiece fight (those look cool, but are much easier)

However, 3 big knocks against Origins:

1) traversal- the game world is about twice the size of Arkham CIty, but there's a lot less grapple points. It's also impossible to know where you will and won't be able to grapple to until you're in mid-air and the prompt just won't pop up, because this particular spire wasn't coded to be that way.

2) the combat was tweaked, so that there's more of a delay between the input and response- specifically on blocking. Basically, if you play this after Asylum and City, be prepared to re-learn combat rhythms, or get hit A LOT. It's the only Arkham game I never played NG+ for for this reason.

3) related to this, the progression system isn't great. You HAVE to complete challenges in certain order. If you happen to do the "get a free flow combo of 100+" earlier than when that challenge was given to you, it won't count retroactively.

This takes a lot of fun out of doing the Predator room,s because basically if you don't fulfill a challenge, it's a waste of of an encounter. And some of the late stage optional gadgets can only be unlocked by progressing the challenges...it's a much more restrictive system than either City or Knight, and I wasn't a fan.

Had you posted any other scene I would've been deeply disappointed. :P

Is the Batmobile available at the beginning of the game? Or do you still have to grapple everywhere?

Also, is the game itself ok without the DLC expansion?

About time. Great to see them here!
I just hope there is no cut content compared to Steam releases...
It's really tempting (as I'm totally in for DRM-free and fully offline gaming) but the timing of this discount is really unfortunate in relation to my finances so I will probably pass for now since I own them all on Steam.

I would say it's BECAUSE of pandemic. After all when people are forced to sit at homes they have more incentive to play games.

Also this:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_vr

Breaking news: woman rescued after wandering through labirynth of game boxes for days /s

This looks to be missing, unfortunately:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/237618/Batman_Arkham_Origins__Black_Mask_Challenge_Pack/

+1

Exactly the one I was missing as well (even though it is hardly as good as any of the others but imo it still is a nice game).

It's OK without the Season Pass, but the Season Pass adds a HUGE amount of content. So I recommend it.

Are you sure? That would be a shame.

Oh? Well, that's bad...
I guess we should open a new wish then... Speaking of which, these wishes can now be closed:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_asylum_goty_batman_arkham_origins_batman_arkham_city_goty_batman_arkham_knight_seasson_pass
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_asylum
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_city_1
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_city_goty_edition
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_origins
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_knight
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_city_2011
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_origins_2013
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_knight_2015
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_origins_add
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_asylum_add
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_city_add
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/batman_arkham_asylum_goty_edition

The problem with this game is that it might run nearly perfectly for you on not so high end systems while stuttering like crazy on others. It is a pure game of luck. When I played it back then I had a GTX970/2GB and while the game was running well - especially with the Batmobile - sometimes I had streaming issues in 1080p but only because 2GB is not enough VRAM for this game if you are trying to run in 10800p. Whenever I stwitched to 720p I did not have any problems at all ... others however weren't so lucky. They added multiple patches for the game and sometime they stopped and hoped it would be enough.

Batmobile is in Arkham Knight. It is also one of the worst parts of Arkham Knight, imho - the other being some story aspects I can't go into without spoilers.

The DLC for Origins is a mixed bag. I really liked Cold, Cold, Heart- it's the origin story for Mr Freeze and it tries to recreate the awesome Mr Freeze boss battle from Arkham City, which is one of the best bosses of all time, IMO.

The rest of the stuff (skins, and the challenge mode) are take it or leave it. All the DLC is completely standalone, so Origins can be totally played without it, and you won't feel like you're missing anything (unless you REALLY want some skin that's in the season pass... but I really don't care much about those, tbh)

Worst in the Arkham series, IMHO.

And that's even w/ this game actually being good...b/c it's more Batman Arkham basically.

Just keep in mind, Arkham series is really good to great, pretty much.

Origins re-hashes and re-uses a lot of assets from Arkham City. Still, with it this cheap and it feeling like an expansion - more Arkham is a good thing.

Boss fights are really good in this game though.

Oh, and I also have to mention how good Cold Cold Heart DLC (from the Season Pass) is here too.

Worth $10 for Origins Complete.

Even though I got most (all?) of these free from Epic, still bought the GOG versions too to get the handy installers. :)

Oh and I agree Michael Keaton was the best Batman, gliding through the dark skies like a real hero that he is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-QQJr9mtk4#t=367

No Batmobile in origins, as it's too early for that. You do get the really cool-looking Batwing to fast-travel around Gotham in, and you see pieces of the not-yet-built Batmobile in the Batcave as well (a nice touch).

As regards DLC, I enjoyed the "Cold, Cold Heart" Mr. Freeze campaign as well as the "Initiation" narrative-based challenge maps, which chronicles young Bruce Wayne's martial arts training, but the other stuff never really made much of an impression on me.