Batman: Arkham Origins is Warner Brothers Montreal's 1st input to the Arkham series, the 3rd in total, with the 2 former games being sublimely created by the British developer Rocksteady Games. Origins follows a young Bruce Wayne in his early days as the Caped Crusader.
The game relies, once again, heavily on its critically acclaimed hand-to-hand combat system, based strongly around counter attacks and free-flow movement. This works well the third time around, but as you may find with many elements of the game; it just doesn't feel as cleanly refined as it has done in the past.
The story is set up nicely as a game; from the start you know you're going to be in for some killer boss fights, which is great, as they were one of the outstanding features in Asylum and City, but there's just something in the way that the story progresses that you know WB would never get away with in a film- however, video games aren't films, and there are moments, like while countering your way to success in the awesome Deathstroke boss battle, that you are glad that Batman likes to think with his fists, and not his director's creative eye.
Combined with an interesting plot twist (debatable on whether it's a good one or not) and a satisfying, if not great ending, Arkham Origins feels like it has fulfilled the hole that the fans were craving.
Emphasis on the word 'fans'.
Being a 'Bat-fan' myself, it's easy to imagine why this game doesn't click like the others did (for newcomers or casual followers of the franchise). The villains aren't instantly recognizable, the story is confusing, and some of the references are slightly obscure- like Barbara Gordon, who if you don't know, became Batgirl, and appears here as a teenage girl.
In addition, the gameplay has its own problems. The frame-rate has a tendency to be poor, and crashed my 360 on several occasions; the camera angle often decides to go into a phase of I-do-what-I-want, and craps out on you, staring into a wall while you're pummelled by thugs.
The game now has a whole new Multiplayer aspect, too. It's decent, with a Gears type third person shooter feel on one side, and the sameclassic Batman/Robin gameplay as the singleplayer mode, although not something you'll be dying to return to, especially with the state of the servers.
Repetitive-ness has managed to leak into the game, too, especially in the latter stages of the game, where the antagonist is throwing thugs at you until you almost just want it to end.
Overall, there's another Game of the Year contender somewhere here, but amidst all the rust that has managed to crawl its way over the game's surface, we're left with another great Batman game, but just somehow lacking of the others.