“Huh,” I thought to myself, looking at Commissioner Loeb’s in-game dossier. “They don’t have his first comic book appearance.” I examined the other profiles I had unlocked at that point and noticed it was missing from each of them. It had been one of the small details I really enjoyed from the previous Arkham games. It was a chance to see which characters managed to survive the test of time, and even compare the eras in which they spawned.

“Ah well,” I thought to myself. “Just a small little detail.”

Watching my roommate playing, the two of us got a brief chuckle early on. “I should have tied Electrocutioner up,” Batman laments, having just received word that the villain escaped and is still on the loose. My roommate then looked down to the arena he had fought the villain in only to be looking down at the man’s body, still lying there, creating a logical paradox. Somehow the Electrocutioner had escaped, despite his body lying on the ground where Batman had left it.

They seem to be small, insignificant little details in the grand scheme of things, yet these small issues highlight many of the problems with Batman: Arkham Origins. You can tell this was not a game made out of love or passion for the source material, but instead was dictated by a bunch of men in suits with business degrees hanging upon their office walls, scratching their chins and thinking “Yes, another Batman game would sell nicely. Only this time, add in some online multiplayer to try and minimize trade-ins. Don’t want those used games stealing our sales!”

This was not a game ready to be released for the holiday season, but you know a laundry list of bug reports and other issues were left ignored because someone upstairs was going to have their holiday blockbuster, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. End-game encounters are lazily put together by pouring the goons in, simply generating “end-of-game” difficulty through numbers rather than careful balance and adjustment. Upgrades to certain tools actually make solving select environmental puzzles more challenging, reacting to just-slightly-off button presses and trigger pools. Collectible items remain locked away due to glitches, A.I. interact with the environment incorrectly, and too much of the city is locked away for fear of the player accessing story content ahead of time.

With a little more time many of these issues could have been fixed with some polish and shine. Unfortunately, that would have merely left a slightly better Batman game.

Like the portable counterpart Blackgate, Arkham Origins steadily becomes more and more frustrating as time progresses. This is primarily a result of the combat, which at first seems easier than in previous games. Goons are huddled much more closely to Batman, keeping them in range for quick strikes or counter-attacks. Building up a combat multiplier early on is no problem as the Bat is confronted by three to five guys at once.

Once the mobs begin to grow and carry weapons the proximity becomes a more suffocating. The timing between a strike and a counter are off. Batman may start to throw a punch before the criminal goes to strike, but it doesn’t guarantee the Dark Knight’s blow will land first. Different attacks take different spans of time, and as a result the player cannot accurately or consistently judge whether they can literally beat the punk to the punch. This is nothing to say of going to strike another opponent only for the counter-attack alert to appear after, delivering a blow to the back of Batman’s head.

While a lot of this is a result of the proximity, where all the foes are much closer to Batman and thus reducing reaction time, it is also partly the fault of the A.I. The player may prepare to counter-attack as a foe runs in to strike, but suddenly find themselves swinging at nothing as the same criminal turns to pick up a weapon five feet away. As Batman’s stance changes and freezes, combat multiplier lost, another goon kicks him in the back.

By the end of the game the player is forced into a boss fight featuring a big and burly Bane, surrounded by brave criminals as the Venom-fueled luchador charges straight for the player. Oh, but this time the fight is different than in the past! The Batarang no longer works against him when he sprints forward, and despite his large size and momentum he is capable of homing in on the player’s location. So the player not only has to fend off crowds of henchman, but they must also time their dodge to avoid being stomped on by Bane.

Needless to say, the fight is quite frustrating.

It is one of two key elements that bogs the entire game down. The Arkham games have always had an issue with throwing in more mobsters to pump up the difficulty, creating frustrating conflicts rather than challenging and engaging ones. Yet the problematic fights in question were usually a handful and memorable because they were an outlier. Arkham Origins, on the otherhand, is so full of these annoying fights that they begin to blend into one another. Instead of certain parts of the game being problematic, the game itself is perceived as being broken.

The greatest reasons to return to the snow smothered Gotham are the collectibles and side quests. Most of these involve the player navigating the city, solving puzzles, piecing together crime scenes and earning upgrades. It is the closest to feeling like the Batman that the game has to offer, and most of it is a lot more accessible than it was in Arkham City. With the exception of landmarks, just about anything related to a sidequest is or can be marked on the map and turned into a waypoint. The player is able to jump right to the content they want, be it a puzzle guarding an Extortion File or a brawl with a villain such as the Mad Hatter.

In other words, the game is at its best when you’re intentionally ignoring the story missions, which are downright insulting to anyone with some degree of familiarity with the source material.

If you aren’t overly familiar with Batman beyond the films and maybe the television show, then the story may actually be great! In his second career as a crime-fighting vigilante, Batman is forced to finally learn about teamwork. He no longer has to be so angry at the world, and can lend at least some of his self-imposed burden upon others! There are emotions here, people. Volatile ones filled with shouting and anger, and that’s how you know there is character development!

Too bad all of the story beats they hit have been done better. As many problems as I have with the film, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is a much better “Batman meets the Joker” story. Here, Batman seems to piss The Joker off more than anything else. As for Batman learning to work as a team? The Long Halloween, available in trade paperback, is all about Batman, Gordon, and Harvey Dent trying to work together to stop Gotham’s major crime family. It is a much more fascinating take without relying on Batman himself being an angry little rich kid with a lot of money and deadly combat training. It also takes place early in Batman’s career. The follow-up Dark Victory is all about Batman learning to trust and accept the help of others.

These stories have been done before, and they’ve been done better. There’s no real sense of loyalty to the source material here, however. It makes sense, seeing as Paul Dini, creator of character Harley Quinn and one of the primary writers on the Animated Series (and a number of the comics themselves), was not in charge of writing for this project as he had been for Arkham Asylum and City. Instead, Corey May and Dooma Wendschuh, the primary writers on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, were tasked with writing a Batman story. It feels very much like a “writer-for-hire” project as a result, with no sense of passion for the source. Names are plucked from the continuity such as Commissioner Loeb, but their fates break continuity from Batman: Year One and the aforementioned Long Halloween. Instead, a new continuity is created, one that fails to live up to the established canon or to Batman Begins.

This is a story written with a “writer’s guide to Batman” and “writer’s guide to character growth” as opposed to a real sense of the world and its history. If you are ignorant of these things, then it will likely come off as a good story. It hits all the engineered “how to tell a decent tale” points ripped right out of a Scriptwriting for Dummies book. Anyone that knows Batman, however, will likely be disappointed. We’ve seen these story bits before, and they’ve been done better.

Which is pretty much how you can sum up Arkham Origins. What few interface improvements it makes on the world map are not enough to elevate it with its brothers. If you have Arkham City, just play that again. Or play Arkham Asylum and revel in its much more focused and tightly knit perfection. Arkham Origins adds little more than nothing to the series, and is most certainly not worth your sixty dollars.