
It’s like a roleplaying game where the DM pits his ultimate sword against the ultimate badguy, and the players contribute by fetching and holding the sword. This is the game designer beating the boss. This is not the player defeating the boss. There will be backflips and flying and Michael-Bay style gasoline explosions. (And remember you the player just won this fight during gameplay and then “lost” in the cutscene by designer fiat.) Then Batman will do some bullshit that’s not possible during the normal course of the game. In a pre-rendered cutscene the bad guy – apparently unscathed from the beating you’ve given him – will pin Batman and cackle over him. The game designer will let you have your interactive “fun” chipping away at the boss health bar, but once the bar is empty you’re shoved aside so the designer can give the fight a proper finish. The bosses have larger health bars in this game, meaning the fight is an exercise in belaboring the point.īut the worst sin of the boss fights is that all of the really important stuff happens in cutscenes. If you mess up, then you’ll probably take some damage and shift back to an earlier stage of the sequence. You dodge until he does A, at which point you respond with B, then he’s stuck in C, so you do D, then button-mash through quicktime event E and you’ll chip a little bit of his health away. The sequences are longer and more rigid, to the point where the fight is nearly a quicktime event. You know, the ones that don’t matter and don’t advance the story.īut Arkham Origins goes even further into the sequence-based combat. You can use those other things in the other fights. I know you like Batarangs, Bat-grenades, Bat-explosive gel, and Bat face-punching, but when I designed this fight I decided you’d be using the Batclaw here.

It was like a final exam for your sneaking and ambushing techniques.
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You had lots of freedom on how to approach it, and it used the mechanics you’d been learning since the game started. The one fight I liked was the Arkham City fight against Mr. There’s nothing to do but do what you’re told. You lose your agency as a player and are shoved into a fixed set of actions with a simple pass/fail outcome.

These sequence-based fights are the weakest parts of the gameplay. There’s one way to beat the boss, and you just do the right move at the right time to beat him down. The fights with Titans in Arkham Asylum were pretty shallow old-school vidogame stuff: Wait for the big brute to charge you, then jump out of the way so he hits the wall, then punch him in the butt a few times and run away. I’ve never been a huge fan of the boss fights in the Arkham games. Okay, push the yellow button a whole bunch… now the blue one… now the… no no no! Wrong button! That’s not how I decided you will win this fight! Try again! Some of my complaints might have seemed small or trivial, but they're part of a larger point that I'm making.

Rocksteady made the first two games, WBGM made Batman: Origins, and I find it interesting to see a property being handed off like this. This is an exercise in comparing different art teams and design approaches. This does not mean the game is bad or that you shouldn't like it. Usual flame-shield disclaimer: I've been nitpicking the game pretty hard in this series.
