Playing A Game Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate PC

That Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (nevermind the ... unbelievable name) was given to Arkham Knight purchasers as an apology for that game's technical troubles, is a Joker-caliber prank. More than a poor Batman game, and more than a poor game in general, Blackgate is confusingly bad.

Unfortunately, it's easy to see why. Someone - probably inspired by the Arkham series's Metroid-like world design - pitched a 2D, sidescrolling Batman game; like, you know, Metroid. And then someone else - probably inspired by the fantastic critical and commercial success of Arkham Asylum and City - decided that this game absolutely must contain all of the core gameplay mechanics of the 3D Arkham games.

The soul-crushing result is a 3D game crammed into 2D by accident. Don't misunderstand -- Shadow Complex, for example, was a 2D game with some inappropriately-administered 3D gameplay. But in Blackgate, Batman has to punch enemies coming at him from all angles while he can only move in two directions. In Blackgate, Batman's routes through the map are eternally limited by the golden paths encoded into the map. In Blackgate, "depth" and "verticality" are merely poorly-messaged quicktime prompts.

The game is borderline unplayable. It's certainly not fun. The groan-worthy writing, shitty-looking moving-comic cutscenes, button-prompt bugs, and just-plain-bad "hacking" puzzles barely even factor into it.

The thing that confuses me about Blackgate is that this game made it all the way to release. By all rights, it should have been cancelled before the public even knew about it.

What's most disappointing about Blackgate isn't that it's associated with an otherwise-great franchise, or even that its fundamentally-broken game design should never have been greenlit. What's most disappointing is that Kevin Conroy and other legitimately-talented voice actors wasted their time.

Progress: Barely even got into Blackgate Penitentiary at all. My god. It's just so terrible.

Rating: Awful