Finesse. Force. Function: All these words and more spring to mind when describing the black-cowled superhero who has spawned billion dollar movies and hundred-million dollar games.

Clumsy. Clunky. Clod: These words were probably the kindest that spilled out of my mouth as I was playing developer Armature Studios’ Metroidvania-inspired (and Capcom fighter title-inspired, apparently) Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate Deluxe Edition, an improved home port of last year’s 3DS and Vita Arkham Origins spinoffs.

There’s just very little redeeming value here. On paper, the game sounds great. Take the combat and exploration that the Batman Arkham games are renowned for and place them in a 2.5D-styled Metroidvania game. You should have a smash hit on your hands, or at least a worthwhile experience. Though the world of Batman may be dark, the characters and writing have proven more than colorful enough to carry the home console Batman games.

But everything in this game feels lackluster and tedious. The story is as much of an excuse plot as possible: The Joker, Penguin, and Black Mask have escaped from Blackgate Prison and taken it over, and Batman must capture them while reluctantly taking Catwoman’s help. Though the cutscenes are voice acted well and visualized in a pleasant comic book style, the shallowness of the story stands out and never takes a cue from Batman and retreats into the shadows.

If the gameplay were strong enough to carry the weak plot, perhaps Blackgate could still be an enjoyable stint in the world of Batman. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case. The combat features no progression whatsoever, meaning Batman fights identically in the first level to how he fights at the game’s end. Armature limited player progression to finding the upgrades that allow Batman to explore new parts of Blackgate Prison, none of which are usable in battle except on certain rare enemies.

But Armature wasn’t done making the gameplay an utter pain. For reasons that I’m sure sounded great on paper in the design meetings, players can visit any section in Blackgate Prison in any order. Tragically, horrifyingly, face-palmingly, the completion of each section is dependent on locating items in the others, and there are very few shortcuts in each level. What this means for players is that they’ll find themselves roadblocked all of a sudden mid-section in Blackgate with no means to advance, leaving them to waste a ton of time backtracking to artificially pad the game.

The bad design doesn’t stop there. Once roadblocked in the Deluxe Edition, all players receive as a hint to advance is a vague piece of dialogue stated only once and possibly a marker on the map. To make matters worse, the map is very difficult to understand with its 3Dish layout. It’s never clear what sections are connected to each other or what direction a player needs to go to travel to a certain area. All a player can do is hope and pray to various deities that they’ve taken the right path.

Even the 2.5D-style isn’t executed very well. In-game, it’s not often clear which background sections are traversable and which aren’t. Detective mode helps a bit with this, but it’s very much a struggle to get anywhere if the player is stuck.

The abysmal design even dictates the plot on occasion. Occasionally, Batman seems to be psychic with how much he knows of Blackgate’s layout, deftly proclaiming that he must blow up an impenetrable gate 4 floors up that he couldn’t possibly see from his current location to locate an escaping villain.

On other occasions, Batman couldn’t solve a two-piece puzzle if the first move were done for him. One particularly embarrassing moment occurs when Batman realizes he needs proper security clearance to advance past a door. He notices the door terminal in question is green and recalls that he saw a dead engineer with a green keycard earlier. After 20 minutes of backtracking, Batman retrieves the keycard, begging the question of why he didn’t just grab it in the first place. Imagine how screwed he’d be if the keycard color didn’t even have any correlation to the terminal it opened. World’s greatest detective… not so much.

If combat were enjoyable, maybe none of this would be a problem. However, with a few gimmicky exceptions, players will brainlessly mash the same button over and over, occasionally pressing another to counter. Blackgate doesn’t even offer any combos or special moves akin to God of War or Dynasty Warriors to enjoy here. In fact, there’s not even predictable combat like Final Fight I where players can tailor their strategy and fighting style based on what moves they like to do in the game. Batman throws out blows randomly and is seemingly invincible in hand-to-hand combat. There’s no challenge or even momentary glee of learning the combat system to be had.

I can’t emphasize this enough. Literally every possible drop of fun has been drained out of Blackgate’s combat. Checkpoints are scattered randomly in boss fights, and they’ll often make players watch at least part of a cutscene when restarting a fight and will sometimes make them re-solve a puzzle. Armature has regressed the state of beat-‘em-ups to a pre-Double Dragon state.

For Batman fans who have always wanted a Metroidvania game, this might fit the bill if they can ignore all its shortcomings. I can’t recommend this game to anyone else. Though its graphics are polished and impressive, it’s too rough around the edges in every other aspect and is not worth the time to play it.

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