A competitive multiplayer shooter where you can play as Batman and The Joker? No, I’m not talking about Fortnite, where you can cosplay as just about every character under the sun while building fortresses all over the shop. I’m talking about a 10-year-old gem of a multiplayer mode that it seems just about everybody forgot about — if they ever played it to begin with.
Batman: Arkham Origins — while considered the worst of the Arkham games overall — had a competitive mode that allowed two players to test their skills as caped vigilantes against six real-life players, instead of the braindead drones that we were used to in that series. The six remaining players were split into two completely separate teams, and got to play a surprisingly solid Gears of War-style shooter. One team was made up of a bunch of crazy clowns who followed The Joker’s every command, while the other was a brutish and militant gang led by Bane. The 3v3v2 format was unlike anything else out there, and to this day has never been properly replicated.
Regardless of gang, you got a pretty good range of ways you could customize your gangster’s appearance and abilities. My personal favorite was my Joker gangster: a skinny little punk in a green hoodie with a deformed clown mask who was particularly fond of his dual nail guns. Those babies shredded through Bane’s gang like The Joker’s quips cut into Batman’s insecurities.
The mode was pretty familiar if you were on one of the gang teams: capture zones, deplete the other gang’s reinforcements through kills, and win once their reinforcements run out. The X-factor was that you had to watch out for a pair of nosey vigilantes who could pop out at any moment to take you down. In the middle of a firefight with the opposing gang, you had to be wary of ventilation shafts and stone gargoyles in the rafters, because at any moment, Batman or Robin might appear in the middle of the carnage. And if the vigilante team got one too many takedowns, your gang’s fear level would peak and The Joker or Bane would call off the mission.
The Caped Crusader and The Boy Wonder had all the toys you would expect at their disposal: They could use grapnels to swing around the map, glide through the air with their capes, and chuck batarangs to knock you around from a distance. It was truly nerve-wracking as a gang member, causing me to shout “Where are you!?” into the darkness of my room more times than I care to admit.
Being Batman wasn’t easy, though. It turns out bullets hurt, even when wearing nomex armor. You had to be smart, sneaky and skilled, just like the real Dark Knight. And getting taken down by a gangster wasn’t just harmful to your pride; any time a gangster took out Batman or Robin, they’d earn themselves more reinforcements.
Even worse, it was possible for the gangs to call in their gang lord during the match. Swapping out your gangster to play as Bane or The Joker was amazingly aspirational, and it lived up to the hype. These characters were just as overpowered as you would hope a member of the Bat’s rogue gallery would be. Bane would sprint around and smash every enemy in sight, and The Joker would gun enemies down with an array of uber-powerful firearms while laughing maniacally.
So why did this great hand-crafted mode never really get off the ground? well, its bat wings were clipped right from the beginning it seems. It was hampered by server problems and horrendous queue times, but I think the main problem is that people just didn’t really know it was there, and that it was awesome. The Arkham games were always synonymous with single-player experiences, and that’s why people were picking up Origins. It’s what Arkham fans were used to, so who could blame them? There just weren’t that many fans of the series who even gave this competitive shooter experience a proper shot.
It makes me wonder how things might be different if such a mode were to release today as a free-to-play title: a truly dedicated experience with all the bells and whistles; awesome skins for Batman and Robin, as well as other Bat Family members in future seasons, like Red Hood and Bluebird. The most dedicated gangsters could decorate themselves with tattoos, outfits, face paint and, of course, hats, and there’s no reason why players shouldn’t be able to create their own street gangs built around distinctive fighting styles and abilities. Why limit the experience to Bane and Joker’s gangs when future expansions could include The Riddler’s gang, Poison Ivy’s gang, and so many other iconic figures?
The multiplayer in Batman: Arkham Origins really did feel like a sample of something masterful. It just wasn’t the right time or the right release strategy for such a game to succeed. But today, I really think it could.
