This week sees the release of Batman: Arkham Origins on consoles, but if you can’t wait to spend your nights beating criminals to death with your bare hands, a companion game is out now for your favorite iOS device.
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: Free
Batman: Arkham Origins is a free-to-play brawler in which you play as the Dark Knight in a series of battles against groups of criminals who attack him one at a time. Between bouts, you upgrade Batman’s abilities, purchase new equipment and suits, and wait for your stamina to recharge so that you can go on more missions.
It’s pretty much everything you’d expect from a free-to-play Batman game. But it has Batman in it, so there’s that.
The controls are simple enough: You perform basic attacks by tapping the screen. After you land a few hits, prompts appear, and you can get in a few more big hits by swiping along with onscreen prompts. You can also unlock new fighting stances to mix things up and add a bit of strategy, but mostly it's just tapping on the screen a lot until the next guy shows up.
It’s pretty much everything you’d expect from a free-to-play Batman game.
It all looks pretty good; it runs on the same graphics engine as Infinity Blade, and the fighting animations are smooth and fluid. That creates another problem, however, because you can’t interrupt a move once it’s started, so you’ll be trying to punch a guy, suddenly realize he’s about to attack, and he’ll hit you while you’re still flailing around because you can’t block until Batman finishes what he’s doing.
It’s not a bad game, by any means, but it’s a bit repetitious and contains all the grinding and monotony that you expect if you want to keep it free.

Game Name: : Batman: Arkham Origins The Good: Good graphics, simple controls, contains Batman. The Bad: Uninterruptible animations, free-to-play chicanery. The Verdict Fine for Bat-fans to pick up every once in a while, but it doesn’t Bat-impress. Buy from: App Store |