Arkham Origins, Part 6 - Meta Game Review

Well, I'm back - not the Caped Crusader whose case files you have been reading over the past weeks, but the humble blogger who so enjoys occupying the skin of his favorite childhood superhero. As extremely loyal followers of my Twitter feed already know, I finished the story mode of Batman: Arkham Origins about a week ago and found the final encounter(s) with Bane all the way through to the dramatic denouement at the prison chapel to be somewhat underwhelming. I know Arkham City - arguably one of the best games of all time - is an extremely hard act to follow, and I heard the rumors that primary studio Rocksteady was pulled to work on the next (read: PS4) game in the Arkham series. But I have to believe that WB Games Montréal could have mustered up a more compelling final boss than a carbon copy of the fight we already had with Bane, followed by a much less nuanced version of the Mr. Freeze fight from Arkham City.

But just because I'm overly critical of the ending, doesn't mean I didn't thoroughly enjoy playing most of Arkham Origins. A friend of mine described the game as "standing on the shoulders of giants, but not doing much more than that," and while I agree with that statement, it's always fun to cavort around Gotham City as Batman. And there were actually some elements of this game that I enjoyed more than the previous installments, such as the much more detailed and involved leveling up system and the extremely impressive crime scene investigation feature. And I will say that the side missions are arranged in such a way that it's actually fun to wander around the city completing them rather than it feeling like a chore. And I was a fan of the shock gloves in particular, even if it made Batman's hands and forearms look even more bulky and Gears of War-ish.

Now here's what I didn't like about the Origins experience. Number 1 has to be the bugginess. I know that with a map roughly three times the size of Arkham City, you should expect a fair amount of open world jank. But when such programming limitations keep you from actually completing the objectives of the game - such as in the above video of me trying desperately to interrogate an Enigma data handler - that's out of the realm of acceptability. Also, what is up with him being called Enigma instead of Riddler? Granted I'm assuming the name change comes after collecting all the datapacks and destroying all the relays (I'll get around to completing those missions after I finish playing my buddy's copy of Bioshock Infinite, which I temporarily traded for my copy of The Last of Us), but I struggle to see how that trope could possibly add anything to the villain's character. In my opinion, it's much more interesting when he simply introduces himself as The Riddler.

Firefly was one of the assassins in the main story mode.

My other main beef was with the story, particularly the extremely convenient side effect of Venom that it permanently damages its user's memory. This is far too perfect a deus ex machina to deal with the fact that in this universe, much like Christopher Nolan's, Bane knows Batman's secret identity. It's just a damn good thing he didn't get around to telling his army of mercenaries before he perma-fragged his brain with his ultra-steroids. And what's the significance of having eight assassins? Since it was Christmas themed, they could have at least gone with 12, like in the song. And why were some of them integral to the main story while others were relegated to optional side missions? And if the assassins were the focal point of the story, why were there other optional side missions involving non-assassin villains? The whole effort just seemed stilted and disjointed to me.

But again, despite all my railing against the shortcomings of this game, I will return to it to eventually finish all the side missions and hopefully level up to capacity (although I'm not sure I will be able to complete some of the Dark Knight Challenges seeing as "predator rooms" are rather scarce what with the story mode completed and all). And it's not just the completionist compulsion I feel that will bring me back - I legitimately enjoy the gameplay and the fun of exploring the city, even if the snow and the few strands of lights here and there fall somewhat short of the Christmasy ambience I was hoping for. But perhaps the main reason I will enjoy going back for more is that I will get to wear the batsuit from the classic 1960s TV show, which I earned for preordering a copy of the game for PS3. It's just too bad they didn't include a hot pants Robin skin as well...

Holy Realistic Physique, Batman!

Arkham Origins, Part 5: The Royal Hotel and Bane

As I was tying up Copperhead and locking her into a shipping container to await the arrival of the police, she plead with me to let her go in exchange for the location of where Joker was holding his meeting with all the remaining assassins. However, since Electrocutioner was still at large, the unique electromagnetic signal produced by his gloves would lead me right to the lot of them. At the risk of sounding like a reality TV ingenue, everything happens for a reason: I gaffed and forgot to adequately secure an unconscious supervillain, but his freedom made it easier for me to accomplish my new objectives. It wasn't, however, a mistake I would make again.

The signal from the gloves led me to the historic Royal Hotel, outside of which there was an entire squad of heavily armed SWAT Officers guarding the front entrance. At first this seemed like too tall an order, even for me, and began to search for an alternate route. But then I remembered what happens in the main menu sequence if you wait around long enough before pressing start - a thrilling scene of me jumping directly in front of a couple of armed thugs and escaping without a scratch. [Another thing that happens in the main menu is that Christopher Drake's evocative musical score integrates Carol of the Bells into the main theme for an extra-Christmasy feel, but that's not totally relevant here.] So I used the disruptor on two of the outlying officers, threw a smoke bomb, and jumped right in. It wasn't my most graceful encounter - the fight involved mostly mindless evading and a whole lot of quickfire Batarangs - but I came out on top in the end... only to find that the front door was locked anyway. I guess you can't believe everything you see in an opening title sequence.

I eventually found my way into the hotel lobby via the underground parking structure. I rode an elevator - featuring some Christmas-themed elevator music, which was not as cool as if it had been James Bond-themed, like in GoldenEye - up into the lobby, which was being patrolled by a group of thugs that had been converted from Black Mask's service into the Joker's. By the way, when I mentioned that Roman Sionis was Italian, it was not just based on his given name (Rome is the capital of Italy after all), but also on hearing his henchmen refer to each other as "paesan" and use the exclamation "madon" - as in "Madon, that Vicki Vale is hot. What I'd like to do to her..." It was rather frustrating taking them all out, not because they posed a particularly difficult threat, but because I was at the point in my Dark Knight Challenge progression where I had to perform four "exotic" takedowns - vent, corner, explosive gel, and hanging ledge - and no matter where I stood on the ledge directly above my last opponent, the takedown prompt just wouldn't come up. I guess that Sonic Shock Batarang is nothing more than a pipe dream.

After receiving an A grade for clearing the room, despite missing out on that fourth elusive takedown, I was rewarded with the object of my search in a most shocking fashion. The Electrocutioner himself crashed through the skylight and landed with a dull thud, following an exchange that almost certainly involved the Joker revealing himself as the man behind the (Black) Mask to the three remaining assassins and pushing poor Buchinsky out of the penthouse window. (I can only assume this is how it went down, since I wasn't there after all...) I never like to see anyone full-on die, but like the Native Americans before me, I didn't let any part of him go to waste, as I scavenged his extra cool shock gloves. Good thing I did too, because as I made my way up to the penthouse, I found that Joker had converted the hotel into his own personalized death trap, including setting up a twisted Simon Says-esque game that I was forced to play in order to save an innocent victim's life, and decking out the ballroom with twisted amusement park funhouse roller coaster rides. He certainly wasted no time in establishing his own unique dramatic style.

Upon reaching the penthouse, I found to my horror that the Joker had rigged buildings all over the city with explosives, with all the detonators set up in a row right here in the room. I watched helplessly as the Clown Prince of Crime blew up a building right in front of me, the explosion visible through the frosted window of the penthouse. Thankfully it was only an empty construction site - he was only making a point with that one, but I knew I had to stop him before he could take any lives. I easily overpowered him physically (pictured) and got a couple of good punches in, when I found to my annoyance, that the mercenary known as Bane had stuck around to act as the Joker's personal bodyguard. Bane proved himself the most cerebral of the assassins, assuming (correctly) that I would make my way to Joker, whereupon the giant of a man would be lying in wait. This incarnation of Bane drew more from The Dark Knight Rises than from the Animated Series, seeing as he had a host of mercenaries at his call and that he began our encounter wearing a stupid jacket - but at least it wasn't furry and at least his mask didn't cover his mouth, making him at least semi-understandable.

We exchanged our first few punches to the strains of Rossini's overture to The Thieving Magpie (shades of A Clockwork Orange), but when the fight brought us outside onto the landing, Bane stripped off his jacket and activated his supply of Venom, the supersteroid that somehow amplifies both his skeletal and muscular structure. At this point, he didn't approach the size and strength he would attain in our Arkham Asylum fight - perhaps the Venom had been building up in his system all that time, causing a more massive reaction to the drug - but he was still by far the most formidable opponent I had ever faced. When he got into a Venom-induced rage, he would charge over and over again, forcing me to madly dodge out of the way each time. Not even a Batarang to the face would slow him down (funny how he would become MORE susceptible to that trick later in his career) and God forbid I happened to dodge anywhere near a corner, because he would turn on a dime and hit me three or four times without fail. Thankfully, since he was not quite as superhuman in size as he would eventually become, I was able to straight up counter some of his attacks and use combat takedowns to damage his Venom pack, but no matter how many times I did so, there was always some left in the tank for him to utilize. Plus there was the usual influx of Joker's thugs to worry about.

All through my sojourn through the hotel, Alfred was in my ear about calling Captain Gordon to help me with the fight against Bane. I was of course against it, being in the lone wolf stage of my character development, but towards the end of that fight I was glad that Alfred made the anonymous call against my wishes. Just as I thought I could take no more punishment, two helicopters appeared out of the sky and opened fire chasing Bane into a helicopter of his own, manned by his mercenary crew. Unfortunately Joker's men returned fire and sent the police helicopters into a tailspin, and then Bane returned fire on us - with a rocket launcher, no less - blowing the Joker clean off the ledge of the hotel and into a deadly free fall. Staying true to my character, the only thing I could do in response was to leap after him and try desperately to save my new arch enemy...

Arkham Origins, Part 4: Gotham Merchant's Bank and Sionis Steel Mill

Upon emerging from the sewers I encountered a singing telegram of sorts delivered by three rabbit mask-wearing goons, delivering a message from someone called the Hatter. As they concluded their rhyme, just as I was about to engage in this "Very Low Threat" encounter, their masks began to spark and they fell unconscious. I saw how tonight was going - lots of distractions that didn't seem to impact my main objectives whether I went after them or not - and since I knew of a suspicious looking hat shop just across the street from the Gotham Merchant's Bank in the Burnley district, I decided to indulge in a little side quest. Inside the shop, to no great surprise, I encountered a little man dressed as the Mad Hatter from Lewis Carroll's classic tale who had kidnapped some poor blond number and dressed her up as Alice from the same story. He was using some form of extremely potent mind control to keep her from resisting, but whatever he set loose on me was even more potent, transporting my mind into a psychedelic Alice in Wonderland themed platforming adventure.

Even though this character's nefarious kidnapping and cosplay obsession presumably weren't part of Black Mask's plan with the assassins, I could see how this fellow, no matter meek he might appear, could be a very effective contract killer, what with his ability to control minds and all. MY mind, however, was too strong for him and I was able to navigate his mental obstacles and rescue the girl by use of the Reverse Batarang, a tactic that would become useful years later when Ra's al Ghul held his daughter Talia at knifepoint after our battle at his Lazarus Pit in Arkham City. But unlike Talia, this Alice lookalike, once rescued, did NOT maintain her composure - she just kept crying and wailing despite all my reassuring words, showing absolutely no gratitude for the fact that I had just saved her life. I thought this town must really be going downhill if even the hostages have no class...

After taking care of business at the hat shop, I crossed the street with just enough time to stop Joker from accessing Roman Sionis's funds in the bank. Only when I entered the vault, it looked like Sionis's alter ego Black Mask had everything under control... that is until I saw the real (i.e. unmasked) Roman Sionis brought out in handcuffs and beat senseless by whoever had donned his trademark outfit. I knew who it was even before the madman took off the mask and revealed, for the first time, his pale white skin, green hair, and ghastly painted on grin: The Joker. It seems it wasn't enough for him just to steal the money, he had also administered a deadly toxic laughing gas to the Bank Manager, who died with her face in a hideous grin that still haunts me to this day. Oh, and he also blew up the vault, giving me just enough time to dive to (relative) safety - as safe as a bank lobby filled with armed thugs could possibly be. Which for me is actually pretty safe.

After dispatching with the thugs and exiting the bank, I ran into (you guessed it) another distraction. This one was an unattended baby carriage placed in the road by Shiva, not the Fantasy Football trophy, but a little-known ninja sword expert of Asian descent. I chased her around the city a little before heading to Sionis's former Steel Mill because I knew the vital experience I would gain by defeating someone of her caliber would aid me not only in this quest, but in quests for years to come. [A metagame note here: the Critical Strikes upgrade unlocked by defeating Shiva is frequently the very first upgrade I purchase when playing Arkham Asylum (and believe me, there have been enough times to gather a considerable sample size). The fact that it's not available until so late in the game suggests that Batman somehow learned this extremely useful move during first encounter with Shiva, which is an effective use of the "your enemies define you" flavor.]

I fought my way through the Steel Mill, gathering an important piece of information in the process: Roman Sionis had a pacemaker installed due to the very real Long QT Syndrome. This fact was referenced before when I "reconstructed" the crime scene at Lacey Towers (when Penguin was nosing around the crime scene before the police got to it, he was visibly distressed at not finding a pacemaker scar on the body of the Black Mask decoy shot by Joker), but since it seemed out of place to see it then anyway, I just pretended that it was a bit of new information I got through hacking Black Mask's computer. After taking out an armored enforcer - a big mini-boss type character that makes me feel more like I'm playing Streets of Rage 2 than Arkham City - and clearing out a group of Joker's henchmen from the secret underground drug lab for which the Steel Mill was merely a front, I found the Italian gangster bound up in his office. I freed the poor bastard and was about to get into some world class interrogating, when I was suddenly ambushed and poisoned by another dextrous female assassin known as Copperhead.

The snake-inspired killer (just take a look at that tongue) had a deadly bite, but thankfully I was able to analyze the scene enough to find a sample of her poison, scan it, and send details to Alfred in the Batcave. He quickly formulated an antidote and sent it to me in the Batwing for an airdrop, but the catch was I had to make it up to ground level to reach the canister. On the way up, the poison caused some traumatic hallucinations, including one of Alfred being very mean to me, and haunting visions of two people I had failed to save that night: Commissioner Loeb and the still-grinning Bank Manager. I also had to do some hand-to-hand combat with Copperhead while doped up on poison, which gave the illusion that there were multiple copies of her (again, think back to the desert-based hallucinations of Ra's al Ghul brought on by drinking the Lazarus chemical in Arkham City). After a few tries (those hallucinations do make things a bit more forgiving) I held her (them?) off long enough to give myself a deep injection of antidote and finish off the pendejo (pendeja? She started it, it was her word for me) once and for all.

Arkham Origins, Part 3 - Lacey Towers and the GCPD

I emerged from the Final Offer, ready to proceed to the crime scene at Lacey Towers, when I was met with another distraction. Projected high above the ship's deck was a message from an orthographically-challenged villain known as Anarky who had apparently planted bombs all across the city and was threatening to detonate one in just a matter of minutes. This would have been a bit of a problem but for a massive retcon that gave me access to the grapnel boost upgrade (allowing me to launch myself into a glide from a long range grapple), even though according to my earlier case files, the gadget was still in prototype phase around the time of Arkham City. Oh well, you have to give the people what they want, and what they want is MORE GRAPPLING!

Upon arriving at Lacey Towers, one of Black Mask's safehouses, I found that it wasn't quite as safe as he believed. Tied to the chandelier and shot through the heart was Tiffany Ambrose, the main squeeze of Black Mask's alter ego, Roman Sionis. On the floor near the entrance was the body of someone who wasn't Black Mask himself, but who had the same height, build, and taste in headgear: a decoy, mercilessly shot dead by someone who was waiting in the room, probably whoever had strung up the lady friend. But further investigation of the scene showed that there was a third member of the party, someone wearing a white coat who snuck in from the balcony and got the drop on the shooter. The last activity on the girlfriend's cell phone was a worried text to Sionis asking about someone called The Joker. Sionis replied that he was "Nobody that matters," but reading that name for the first time, even though I had no idea who it was at the time, I could tell that something sinister was going on. It's one of those character-defining moments that I will always remember until the end of my days.

While I had a pretty clear prime suspect, it was still unclear who came out on top in the fight that followed and what had become of the real Black Mask. I needed more information, and the only way to get it was to physically hack into the GCPD's server room in police headquarters. As I was describing my plan to Alfred over the radio, he gave me a piece of advice that, for once, I decided to take: return to the Batcave and pick up another gadget to help me deal with the hordes of corrupt cops occupying the building. The Concussion Detonator is similar to the Snap Flash that would eventually be adopted by Robin - I can attach it to an enemy without their knowledge, and after a period of time it explodes, leaving them dazed. My new toy aside, going to the Batcave is always a fun proposition, because it gives me the chance to listen to some of Alfred's unique, w00ts-laden wisdom.

Clearing out the cops guarding the rooftop entrance to the GCPD was no issue, but once inside, I stumbled upon a whole room full of corrupt SWAT officers. Their leader was the baddest egg of all, Howard Branden, who had apparently made a deal with Black Mask to get in on the bounty he had placed on my head. I couldn't hold back a little smile at this piece of information: sure it was one more faction to deal with, but think of how bored I would be if the only skulls I got to crack tonight were henchmen and criminals. Adding some rotten cops into the mix is a surefire way to spice things up. Speaking of spicing things up, you'll never guess who I ran into in the interrogation room: Penguin's arms dealer Ricky "Loose Lips" LeBlanc. Apparently the cops had confiscated a device from him that could not only remotely jam firearms, but also disable encrypted locks on security consoles. Of course the cops, even corrupt ones, couldn't get that information out of him; it took my personal touch to persuade him to speak. And it's a good thing too, because one of those exact encrypted locks was protecting the door to the server room. Funny how things like this tend to work themselves out.

One thing that didn't work out, however, was that all access was restricted to the evidence locker in which this Disruptor was stored. I had to have Alfred examine the schematics of the building to help me find an alternate way through. The drawback to this method was that Alfred's alternate route took me straight through the holding cells, where I had to do battle not only with a group of SWAT officers, but also with the hardened criminals that they set loose, presumably to keep me busy while they focused on collecting that bounty. I have to say, one of the reasons why I particularly like this case file is because I come across so many various types of enemies in it. You've got your garden variety thugs, some of whom wear armor or carry knives or riot shields, but there are also big fellas like the Penguin's enforcer on his ship, who can't be taken down except via a savage beatdown, and Black Mask's skilled martial arts experts, whose advanced attacks require two successive counters to block. (Or sometimes when you counter them, they just stand there doing nothing, screwing with your combat modifier bonus #BugCity) In the holding cells, I had to face off with a thug who was hopped up on the muscle-enhancing drug known to be used by Bane, who required two successful takedowns: one to deactivate the Venom device and another to put him out of my misery.

On my way back to the server room, I overheard an argument between Captain James Gordon, one of the few honest cops left in the city, and his daughter Barbara. I didn't catch what it was about, but I remembered noting that the girl's fiery personality matched her fiery red hair. The Disruptor worked like a charm and I easily made it into the server room only to run into... Barbara Gordon, doing some hacking of her own. She was pretty good at it too; she even helped me devise a plan to access the GCPD's telecommunications hub in the sewers below police headquarters so that I could remotely access the criminal database at any time. I remember thinking that despite her rebellious demeanor and curious slang - she referred to my cryptographic sequencer as a "pwnbox" - it would be great to have someone with her skill set as part of my crime fighting team.

Since apparently meeting one Gordon tonight wasn't enough, I ran into Barbara's father as I was trying to avoid being pwnd by the SWAT team who had finally managed to catch up to me in the server room. We had a nice little chat that ended with me knocking him unconscious while simultaneously saving him from being riddled with bullets from the SWAT team's guns. In spite of the rocky beginning, I knew this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. After wading through the sewers (it's a good thing I had already subdued Killer Croc, or this trip might be a little more interesting) and uplinking the National Criminal Database to the Batcomputer, I was able to find enough information to solve the Lacey Towers murder. As I suspected, the crime was indeed committed by the Joker who likely kept the real Roman Sionis alive in order to access his funds in the Gotham Merchant's Bank. I knew I had to rinse the muck off my suit and get going.

Arkham Origins, Part 2 - Enigma and The Final Offer

The Batwing is a marvelous piece of technology, if I do say so myself. It's more efficient at vertical take off and landing than the Harrier, has a higher top speed than the F-22 Raptor, and has a much sleeker design and a more awesome color scheme. Arkham Island was so small that I didn't need it to get around and I didn't want to have to engage Hugo Strange's TYGER helicopters every time I took the air in Arkham City (although I did use it as a very loud, very vibrate-y courier service to drop things off during both adventures), but on this Christmas Eve caper, it was just the thing to transport me between the auto-drop-off locations at various points in the city. Or it would have been were my signal not being jammed almost immediately after takeoff. I knew this problem would make my life difficult if I didn't deal with it right away, so I put the interrogation of Penguin's arms dealer on hold for now in order to deactivate the jamming signal coming from the closest CGC Tower.

A handful of armed thugs were in there holding the engineers hostage, but they didn't prove much trouble. What proved more trouble - and more interesting - was reconstructing the scene of a gruesome explosion that took the life of an innocent repair worker. Using my advanced Detective Vision, I was able to create such a detailed evidence chain that I could basically watch the event over and over again as if I were in the room. Let me state that this was strictly for crime fighting purposes - this isn't Grand Theft Auto, I don't like watching people get brutally killed just for the entertainment value. Anyway, the keycard I recovered from the unfortunate exploded worker allowed me to hack the encrypted access panel with my Cryptographic Sequencer, leading me to the madman behind the jamming signals in my towers: a shadowy figure called Enigma. The smug brainiac had also gathered a large amount of private information that he was planning on using to extort practically the entire population of Gotham. Obviously dealing with my would-be assassins was the more pressing matter of the night, but I knew I would have to find time to interrogate his data handlers across the city in order to stop mass panic from breaking out.

But the first person I had to interrogate was Penguin's arms dealer, a thug aptly nicknamed "Loose Lips." I had to dangle him off the top of a building to get him to talk, but once he did, he led me to a series of relay points across the city through which Penguin's communications were passing. I had to traverse the snowy distance on foot since my Batwing towers were still being jammed, but I eventually found his hiding place: a disused cargo ship off the coast of Amusement Mile called "The Final Offer." The deck was heavily guarded by armed thugs and the inside was a maze of flooded tunnels, across which I could only traverse by standing on a plank of wood and using my batclaw to pull myself across, a method I would revisit both in Arkham City for both Penguin's museum and Joker's steel mill. Speaking of Penguin's museum, this ship also had a makeshift gladiator pit - the boiler room - in which I had to battle Black Mask's next assassin: a Russian street thug known as the Electrocutioner. I say "battle" when I really mean "give him one swift kick and he went down." I guess there's a reason nobody had ever heard of this guy. The onslaught of thugs that came in afterwards was slightly more challenging, but nothing I couldn't handle.

While I was fighting his cronies, Penguin had locked himself in his office with a couple of his hench-bimbos and placed a cadre of armed guards in the outer room with a hostage: a thug working for the Falcone crime syndicate. It seems that Penguin was attempting to persuade his fellow bird-themed to take themselves out of the weapons trading business by torturing the kingpin's son Alberto Falcone. Now generally I couldn't give two bat guanos about what bad guys do to each other in their spare time, but seeing as I needed information from Penguin, I put a stop to the session before it got out of hand. The diminutive crime lord didn't have much to say except that he had heard about a murder at Lacey Towers, which was a known safehouse of Black Mask's. No sooner had I heard this important plot point than my legs were taken out from under me and I was dragged back into the boiler room.

The architect of this sneak attack was none other than the next assassin on Black Mask's list: the skilled melee fighter known as Deathstroke. Despite his head of gray hair, lack of his right eye, and the fact that most of his fighting repertoire was taken almost entirely from the purple and blue Ninja Turtles, this guy was an incredibly formidable opponent. He first came at me with a Donatello-esque bo-staff, which I was eventually able to take from him and break over the reinforced knee pads of my costume. He then took out a straight Ninjatō, or half of Leonardo's arsenal, which was a little faster and sharper than the staff, but still manageable. The gadget in which I was most interested was a sort of remote grapnel launcher. He would attach one end to me and the other end to an explosive canister up in the rafters, then activate the hydraulic mechanism, which pulled the canister to me at high speeds. I was able to grab it at the last second and throw it back at my assailant, but I knew that I could make use of that device as well, both to pull two objects together, but also to create a high wire/zip line effect for traversing long horizontal distances. I made sure to add it to my utility belt after knocking the assassin unconscious and tying him up, a mistake I failed to make with the Electrocutioner, who had regained consciousness and walked away after our first fight. Oh well, I guess I'll eventually have to deliver another single punch to knock him out again.

Arkham Origins, Part 1 - Black Mask at Blackgate

Hello, loyal readers. It's me again: vengeance, the night, Batman! It's been a couple of years since I shared with you the case files from arguably my greatest adventure ever, the one where I took on Two-Face, Penguin, Ra's al Ghul, Mister Freeze, and of course the Joker, all within the confines of Hugo Strange's Arkham City prison facility. While I doubt I'll ever be able to top that story in terms of pure drama, I feel the time is right to relate another entry from the Black Casebook, a defining moment from early in my career. Over the coming weeks, I will give you the story piece by piece, and hopefully it will give you a unique perspective into the events that made Batman who he is today...

It was a dark and stormy Christmas Eve in Gotham City. I had first donned the Batsuit to fight crime about two years earlier, a fact I was reminded of when a snippet of an interview I did with Vicki Vale came up on the screen as I madly channel-surfed in the Batcave. She mentioned that I had returned from my post-graduate hardcore international training montage two years ago, which I hoped no one would put together with the first sighting of the Batman. Flipping to the next station brought word that criminal overlord Black Mask had staged a highly irregular break-IN to Blackgate Prison, presumably targeting police Commissioner Loeb, who was there to witness the execution of Julian Day, AKA Calendar Man. I suited up in a frantic, jump-cutty montage, amid Alfred's protestations over me going out on Christmas Eve, but he always was somewhat of a homebody. I jumped into the Batwing and before the background music could come to a bombastic blaring climax, I was at the prison grounds, commencing my search for Black Mask.

I rescued Warden Joseph from a particularly nasty mobster in a Black Mask mask, but since he had no information about what the villains might be doing with Commissioner Loeb, I had fight my way through the prison until I got a chance to use my advanced interrogation techniques on another one of his henchmen. Even though I went through that entire fateful night back at the Asylum without having to squeeze information from anyone, being a detective, interrogation was actually one of the first things I mastered. Not surprisingly, I learned that Black Mask was taking his prey to the execution chamber.

I knew I had to act quickly, but to reach the chamber, I had to make use of most of my arsenal of gadgets. You see, during the Arkham Asylum time period, I was going through a "fast and light" phase, resulting in an almost empty utility belt (except for Batarangs and my grapnel gun of course) which gave me greater speed and maneuverability. Both in my early years and since then, I kept items like my Explosive Gel and Batclaw directly in my belt, which came in handy that night as I came across no shortage of structurally weak walls and air vents covered in grates. The drawback was that my suit was more cumbersome, which made my appearance more bulky and my moves more cartoony, giving the effect that I was playing an arcade game of my life. But since I was less well-known back then, henchmen were also not expecting me, so it all evened out in the end.

I arrived just too late to save Commissioner Loeb, who it turns out was in Black Mask's pocket the whole time. With him in the chamber was his number one thug, a giant of a man covered in scaly, reptilian skin who I would come to know very well over the years as Killer Croc. The next thing I saw the crocodile-man do, after throwing the former Police Commissioner into the gas chamber, was to smash a suspicious-looking drone that was flying around the prison. This was years before Obama was elected president, thus it couldn't have come from the government, so I grabbed the memory card to see what I could find out from it. Then I rushed outside into the snowstorm.

Again I was just too late to apprehend Black Mask, who barely had time to escape in his helicopter. But luckily he had left behind his croc monster for me to play with. He was quicker than he looked, even in those stupid striped slacks with dangling suspenders, but even his speed and his thick hide couldn't protect him from a quick flurry of blows, provided I could knock him off balance with my cape first. It didn't help that Black Mask's chopper kept swooping by to drop more henchmen on me, but it did help when Croc would periodically pick up gigantic fuel tanks with the intention of throwing them at me, because I could pepper them with enough quick batarangs that they would blow up in his face.

After a long, drawn-out battle, I finally got the lizard pinned down and made with the interrogation again. Apparently Black Mask had issued a sort of Christmas challenge to a group of assassins, charging them with the unenviable task of taking me down. Croc passed out before I could ask him why sudden beef Black Mask had with me, and I barely had time to drag him away from the cliff face on which the prison was built before I was surrounded by the Gotham City Police Department, led by the very capable Captain James Gordon. It was a shame that so many of them got such a good look at me, but it was bound to happen. What wasn't bound to happen was the police taking me into custody, as I dazzled them all with a death-defying leap off the cliff and into the cockpit of the Batwing, which I immediately flew back to the Batcave to get some answers.

Analyzing the memory card from the drone provided evidence that Black Mask had hired eight assassins, only seven of which were listed: Deathstroke, Firefly, Copperhead, Deadshot, Electrocutioner, Shiva, and Bane. I wondered who the last would be, unless it was maybe Killer Croc, who I already defeated? I also wondered who would be spying on Black Mask, until I recognized the calling card of another established criminal in Gotham, the Penguin. Alfred of course urged me to lay low, but I couldn't risk innocent people getting hurt on my account. I had to be aggressive if I wanted to make it through this night, and the best way to do that was to get whatever information I could from Penguin about what was going on in this City of Assassins.