This game has received some pretty bad reviews, and i think some of them are overly harsh. This game is by no means bad, it's not perfect but it's still great, and ill share my reasons why.
I played the game from start to finish in one session, the story had me hooked from the moment i started it, it's awesome, easily the most gripping and action packed of the series so far and stands at approx. 8-10 hrs to finish the main story. The game is set only 2 or so years after Bruce becomes Batman, so he's not the hard as nails, super detective as we know him to be in the previous games yet, he's still pretty young and he's still learning, so he does make mistakes along the way.
A bounty of 50 million dollars is placed on Batmans head, and 8 of the deadliest assassins take up the challenge. Instead of hiding out as Bruce Wayne in Wayne Manor, Batman decides the logical thing to do is to take them all out 1 by 1, he is a down and out badass in this game ! He's got a bit of an anger problem to say the least, and doesn't plan to get cosy with the Gotham City Police either. The story reminds me a lot of Batman : Year One and Batman Begins.
All of the 8 assassins fit into the story surprisingly well, which i originally felt might have been a bit of a mish mash, but they all feel like they have an effect. I thought the game had the best line up of characters the series has seen so far. The boss battles are great, a lot more enjoyable than Asylum and City, and most require a different strategy to take each one out. The combat has been left completely untouched, which is good. It would have been a major mistake to change an already perfect formula.
Origins has a larger map to explore also, about double the size of Arkham City. Origins finally lets us explore areas of Gotham city, which is great, but not without it's flaws. Half of the map is basically Arkham City's map, you glide through areas like the Amusement Mile, Park Row, The Bowery etc, and you do at times feel the sense that you've been here before. I would have preferred these areas to be cut out and be given more Gotham, new areas instead of old ones. Parts of the map also give you the option to fast travel, which does feel a bit un-needed to be honest, i found myself only using it only once or twice on my playthrough because i felt like there wasn't much need for it, fair enough if you just can't be bothered gliding and grapnelling from one side of the map to other then you might like the feature, but it doesn't take that long to do it manually. A better addition would have been to be given the opportunity to drive the Batmobile or fly the Batwing to different parts of the city.
After your through with the story there's the usual hand full of side quests and collectibles to take on, which have always been a nice bonus and add a lot of replayability. Although the side quests don't feel quite as well thought out as in Arkham City, there still fun. Riddlers back again ( but at this point in Batman's career he's known as Enigma ), with his enormous stash of collectibles to find, including shutting down his comms towers around Gotham, so prepare to be scouring every inch of Origins if you want those Trophies / Achievements. It's all good fun if like me your a completionist, if not you can overlook the collectibles altogether.
What Origins' biggest failure is in the fact that there's just nothing new or original, a lot of the gameplay, character designs, mechanics feel like they've been recycled from Arkham City, which technically isn't a bad thing, but what made City so great was the fact that it changed things up a lot from Asylum and felt like a breath of fresh air. At times with Origins i felt like i was playing an Arkham City DLC. There's nothing particularly new in terms of gadgets either, the remote claw feels a lot like the line launcher, just using it to travel from one side of a room to the other, it serves more purpose in combat. The glue grenade is the freeze grenade from Arkham City, just with a different name, it does exactly the same things, you can even make rafts with it. The biggest change in terms of gadgets is probably the concussion grenade, which you throw onto an enemies back which then explodes and dissorientates them.
Another quite annoying thing i found with the game was that it was quite glitchy in places, on 2 to 3 occasions i found myself having to restart the last checkpoint because i'd try to interrogate a thug and he'd be half way stuck in a wall, or his legs would be in the ground, or i'd be gliding around the city and be stopped with the loading icon, i know we saw that now and again in Arkham City, but it's more apparent in Origins.
Presentation wise Arkham Origins is no different than Arkham City, Batman looks awesome and a lot of the villains look very good too, but nothing else seems to have changed. The city looks just as detailed and great as it did in Arkham City so nothing to complain about there, but the biggest dissapointment in terms of presentation has got to be the facial animations, it can be pretty appauling to say the least, and at times a step down compared to Arkham City.
In terms of sound, Origins has nailed it, the voice acting is great. Roger Craig Smith did a very good job of taking over the dark knight's voice from kevin conroy, and Troy Baker..... well that guy should win some kind of award for his likeliness of Mark Hamill's Joker, most of the game i couldn't even tell the difference he sounded so good. The soundtrack is excellent and suspenseful as ever, especially during predator challenges.
And finally for the multiplayer, this is a bit of a grey area, personally i don't think Batman needed or should have had an online element added, it just doesn't seem to fit too great into the game to me. There is only one mode, which is called Invisible Predator, which has you playing as either part of the Joker's team, Bane's team, or Batman and Robin themselves. Randomly assigning you to the one of the teams, the object is pretty much team deathmatch, as either Joker's or Bane's team you kill off the other team with your custom loadout of guns and grenades, while watching out for the caped crusaders. As Batman or Robin you are basically playing an online predator match, taking out players from the two opposing teams with silent takedowns etc to fill up your intimidation meter. It's not a great feature to the game but it's not terrible either.
Overall i think Warner Bros. Montreal did a great job taking over what Rocksteady started, it was a mammoth task and i think they've done it justice. Yes they played the safe option and didn't really change anything up or add anything new and it does have it's flaws, but the awesome story and great cast of characters make this game a great and worthy addition to the series.