What should have been a joyous weekend for many a Batman fan instead became a hugely frustrating one. I've never really been a hardcore gamer, but by virtue of having an unhealthy obsession with not only Batman, but superhero comics in general, I will pick up almost any superhero game that comes out. And superhero games do not get any better than the Batman: Arkham series. These things are more than just good superhero games, they're good games, period. So when Arkham Origins became available for pre-order on the PSN, I jumped at the chance. I normally don't pre-order games, but I made an exception in this case, because packaged with the pre-order was a DLC featuring Deathstroke as a playable character in challenge maps, plus two skins for him. I also purchased the DLC Season Pass, so I'd have access to all the skins and challenge maps that would later become available, and that Season Pass was supposed to include two bonus skinsone from Gotham By Gaslight and one from Brightest Day. On Friday night, I rushed home from work and immediately fired up my PS3 to download the pre-order. And I was greeted with a very unpleasant surprise: the Deathstroke DLC? PSN wanted me to pay the $5.99 price tag for something I was supposed to get for free. The bonus skins that were supposed to be available to me as part of buying the Season Pass were also nowhere to be found. I went online and found the
WB Games support forums were littered with complaints about similar issues (and at the time of this writing, WB Games has not even responded to my support ticket). And it's not limited to the PS3, because Xbox 360, Wii, and PC users are also making similar complaints. PC users appear to have gotten the worst of it, and the Steam community forum has a
list of bugs, including game-ending ones like falling into the world. While the problems I've had with the game are nowhere near as bad as what PC users have reported, I've also had some of the same issues, most notably the lagging problems. Many times I've been gliding from one point in Gotham to another, only to have the screen freeze and the spinning bat symbol to appear in the corner of the screen for several seconds. Other times, movement slows to a buggy crawl. WB Games has said through their support forum that they're working on a fix and in the case of the Deathstroke DLC, "looking at ways this can be resolved." What sort of resolution that may be, or when it will come, is still up in the air. Hopefully WB Games can fix these problems before they've irritated too many customers. If you've been experiencing issues, you can submit a ticket to WB Games through their
support site. Although don't expect a prompt replyjudging from the slow response time I've personally dealt with and the number of complaints on the forums, one suspects they're dealing with a high volume of issues.