Reheated
Cold, Cold Heart is a self-contained adventure that retells
the familiar Mr. Freeze origin story. That's good news and bad news,
because while Freeze's motivations are some of Batman's rogue's
gallery's most sympathetic, this version sadly seems to have virtually
no interest in putting a new spin on it. It's almost identical to the
Batman: The Animated Series episode Heart of Ice, so if you've seen that
(and you should) there are no surprises.
It begins in the absurdly cavernous Wayne Manor and then briefly
returns to the Penguin’s club, but the bulk of its two hours takes place
in a pretty generic gray-and-blue cryogenic research lab. There you
fight through a few predator encounters, one of which is fairly tough,
and the usual brawls with a good variety of enemies. (Fortunately they
barely call in the overused big brutes at all.) My favorite thing in
Cold, Cold Heart, though, is the new freeze-ray thugs. They’ll encase
you in ice if you hold still, but their attacks can be turned to your
advantage if you dodge at the right moment and cause them to rake the
beam over other henchmen.
The bulky new thermal Batsuit looks pretty cool, in that “Batman
needs a custom suit for every situation” sort of way. It unfortunately
doesn’t change how the Shock Gauntlets (now
This is the first major DLC pack
for Batman: Arkham Origins, Cold, Cold Heart introduces the chillilling
Mr. Freeze into this Batman origin story.
Thermal
Gauntlets) work, though. They still pretty much defeat the purpose of
this otherwise excellent combat by letting you just punch everybody in
the face, regardless of what weapon or armor they’re carrying. I
continued to avoid using them.
Oddly, Cold, Cold Heart does away with the Glue Grenade gadget, but
doesn’t replace it with Arkham City’s Cryo Grenade (which was presumably
changed in Origins because Mr. Freeze wasn’t around yet). It just gives
you one fewer weapon to work with.
The boss battle with Mr. Freeze is mostly a retread of what we saw in
Arkham City, but a bit tougher. It’s a good fight, if nothing terribly
novel except for icicles you can drop on his head by tossing a heated
Batarang at them.
After that, there are a handful of new collectibles in the form of
frozen citizens that need thawing, but it actually doesn’t allow you to
revisit the northern part of the Gotham map. At least you don’t have to
cross that stupid bridge anymore.
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