Batman Arkham Origins: Cold Cold Heart

Mr. Freeze’s back-story is really quite tragic and has remained somewhat consistent throughout his various incarnations, even the Arkham series. Victor Fries starts off as a child obsessed with cryogenically preserving living things. The motive is quite innocent: the boy thinks he can save sick people by freezing them and then reviving them once modern medicine has the tools to cure their illnesses. Fast forward, and Fries is married to Nora, with whom he is desperately in love and working at GothCorp, which is run by Ferris Boyle. Ironically, the woman who once saved him from himself, will become the very source of his madness.

The game, starts off with Fries putting Nora, who has been diagnosed with a terminal disease called Huntington’s Chorea, into cryostasis. Fries believes he can actually buy enough time to work on a cure. Meanwhile, his boss, Boyle, approaches him and works out a deal : work on cryogenic technology (i.e.,weapons) and he’ll devote GothCorp resources towards developing a cure for Nora’s illness. Yet, as all villains go, Fries keeps his end of the bargain but realises that Boyle has no intention of keeping his side of the bargain. So naturally, Fries decides to do the research himself, leading to a fight with Boyle and his guards, which triggers a freeze ray that freezes one of the guards and damages a container full of cryogenic chemicals. At this point, Fries realises that his body has gone through a dramatic metabolic change, and realises he won’t survive outside his supercooled lab. So what does the tech-genius do? Well like Tony Stark (who is Marvel’s copy of Batman), Fries builds a suit with a few spare parts (the kind of “spare” parts people keep in their labs - amazing) and starts working on his revenge. Ladies and gentleman, your villain is ready.

As in the trailer, Mr. Freeze, kidnaps Boyle in order to teach him a lesson, I suppose. Meanwhile, Batman tracks him down and while fighting Penguin’s gang, drills into Freeze’s lab to confront him. At this point, Batman is using a super-cool Extreme Environment (XE) suit (armoured exoskeletons are all the rage these days). As Batman and Freeze go at it, he finds ways of damaging his suit (much like the boss battle in Arkham City), but the fight is interrupted when Nora’s pod issues an alert that it is failing. Freeze flash-freezes the room and rushes to Nora’s pod. Meanwhile, Batman is able to attack and incapacitate Freeze.

At this point, I’m not sure the traditional hero-villain storyline holds. While Batman restrains Freeze, Boyle manages to escape and Freeze Batman (who pushes Freeze out of the way). No matter, Boyle, then goes onto beat Freeze to death while mocking him about Nora, saying he could watch her die before he dies himself. Of course, Batman manages to free himself in the nick of time, knock-out Boyle, rehabilitate Freeze (by administering coolant) and save Nora by fixing her pod. Batman has a cathartic moment here, telling Freeze that while he can never give him peace, he can give him justice. Thereby, almost accepting the inevitable fate of clashing with Freeze in the future. By saving Nora and realising that Freeze will eternally be damaged by his experience, Batman’s most interesting villain takes a more humane form. You can almost root for Freeze if Batman wasn’t in the picture.

Gameplay throughout is no different from Arkham Origins proper. The storyline and new gadgets are really cool, and for Rs.1300, I think it maybe worth it if you are a die hard fan. Available on Amazon for $9.99.

By Navam Niles