Batman – Arkham Knight Review

Developer Rocksteady Studios
Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Genre Third-Person Shooter
Game modes Single Player
Players 1
Reviewed on Playstation 4

Available on MacOS, Linux, PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One

Desolation Morris

Published September 1, 2015

Rocksteady finally treats us with the concluding chapter to the acclaimed Arkham series with Batman: Arkham Knight.

While the PC version of Arkham Knight currently resembles something similar to Britney Spears’ career, those of us who managed to get our hands on the console versions have been having oodles of fun with it.

On the positive node:

Arkham Knight delivers exactly where you’d expect. It built on the strengths of its predecessors and stuck to most of the things we enjoyed from the previous games. The visuals are absolutely stunning – the map is much larger than previous instalments and contains nods to the franchise and references around every corner. Everything from the city itself to the character models of random thugs to the week old papers on the street corner have been given pain staking attention to detail. Simply put – this game is beautiful.

Gotham comes to life as you’d expect it to while maintaining the overall gloomy tone we’ve all come to expect from a Batman game. The general civilian population have of course been evacuated from the city which leaves the streets open for exploration and at the same time serves as a useful way of not accidentally running over a civilian.

Batman himself had a bit of an overhaul. This time round he’s got a wider assortment of gadgets, skills and tools at his disposal to wreak maximum havoc on the evils of Gotham and comes with the upgraded suit to boot. While he doesn’t vary significantly from what you’re used to there are some new skills and methods of doing things – such as the voice synthesizer which can be used to trick thugs into going places or doing things for you.

You’re able to equip an alternate costume for Batman if the regular one doesn’t strike your fancy quite early on depending on what you got with your pre-order bonus or season pass – that was one of the nicest things for me personally. I ran around as Justice League 3000 Batman. What fun!

If you played any of the previous games you’ll be familiar with the free flow combat system. It’s back and as always it allows you all the freedom to knock the living daylights out of thugs with combos, gadgets and environmental takedowns. You even get to use the Batmobile while in hand to hand combat, providing the situation allows for it.

While you may think that’s somewhat unfair – enemies become complicated rather quickly and you need everything at your disposal, trust me. You start out facing the regular variety of thug that roams the streets. The regular thug quickly becomes part of a larger set of varied thugs such as Medics who bring other thugs back from an unconscious state…or charge them with electricity to kick your ass. There are sword wielding ninjas and thugs wielding shock batons and guns as well along with several other variations of rather impervious big guys who carry Miniguns. That’s right. Miniguns. In a nutshell – you’ll be having quite the time trying not to get your ass kicked.

It becomes very obvious very quickly that defeating groups of enemies involves a strategic, calculated attack based on your personal skills, mind set and the situation at hand. Often running face first into a situation will get you killed as opposed to first assessing the situation and planning your attack.

The Batmobile is the of course the most notable addition to this final installment of the series and also leads as the key marketing point. The Batmobile becomes an extension of Batman himself and without giving anything away I can tell you there’s a certain satisfaction in wielding a fully upgraded Batmobile. Oh yeah, didn’t I mention that? The Batmobile has its own separate set of upgrades and skills. You can upgrade everything from armour to how high it flings Batman into the night sky. While blazing the streets of Gotham, The Batmobile can do pretty much anything from traverse rooftops, climb walls, destroy rival vehicles and even take down thugs (non-lethally of course!).

The story revolves around Arkham Knight, the somewhat over eager and angry guy who took over the city, I’ll leave you to investigate who he is exactly if you don’t know already – and while interesting at the best of times – it doesn’t grasp the attention for too long and that’s exactly where Gotham’s Most Wanted comes in.

Gotham’s Most Wanted allows you to investigate various other goings on in Gotham that doesn’t involve the main story. You can choose to go after an assortment of side missions that involve (among other) Riddler, missing firemen, hunt down Two Face, find Azreal, investigate the Man Bat and even decide you’ve had enough of Arkham Knights forces and go after them directly.

In addition you can accomplish various tasks to unlock challenges. The tasks can be as simple as having to drive the Batmobile a certain way or move from a run to a jump off the side of a building. The given task will unlock the relevant challenge and these range from fighting a horde of thugs without getting hit to literally flying through hoops.

On the negative node:

While there’s a lot in this game to keep you occupied, once you finish everything there isn’t much replay value. Sure there’s the ‘plus’ mode where you start a new game with all upgrades and gadgets you had in the regular mode and with things amped up in difficulty but if you thoroughly completed the regular mode that becomes old very quickly. Challenges also tend to be tedious, over complicated to unlock and sometimes hard to enjoy. Challenges, needless to say – they were not my favourite.

Perhaps the biggest down side of Arkham Knight is oddly enough its strongest selling point as well. Maybe it’s just me but the sheer dependence on the Batmobile is maddening. It becomes a crutch without which Batman cannot accomplish the simplest of tasks. It gets forced upon you around every corner.

Suddenly Batman can’t even find his way down an elevator without involving the Batmobile or get from point A to point B without first having to take a ride in the Batmobile and using its winch to pull object A to accomplish goal B while you run in a circle.

Some of the missions which involve the Batmobile are rather extreme and warrant everything from driving upside down at top speed inside a tunnel while avoiding obstacles in your path to The Riddler forcing you to use the Batmobile to accomplish pretty useless and tedious races and tasks during his story arch. Some alternative options aside from the Batmobile would have been nice, at least on occasion – that’s all I’m saying.

Another big down in Arkham Knight to prepare for is the Season Pass and DLC. The season pass is expensive. It almost costs as much as the game itself. The DLC is so far short, pointless and doesn’t quite deliver to the hype built around it. The DLC released up to this point is a little shallow and we can only hope the best is still to come.

It all becomes rather pointless considering you know that if you wait a little while there will be a GOT edition or something that includes all the DLC anyway.

Arkham Knight doesn’t allow you the option to explore the city as an alternate hero. While you had this option in Arkham City with Catwoman, now suddenly you don’t. You get to fight alongside Nightwing or Catwoman and briefly control them during a challenge or a fight but if you were hoping to explore the city as someone other than Batman, you’re in for a let-down.

Rocksteady finally treats us with the concluding chapter to the acclaimed Arkham series with Batman: Arkham Knight. While the PC version of Arkham Knight currently resembles something similar to Britney Spears’ career, those of us who managed to get our hands on the console versions have been having oodles of fun with it. On the positive node: Arkham Knight delivers exactly where you’d expect. It built on the strengths of its predecessors and stuck to most of the things we enjoyed from the previous games. The visuals are absolutely stunning - the map is much larger than previous instalments and contains nods to the franchise and references around every corner. Everything from the city itself to the character models of random thugs to the week old papers on the street corner have been given pain staking attention to detail. Simply put – this game is beautiful. Gotham comes to life as you’d expect it to while maintaining the overall gloomy tone we’ve all come to expect from a Batman game. The general civilian population have of course been evacuated from the city which leaves the streets open for exploration and at the same time serves as a useful way of not accidentally running over a civilian. Batman himself had a bit of an overhaul. This time round he’s got a wider assortment of gadgets, skills and tools at his disposal to wreak maximum havoc on the evils of Gotham and comes with the upgraded suit to boot. While he doesn’t vary significantly from what you’re used to there are some new skills and methods of doing things – such as the voice synthesizer which can be used to trick thugs into going places or doing things for you. You’re able to equip an alternate costume for Batman if the regular one doesn’t strike your fancy quite early on depending on what you got with your pre-order bonus or season pass - that was one of the nicest things for me personally. I ran around as Justice League 3000 Batman. What fun! If you played any of the previous games you’ll be familiar with the free flow combat system. It’s back and as always it allows you all the freedom to knock the living daylights out of thugs with combos, gadgets and environmental takedowns. You even get to use the Batmobile while in hand to hand combat, providing the situation allows for it. While you may think that’s somewhat unfair - enemies become complicated rather quickly and you need everything at your disposal, trust me. You start out facing the regular variety of thug that roams the streets. The regular thug quickly becomes part of a larger set of varied thugs such as Medics who bring other thugs back from an unconscious state…or charge them with electricity to kick your ass. There are sword wielding ninjas and thugs wielding shock batons and guns as well along with several other variations of rather impervious big guys who carry Miniguns. That’s right. Miniguns. In a nutshell – you’ll be having…

Video Game Review: Batman – Arkham Knight Review

2015-09-01

Desolation Morris

Total Score - 8

80 8

Overall Arkham Knight is a great game filled with fun, great graphics and great controls. It is a must buy for the Batman fan. It’s everything we wanted in a Batman game and more. It’s just a pity Batman suddenly can’t find his socks without his car.

User Rating: 4.55 ( 1 votes)

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Desolation Morris

Guest Contributor - Entertainment

Werner is a strange one...he quotes a lot of things...incoherently I might add, also he reviews stuff from time to time. We still don't truly understand what he is or where he came from.

To quote him verbatim:

Make sure they see my twitter handle so I can get hookers and drugs.

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Article Tags: Batman · Batman Arkham Knight · featured · Game Reviews

Article Categories: Games · Video Game Review