Let’s gather and talk about the newest Batman game. All of it. In the most spoiler-riffic fashion.
Last night I got together with my fellow Kotaku writers Kirk Hamilton, Luke Plunkett, and Chris Suellentrop to talk about Rocksteady’s latest interactive Batman saga. We’d all finished the game, and although Chris had already reviewed it for us, we wanted to go deeper, and to leave no spoiler unturned. So that’s what we did.
HERE IS YOUR WARNING: The following discussion goes in-depth with the entirety of Arkham Knight‘s story. We discuss the beginning, middle, and end, and no spoiler is sacred. Warning complete!
Evan Narcisse: Arkham Knight is unquestionably the biggest Batman game to date. It’s had more stuff to do, more characters and more plot twists than its predecessors. Some of those elements came as surprises and some, probably, as letdowns. Let’s start with the good stuff, then.
Kirk: Do we have to?
Evan: It can be quick, Eeyore.
Kirk: I’m mostly kidding. Though it has been kind of weird how a game this good (and it is good!) still has this odd storm-cloud hanging over it. For everything nice someone says about Arkham Knight, I get the sense there’s a criticism or complaint waiting in the wings. I’m not sure why that is. The stuff with the PC version? Something off-putting about the way WB has promoted it?Anyway, like I said… good game! I just plowed through my remaining main story missions last night.
Luke: I’ve found that strange too! Granted, I’ve been lucky in that my PC copy had worked flawlessly from the start, but the game itself has been terrific from beginning to end for me. And yet everywhere I look online, there seems to be this weird hesitation from people to really praise it, like something is gnawing at them they either can’t or won’t articulate. And no, “the Batmobile sucks” isn’t it.
Evan: Part of it is the WB stuff, I think. They have increasingly been delivering good games that still manage to poke at things that irritate the people buying them, whether it’s bad PC versions or the nagging sense that players are getting nickel-and-dimed.
Kirk Hamilton: Which is a shame, because you can tell a shitload of heart and hard work went into this thing. It’s a real labour of love.
Chris Suellentrop: It’s a good game! It’s just not the best thing video games have to offer in 2015, which is what some people were expecting, and what some early reviews were touting. Not that I’m sure what the best thing video games have to offer in 2015 is. Is this where I get to say that I liked Mark Hamill as The Joker without putting bold text around it?
Kirk: It is! I think we’re already past the spoiler warning. Though in case we need another one… YOU GUYS, WE ARE GOING TO SPOIL THE SHIT OUT OF THE ENTIRE GAME, SO YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Anyway, I liked Hamill, too. Loved him, even.
Chris: I thought he saved the game after a pretty dull and by-the-numbers first act.
Luke: Easily the highlight. Not just in terms of vocal performance, but in what that character brings to the story and the game. He’s a narrator, he’s a spirit animal, he’s a waypoint marker.
Kirk: Right! Turns out Batman desperately needed a less dull inner monologue.
Evan: Joker is basically Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite. With less tears.
Kirk: And a better musical number.
Evan: Oh, man, that was so great, right?
Kirk: So great.
Chris: The musical number is my video-game highlight ofso far, my very favourite thing in any game this year.
Luke: Well, it’s a little smarter than that. Notice there aren’t many narrative cutscenes in the game? Normally the only time they take the camera away from you is for a briefing. The Joker lets the game tell you a story, develop a character and keep you moving while, well, keeping you moving.
Kirk: I think the camera in this game is incredible. Not like, the “game camera,” which sometimes gets wonky and can be frustrating, especially in some of those Batmobile chase sequences. But the cinematic camera… the way it swoops and spins around batman, the way it zooms in on combat takedowns and sweeps out when you launch off of a building. The way it pulls in when you get out of the Batmobile and you realise how MASSIVE that sucker is. It’s seamless, and at its best, it’s extremely impressive. It takes the brilliant work Naughty Dog has done with cinematic cameras and pushes it to the next level, at least technologically.
Luke: The sequence getting in and out, or summoning it and flying into it, or blasting out of it and gliding, and the camera pans out to give you scale then moves in to give you control…ungh
Evan: It even works during the Dual Play switching, which I thought would be a real challenge in terms of keeping a smooth visual flow. So, ok we have to talk more about Joker and what he means to this game.
Kirk: Yes! The Joker. The…. Joker. Mr. Jokesalot. Captain Jokemaker.
Evan: Before Arkham Knight came out, Sefton Hill at Rocksteady said that Joker would NOT be at the center of the game.
Kirk: Well, of course he did.
Evan Narcisse: Which wound up being kinda… true.
Luke: From, a certain point of view.
Evan: He’s not the big bad in the real world. But he’s certainly the biggest threat Batman’s facing in the game.
Chris: [Presumably in Yoda voice] Your father, he is.
Evan: Don’t take Thomas Wayne’s name in vain!
Chris: I got the sense you were supposed to walk and listen to the Joker in your head during certain scenes, but I always wanted to just sit there and listen to him, or sit atop a building with him and gaze at the zeppelin.
Luke: But yeah, I wasn’t surprised to see the Joker turn up. What did surprise me was just how central he became to the game. Yes, early on they establish that he’s such a foe, such a big part of the universe that he can star even in death, but by the end, the game itself is almost about Joker instead of Batman.
Kirk: Evan and Chris, I believe you both played Arkham Origins. One of my favourite sequences in that game is where you go inside the Joker’s brain and live out his astonishment at having just met Batman. The best stuff in Arkham Knight channeled that, I thought. It was REAL good, especially toward the end. Joker has always been Batman’s best foil, not because he’s such a fun villain (though he is) but because he’s the Yin to Batman’s Yang. The psychological stuff in Arkham Knight explored that wonderfully, I thought.
Chris: Yes. And let’s praise Arkham Origins! It’s the Die Hard of video games, the action Christmas game you didn’t know you needed. Punching out people to the sounds of “Greensleeves” never gets old.
Kirk: Such an underrated game, as I’ve already written.
Luke: In Akham Knight, the dream/nightmare sequence for Joker, with all the stone Batmen, packs more meaning and is more enjoyable than any number of “dead parent” flashbacks or other crisis Batman faces.
Kirk: It made me jump, too!
Evan: The most intriguing thing about the way the Joker lives in Batman’s head is that it works in multiple ways. Either Batman’s possessed by the literal disembodied psyche of his archfoe or the Joker is just the form his own doubts and fears take. It’s, like, “damn, sure he’s the evil-arse Joker but he’s kinda right about some of this stuff he’s saying, Bruce…”
Kirk: I really liked how Batman would totally ignore Joker… right until he didn’t.
Chris: What Arkham Knight does better than Arkham Origins is exactly that, Evan. Get inside Bruce Wayne’s head and give you at least some sense of who this man is, beyond the monotonous brute who occupies most of the first act.
Kirk: Speaking of that, I have to say that as much as I like Kevin Conroy as Batman, I felt like he was a bit mismatched by some parts of this script. He’s so dignified, you know? This batman was a bit rawer, and more of a mystery. Maybe it was just me.
Luke: No, it’s not just you. This performance, the way Batman breaks down as the night goes on and gets very WHERE’S THE TRIGGER, seemed to not quite fit Conroy’s voice.
Evan: I love Batman but the most frustrating element of his more modern iterations is this dogma that any hint of his emotional complexity has to come from how he interacts with other characters. He’ll never just say how he’s feeling to other people.It’s all interior monologue or others interpreting it.
Kirk: It’s tricky, too, since due to the open-ended nature of the game, one minute you’ll have Batman watching Oracle kill herself, and the next minute he’s having a casual chat with Alfred about how he’s “gonna pay Penguin a visit and say hi” or something.I’m not sure what Conroy could’ve done better, given what he was working with.
Chris: Can we talk about Oracle? As a Batman devotee, Evan was bothered by her death scene. I was shocked by it, but in a good way. And I was disappointed by her return at the end of the game.
Luke: I was too! It undermined what could have been a very powerful moment, even if it did play into the whole “comic book” style the ending went for, where everything happens to everyone and it’s all a little *ahem* batshit crazy.
Chris: I also found Commissioner Gordon’s actions leading up to the climax difficult to believe, or not in keeping with what I know of his character.
Kirk: I was a bit disappointed with all that, too. On the one hand, I predicted it’d happen, and it was nice to get to see Oracle exact some measure of revenge on the jerks who’d held her captive. On the other hand, it was so predictable… and yeah, Chris, I thought Jim’s actions in the final act w/r/t The Scarecrow were ridiculous. So were Batman’s, for that matter. I was so much more invested in the inner-space stuff with Joker than I was with the “Surrender Dorothy” crap going on with Scarecrow and Bats.
Evan: Before the game came out, I wrote about how Scarecrow is one of the lamest Bat-villains and, while he’s used well here, I still feel that way. He’s always a walking plot device and, here, he’s just a runway for the Joker stuff.
Kirk: Though I will say that John Noble was great. Because John Noble is always great.
Luke: John Noble, in any other game, would have won “best voice actor”. He lends so much gravity and weight to a character who, as we’ve said, is normally The Worst.
Kirk: I got a bit distracted once I realised it was him, but I didn’t really mind. Though I will say that I don’t think a person would sound like Scarecrow does if they had no lips!
Evan: Going back to the climax for a quick bit, I got really annoyed by the false endings in the third act. There were at least three times I thought the game was over.
Chris: I don’t even want to speak of the drill.
Luke: Let us not speak of the drill. Or the rooftop helicopter fight, for that matter.
Kirk: God. You guys, I just… I really disliked around 50% of the missions in the last act.
Luke: The Arkham Knight takedown was not fun either. Really tedious implementation of stealth combat stuff that you’d already done better dozens of times throughout the game already.
Kirk: I liked so much of the ending narratively, but god… those missions. The checkpointing on the stealth mission against the Arkham Knight, the drill sequence, the big tank fight… >_<
Luke: It says a lot when the most enjoyable part of the game’s ending that you actually PLAY is the Joker FPS section.
Evan: Which itself was pretty shallow, mechanically, Luke.
Luke: Mechanically, yes. But it sure was satisfying shooting Penguin in the face.
Chris: But Kirk, the stealth tank sequences that men play live after them, the punching and kicking is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Batman.
Kirk: Hahahaha ok, if you say so.
Chris: I really enjoyed cleaning up all the watchtowers and the militia checkpoints after the story was over — just great Batman fighting and sneaking. But then you’re supposed to fight Deathstroke in a tank and I just turned the game off.
Kirk: I haven’t gotten to that stuff yet, though I actually do think I’ll go mop up sidequests. I like a lot of them. Those Two-Face heists, in particular.
Chris: The Two-Face heists were pure Arkham Asylum, little contained battles that reminded me of why that game is still my favourite Arkham game.
Luke: That’s funny, Chris, because I uninstalled the game five minutes after finishing the campaign. I’ve always found it weird cleaning up side-missions once a main story is done, and the way they frame it in particular here only makes it more bizarre.
Evan: Finishing sidequests to get more narrative payoff is a real turnoff. I’ll do it here, because Batman, but I won’t like it.
Chris: Yes, Luke. Everyone mutters about how you’re really playboy Bruce Wayne.
Kirk: Do you really have to finish them all? The game is telling me I have to do seven, which I don’t think is all of them. I think I’ve already cleared one or two, I guess.
Chris: All of them, Kirk. Even the Riddler trophies.
Kirk: Yikes.
Luke: Or, you can search “Batman Knightfall Ending YouTube” on Google
Chris: Yes, that’s what YouTube is for.
Kirk: I thought YouTube was for watching Kinder Egg unwrapping videos.
Chris: I’ve learned a lot about how to apply eye shadow.
Evan: So we’ve talked Scarecrow and Joker. Let’s discuss the Arkham Knight. Another instance of misdirection here since, if I recall correctly, he was talked up as an all-new character.
Kirk: Surely I’m not the only one who called it early on.
Evan: Nah, I called it as soon as I saw the design.
Luke: I’m not a HUGE Batman comics fan, so I didn’t know right away, but the second you got those Joker flashbacks with Robin, it was pretty clear.
Kirk: Yeah, I mean I even thought it was Robin before I knew about Jason Todd. I just figured it was actually current-day Robin. Who else could it have been?
Chris: They telegraph it, and I guess they had to because otherwise, many players — like me — would have responded to a reveal of Jason Todd with, “Who?”
Kirk: Yeah, it was a little weird to tie the twist to something that happened outside of the first two games.
Evan: And I kept hoping to be wrong. “Maybe it’s Ra’s Al Ghul! He’s always coming back from the dead. Plus, he’s got the League of Assassins…”
Kirk: I’d assumed he at least got funding from Ra’s! But I guess not. Overall I thought the Arkham Knight was kind of lame, both as a character and as plot device. And as a guy you fight against in a lot of shitty tank battles and instant-fail stealth sequences.
Evan: I mean, I loved the needling he was giving Batman throughout. The whiny tone of his scripting was **very** Jason Todd. This is why fans voted to kill you, Jason. This shit right here.
Kirk: Poor Jason. But yeah.
Luke: He seemed there only to justify his goons, if that makes sense. “Oh, we need to fill this city with tanks and soldiers…let’s create a military-looking guy in armour”
Chris: He was extremely boring. Combining him with the Ace Chemicals plant was a dangerous, stream-crossing boredom cocktail. Speaking of the empty city, couldn’t they come up with something different this time? It always feels ungenerous to want more, but I did want more. I’d like a living, breathing Gotham, one that’s closer to what San Andreas in Grand Theft Auto V felt like, a city with a sense of place, with neighbourhoods and with citizens who aren’t thugs and supervillains.
Kirk Hamilton: It’s that Spider-Man thing, right? Like, wishing the game let you actually play as your alter ego.
Chris: Yeah. The Atari 2600 Superman game let you play as Clark Kent, if memory serves, and it was not very exciting.
Luke: I’d imagine that the systems inherent in a brawler wouldn’t allow for the flexibility of a GTA-style game.
Kirk: Sure, though I’m not sure I’d want that. But something… I guess something creative that lets you do a few sequences as Bruce Wayne. Even standalone stuff. It’d be cool!
Evan: I’d always wanted Rocksteady to somehow make a co-op Batman game, because I love the idea of gruff-arse Batman assembling a family around himself. So this game was disappointing, not because it wasn’t co-op, but because it didn’t really show how Batman’s allies can be his best asset.
Chris: Even though the theme of the game is how Batman doesn’t trust his allies, and how that costs him.
Evan: Yeah, that didn’t pay off really. There’s a nice moment with Nightwing after you finish the Penguin questline, but I wanted more.
Chris: I liked that Nightwing moment, and I really liked the middle section with Robin. I thought that was the strongest part of the game.
Kirk: I wish you could call in Nightwing or Catwoman to back you up in the open-world fights. (You can’t, right?) As it stands, the most reliable companion Batman has is the Batmobile. Which, yeah. Not all that heartwarming.
Luke: I did appreciate the steps made to make the Batmobile feel like a character, though. How it growls like a dog, and how the camera lingers on its “death” scene so you can get upset about it.
Kirk: I already made this joke, but a lot of Arkham Knight is like Papo & Yo, only instead of your alcoholic father, it’s the Batmobile.
Evan: Hahahaha! Kirk, I totally thought they were trying to channel the horse-dying beat Shadow of the Colossus in that moment when the Batmobile gets chewed up.
Chris: Oh, way to remind me, Luke! The Batmobile’s resurrection was the second back-from-the-dead moment in the game that I found disappointing and irritating.
Kirk: Especially because it preceded a tank fight where I immediately died. Kind of an anti-climax.
Luke: Yes! I was hoping for an endgame reliant on swinging and flying and good old-fashioned Batman legwork. Instead, “oh, here’s another Batmobile, and btw, this one’s totally OP”
Kirk: And white?
Evan: The winter Batmobile.
Chris: Lucius, why have you been hiding this way cooler Batmobile?
Kirk: I want the one with the crazy Joker face on it. Is that some pre-order skin or something? I want that Batmobile.
Luke Plunkett: So good
Chris: Batman: Twisted Metal
Luke: IT HAS A BOWTIE
Evan: Those hands are creepy as fuck.
Luke: THE BOWTIEMOBILE
Kirk: Well, I’m out of time, so I’ll have to fire my grappling hook and take to the sky. I trust you all will carry on without me, and finally get to the bottom of the “is the Batmobile good or bad?” question. Just kidding, there is no easy answer to that.
Chris: Farewell, Batmobile apologist.
Evan: I think we handled the Batmobile stuff a bit before but I will say that, while I liked it, it made the game feel less “Batman.” As evidenced by its primacy in the last boss battles.
Chris: I literally have no idea where to take this after THE BOWTIEMOBILE.
Luke: I loved the Batmobile. Fuck the haters. It gave the game scale and variety, and is probably now the gold standard for console game tank battle controls/design. The way it controlled like a Halo tank, but then added in cool features like the predicted shot arcs (so you could dodge and weave) made the tank battles some of the most frantic and enjoyable in the game, especially since I found the actual hand-to-hand combat a bit lacking in a post-Shadow of Mordor world.
Chris: I literally never drove it once my Batsuit was powered up enough to fly quickly across the city. Though I did like defusing those bombs. The dodge manoeuvre was fun.
Evan Narcisse: OK, time for final thoughts, guys… It’s weird how Batman: Arkham Knight feels throwback in some ways. It’s an narratively focused open-world game focused on a sole grim protagonist. But it also bears many of the occasionally unpopular ideas that AAA publishers are implementing to try and survive in a shifting landscape. I think that I was surprised that, overall, I liked it. I do wonder if games like this will continue to get made in this specific way, though.
Chris Suellentrop: This game is built on such a solid foundation that it would be hard not to like it. And as frustrating as I found the force-feeding of the Batmobile early on, Luke’s right that it added variety to a series that some players thought had grown stale. Mark Hamill delivers another brilliant performance as the Joker, and that was enough for me. If they do another one — and they will do another one — they need to find a way to shake up the formula. Maybe it’s a Shadow of Mordor style system that involves more searching for your nemeses (sorry) in an open world, and less following a trail of breadcrumbs.
Luke Plunkett: This felt like a good way to close out a trilogy. You can see that in places the team tried to make this as next-gen as possible (the toxic smoke, the scale), but in the end were hamstrung by the need to make another Batman game which played and controlled the same as the last three. Given that, I’m thankful this is a sequel that was genuinely better than the games that came before, and I’m excited to see what they take on next
Evan: And we’re done. Thanks for making time to chat, guys!
Comments
19 responses to “What We Loved And Hated About Arkham Knight, With Spoilers”
Pro’s
Downloading it.
Tittle screen.
Intro logo’s and movie.
Hype Train!
Con’s
unplayable mess that still isn’t fixed on PC.
Overall its a pretty good main menu simulator, whenever I am looking to get bent over again I will defiantly be looking to WB Games! Seriously though…
It sucks that the gaming industry is like this these days, PC smashes consoles out of the water, fact. Not elitism, plenty of friends and family own consoles as have I over the years, they offer a great experience for the price, if I ever have kids or save for a house or even get married I doubt I could justify 2000 dollars on a gaming rig, and would most likely move to console knowing I will get a pretty good experience.
That said PC is faster, and gaming devs are just so lazy. instead of using the extra power for cool features they use it as a reason to not having to optimize as much letting our extra power pick up the slack. Even games that run often have high hardware requirements compared to if they were optimized correctly. This platform has got it’s own problems, for sure but to think that they couldn’t even muster a half decent launch is laughable… The original dark souls was a better release to PC as its 2 biggest problems were modded within a day. I would love to know the budget for Batman AK. When you consider The Witcher 3 was only 35 million and mustered a much better release (with its own problems) and was playable for most at launch, or within a week. If AK’s budget was even close or worse more… That really only leaves one reason, they failed to allocate the correct budget and time for PC, pushing it to the side like most devs do.
I hope everyone on console enjoyed the game nevertheless.
You can argue that the twists are predictable. Barbara Gordon’s death scene was very obviously not a proper death scene. The old guy hiding his infection rather than being immune. From moment one the Arkham Knight was clearly a side kick. However the game didn’t assume it tricked you. When it finally admits it’s Jason Todd under the mask it doesn’t gloat like it had you all along. When Bruce Wayne and Alfred die the game doesn’t think you believe Batman just exploded. Gotham thinks that, not the player.
The one bit of writing that still nags at me though is the fear gas. They use it to go to some cool places so it’s ok, but it’s wildly inconsistent. In the previous games it’s always been a quick puff of it turns the world into a nightmare, and that seems pretty true for everyone else in Gotham, but in Arkham Knight it’s effect on Batman is more or less whatever the plot needs to move forward. He gets stuck in a room with 1/4 of the amount of gas required to flood the east coast with it and then sees the Joker sometimes? He’s breathing in the stuff forever while fixing the Batmobile and nothing major happens. He’s had a lot of previous exposure and he has the Joker’s toxic blood injection so there’s enough of a reason to say it doesn’t work the same on Batman as it does everyone else, but it still seems weird.
I didn’t think Barbaras death scene wasn’t that obviously fake. As for the old guy, that one worked for me because I accidentally read a spoiler that was incorrect, so my mind was going somewhere else. When people started complaining how predictable the Arkham Knight was I originally thought it was going to be Robin. I guessed it was Jason Todd when he was introduced but I was still holding out that there was something you missed.
Really? To me it just didn’t feel like a death scene for someone so important to the main character. It didn’t feel like it was done for shock value even though it was intended to be shocking, so I expected more from it. I might have chalked it up to just a missed opportunity but the game was pretty open about it’s don’t trust your eyes policy. Couple that with the way it got pushed to the side soon after and nothing really came of it.
I wasn’t sure which Robin it was until they started mentioning Jason. Robin being pissed off and Batman treating him like crap made him the likely candidate early on, but they were very clear that Arkham Knight knew things only people who trained with Batman could (not even pre-Batman Bruce Wayne in training, but Batman). When Alfred mentioned that he’s got no serious leads I was thinking ‘there’s only like six people who it could be, a dozen tops, and Batman is the World’s Greatest Detective’.
I don’t mean any of this as a bad thing. The game wasn’t trying to trick me it was trying to tell a good story and entertain me. Falling for the twist wasn’t the point as much as the significance of the twists to the characters within the story. Ultimately I think it makes the story better. Genuine surprise can add something the second or third time you play it, but it’s not required if you do it right like this. With NG+ it’s like yeah, I know what’s happening here, but the characters thoughts and reactions are still interesting.
It’s because of the way I think the fear toxin works. It’s a twist later on that he saw her die because of Scarecrow, however when I thought about it being an illusion I started wondering how Scarecrow can force visions and illusions. Normally nobody can know what somebody is experiencing under his fear toxin, yet he somehow manage to make a toxin that he had full control over? He even started gloating like he knew what Batman saw, what if the hallucination was different and that would give it away?
Eh, I think Under the Red Hood did a much better job with the twist.
But what if the Scarecrow that gloated was just a fear induced hallucination? =P You’re right but Under the Red Hood had the advantage in that most of it’s audience didn’t know how Under the Red Hood ended.
I think the reason the Scarecrow knew Batman saw what he wanted him to see, and made him see it was through the power of suggestion, the Scarecrow was telling Batman what to see by telling Oracle what she should do with the gun, Oracle wasn’t infected so she would do nothing with the gun, Batman was so he would see what he feared the most in that instance, that Oracle would do what Scarecrow expected.
The biggest flaw of this game is the continued omission of DC’s biggest star…… Captain Boomerang. Definitely needs more Boomerang.
Other than that, I loved the Joker FPS bit, because I finally realised how pant-shittingly tense it was when YOU were the one being hunted by the Batman. I’d love to see some DLC where you play as a villain, or even just Joe Thug, where you have try and avoid Batman while watching your fellow thugs get hunted and dispatched one by one.
While I’m sure you’re (mostly) joking, he’s really still more of a Flash villian so hopefully (given the insane amount of Superman and Flash references in-game) we’ll see him soon enough.
Yeah, you’re right, he’s mostly a Flash villain. But after watching the surprisingly great Batman: Assault on Arkham (which was even set in Rocksteady’s Arkham-verse), I’ve wanted to see him appear in-game, even if he is (as Deadshot puts it in Assault on Arkham) “a one gimmick hack/two-bit C-lister”.
Oh man, I just can’t agree with you about Assault on Arkham (I thought it was one of the worst animated features they’ve done), but I’d definitely would’ve liked to see more in the way of C-listers appearing in Arkham Knight, even as slight cameos like Arkham Asylum handled them (with Riddler’s riddles). Half of Arkham Knight’s cast were new characters specifically made for the game, which was a bit disappointing.
I’ve been thinking an open-world GTA: Gotham would be awesome, and how the Batman would come after you if you got 5+ stars.
You made me imagine a couple of missions in this theoretical game where you and a group of thugs are trying to pull off a GTA:V style heist while Batman lurks in the shadows and up high taking out your friends one-by-one, and one wrong move could put you face-to-face with the bat.
Was extremely dissapointed by the Arkhum Knight character and was extremely easy to figure out his identity.
He was supposed to be brand new, and a Huge threat to Batman, but not once during the game did he feel threatning.
Arkhum Knight was a whiny little bitch, and did not sound threatning and became an annoyance on the story.
The Joker did make up for lost interest with Jason Todd. The Joker never gets old, especially with Mark Hamils Masterwork with this character.
But I cannot understand this hate against the Batmobile. It drives great. I have had nothing but fun with it.
In Saints Row I would have loved it. In truth I enjoyed it in Arkham Knight. However the reason I don’t like it being in the game is that it breaks the golden rule of the Arkham series – you play as Batman not a video game character. Imagine if the game had a sequence where you play as a FPS Batman with a ‘non-lethal’ mini-gun. It could play really well and be a lot of fun but it’s not something Batman does. He doesn’t drive around Gotham side swiping walls, firing rockets at cars, running down villains like Tommy Vercetti.
I’m not saying you’re wrong to like the Batmobile. Just explaining why a lot of us took issue with it. There’s also a lot of people who didn’t like the way it controlled/played who were frustrated because every other mission and objective involves dragging the Batmobile in for little to no reason. Imagine you sucked at controlling the Batmobile, then picture what it would have been like to go through the dozens of tank hunting, tank horde, racing, jumping, sections of the game. Not so much fun. =P
I can understand the dissapointment with the Batmobile Missions.
Started doing more of the Batmobile Side Missions today and they do become very tedious to the point I just ignore them now.
I still enjoy the Batmobile when helping cops chase down thugs or the Captain Trucks Chase Missions.
I think the game is amazing, the best in the series. While I understand the complaints about the batmobile, that was mostly around the start of the game. When the world opened up the batmobile usage became more spread out.
For me, I knew once Fear gas was used, there was going to be some really trippy stuff , despite Batman’s strong mental fortitude. I didn’t know they were going to do a Babs death scene, but once they did, it was obvious due to the Fear Gas. I was surprised by the times I had jump scares though (Man -Bat wow), and Joker was great , great idea on how to bring him “back”. Arkham Knight was average though.
Overall I did enjoy the game, though I wonder how it would be with Dini still writing it
I just completed it 100% this morning and I gotta say…
I’m a little bit disappointed that Bane wasn’t waiting at Wayne manor it being the Knightfall ending and all, especially after the ordeal of capturing every villain in Gotham. An unwinnable boss fight would have been a perfect ending.Around 38 hours playtime for 100% completion btw for anyone wondering.
pros
the joker
the whole arc of the story
the batmobile design
the combat
the ending
cons
no challenge maps as such, no doubt we have to pay more LATER to get something that was part of the games.
the dual team system (well except for the Catwoman parts)
the god awful tank stuff. the massively painful mine parts and especially the boss battles
WTF with Deathstroke, why an almost exact copy of the Knight one (which itself ended poorly), not much of an assassin
the shoehorning batmobile into missions, some of it was okay, but mostly not.