Hold on to your bat-butts...
The Good:
The Story:
The final adventure of Arkham Trilogy takes steaks to a whole new level as Batman’s greatest villains unite under eerie Scarecrow and the mysterious new villain Arkham Knight to take over the city and defeat their common enemy. There are many unforgettable moments, exciting action sequences, emotional dilemmas, clever and unexpected twists and references to other infamous stories, creating one amazing story arc. It’s not without questionable points at certain places but overall it’s truly a great adventure and one great conclusion to one great trilogy.
Very lively and highly detailed Open World:
From the mental hospital, to part of city where inmates were imprisoned, we come in full circle as this game takes place on the lively city where citizens live (or used to live before evacuating at beginning of game) With skyscrapers, brightly lighted malls, clubs, streets populated with criminals to dark and abandoned sewers, It’s is very a diverse environment and the amount of details they have given for each little part of it is simply impressive. You get to see many landmarks of this city and even access them including the Watchtower, GCPD HQ, Wayne Tower, ACE Chemicals etc.
Impressive Graphic Design:
Thanks to the unity of a highly skilled development team and Unreal Engine 4, the graphic design has taken a major leap forward from its last gen predecessors. Not only the above mentioned open world, but each character model, their facial expressions, weather changes, action sequences, and certain atmospheres are very well done and visually appealing.
Batmobile:
This is probably the biggest addition and improvement of the game. Not only it is highly enjoyable, but for me, this is also the best interpretation of Batmobile from all of Batman lore. It has the sleek design of the classical versions and the highly advanced tank-like weaponry of modern interpretations. You can summon it to your position at any time to perform various tasks including freeroam on the streets of Gotham, battle against dozens of drone tanks, reach areas that are difficult to access, do Riddler’s challenges and more. The ways they have utilized this amazing feature in to the game is highly entertaining.
Improved and more challenging Combat and Stealth system:
The infamous combat system of Arkham Games returns with not much changes (why fix that isn’t broken?) but with much more challenging adversaries. Unlike in last games when you only had to tackle some goons and occasionally some with shields and stun batons, this time you are fighting against highly trained militia who are equipped with much more advanced abilities and weaponry. There’re ones skilled with swords, giant brutes with shields and electrocuted gloves and whatnot. They also come in higher numbers and with different combinations of enemy types so you have to think much faster and utilize all your gadgets to fight specific enemy types in order to do a flawless combo and survive. Stealth section enemies have also improved as there’re enemies who are undetectable by detective mode, ones who can revive already took down enemies, one who can control drones to detect Batman etc. But they are not the only ones who have improved. Batman is also equipped with new gadgets and moves such as Fear Takedown, imitate their boss’s voice and command them to specific locations, hack drones etc. It’s very challenging and as always, extremely enjoyable.
Team up with an ally:
Another improvement they have done to the combat system is that at certain points of the story you can fight enemies alongside an ally, and choose between that character and Batman to be your playable character. They have their own sets of weapons and combat skills and they can join up with Batman to do some amazing finishing moves. Though there are only few points you can do this, it is certainly a welcomed feature.
Alternate Costumes:
Now this isn’t necessarily a main part of the game but I have to address how well they have given details to each costume and make it blend with rest of the game world. Too bad every good suit can only be obtained by DLC, preorders or specific retailers. That’s current state of game economy for you.
So much to do but not too much of anything:
In some games when they want to fill the game with lots of tasks to make it look bigger, what they is to duplicate the same repetitive activity at multiple points of the game. Arkham Knight has lots of tasks to be done but they are very diverse and isn’t repetitive. For example there are highly challenging (and somewhat annoying) Riddler’s racing tracks but there are only 3 of them in the whole game to not to overwhelm the player with it. There are chase sequences, stealth sequences with Batmobile, moments that require detective skills, puzzle solving etc. etc. It’s a very good balance between quality and quantity of activities.
The final entry of one of the greatest game series of all time:
Rocksteady was a small time game development company who had their big break back in 2009 with the release of Arkham Asylum which earned thousands of sales, great scores and reviews, game awards and considered the best Superhero game ever. But unlike many companies who try to cash in on the success of their game titles by making endless amount of sequels and spin offs, RS stayed true to their plans and create one solid trilogy in which each title is improved upon its predecessor. Even though this isn’t feature of this game itself, it is a fact that’s worth mentioning and praising.
The Bad:
Villain confrontations and Boss Battles:
One of the best things about Batman lore is its complex and diverse villain gallery. Considering this is the final game of the trilogy meaning that this is the final time we get to interact with the villains, you would think there would be major story arcs with them with a satisfying final confrontations. But unfortunately other than the main villains of the story, most of villains are kept in sidelines and not much effort has been put to create a narrative between them and Batman. Boss fights themselves are very disappointing as most of them revolves around fighting their minions OR do a specific task and then watch Batman as he takes down the villain in a cutscene and with no satisfying conclusion.
PC Port:
Let’s address the elephant in the room. If you have heard about all these articles, reviews, forums and whatnot saying how terrible the PC port is, yes, they are all true. Unlike the previous Arkham Games, Knight is ported by a different company which isn’t even known for creating nor porting games for PC and they done an absolutely horrendous job at it. Lags, shuttering in cutscenes, audio issues, unresponsive button commands, poor optimization, pretty much everything you would expect from a bad PC port is there. Patches have been made, re-releases have been done and while they have remedied the issues for some extent, some issues are still unresolved and the very fact that the publisher tried to sell such half-baked game is a truly disgusting and shameless move.
Lousy key mapping:
This isn’t a glitch but a clear display of how well the PC port developers knew how to port a game to PC. Unlike in predecessors where you can do finishing moves by clicking one button, now it’s required to click 2 buttons. Now this isn’t a problem for a controller as all buttons are near to each other. But when you have to press Alt at the same time going across to click ‘1’ at the same time moving throughout the room fighting and dodging dozens of enemies with shields, stun batons and whatnot, it can be very distracting and may even break the already challenging combo. While the button to summon Batmboile which is not something you need to do instantly, is placed right next movement keys. Of cause you can change the key mapping as you like but this being the default mapping just shows how much developers are NOT qualified to do a PC port.
50/50:
TOO MUCH Batmobile:
As I pointed out in THE GOOD, Batmobile gameplay is enjoyable and a nice addition to the game. But sometimes too much of good can turn out to be not so good. There are few moments that feels they are overusing this element; For example in THE BAD points I mentioned how weak the boss battles are and in some instances it’s because instead of a good up-close and personal duel, it turns out to be a simple battle between tanks. For a silent predator, Batman is relying TOO much on his tank to the point it being bit out of character. As I said Batmobile is a lots of fun but it could have been more balanced and wasn’t exchanged with moments that could have been done better and more memorable.
Conclusion:
Even with few inconveniences, and that PC Port abomination, it’s crystal clear how much dedication and passion Rocksteady has given to create a grand finale to an epic trilogy. It has an original and engaging storyline bringing new aspects to the characters while at same time staying faithful for the Batman lore we know and love, it’s much improved and expanded upon its predecessors, has extremely entertaining gameplay and a beautiful open world to explore. There was a time when Superhero games were regarded no better than other licensed games and were simply used to cash in on the popularity of its licensed property. But Rocksteady proved that by putting genuine effort to create a unique and innovative game, even a licensed game can offer as much any other popular game does and even more. Whatever future holds for Rocksteady, and where ever Superhero games genre go from here on, there’s no question that Batman: Arkham Series is the best Superhero video game series to date and one of the greatest game series of all time.
RATE: 8.5/10