Batman: Arkham Knight is the fourth in the Arkham series but the third and final game by Rocksteady. It is often referred to as the end of their trilogy. Of course, you play as Batman in the game. If you are a new player to the series, then the game’s controls are confusing. The game doesn’t have a great tutorial as you’ll have to finish a few missions before some practice levels show up. The core combat is the familiar system of a button to hit enemies, a button to counter and then various other opportunities to use Batman’s gadgets and special moves. It is a system about timing that you cannot just button mash through in order to chain together a combo and not take damage.
There are Predator Levels where you have to pick off enemies one by one a closed area. Batman can survey the situation via a vantage point, drop down silently to take down enemies, and use various gadgets along with the environment. It can be challenging in sneaking around without arousing suspicion. There are new kinds of enemies that jam some of Batman’s gadgets, while Batman gains a few moves to take multiple targets out at once. However, the levels don’t seem to be designed as well as previous games which were a lot tenser.
There are investigative sections where you reconstruct the sequence of events through analyzing different objects of interest. It sounds more interesting than it is since it is effectively a glorified seeking the object game. Most useful of all is Batman’s Detectve Mode which highlights areas of interest and objects that can be interacted with. Finally, the Batmobile is a highly publicized addition to the game. Unfortunately, it almost instantly outlives its welcome. The forced usage of the Batmobile in many of the missions makes it feel oversaturated. The Batmobile can transform from an armored vehicle into a tank, allowing for tank battles. Furthermore, it is used in puzzles as it possesses a winch to pull down objects, as well as weighing platforms down.
You immediately have access to travel around all of Gotham City which is bigger than previous games. At first, the Batmobile makes it seem that traversal is faster but in actuality, gliding is still the quickest way around as you can take a direct route instead of winding through the streets. While traveling through the city, you’ll come to appreciate how good looking the game actually is. It was one of the best looking games at the time when it was released.
With all the variety of gameplay, the game manages to feel uneven at times. There are some points where it is vague on where to go next or what to do to advance the story. You end up scouring the environment using Detective Mode to try and find that one access point that you can slip through or scan that one piece of evidence. It’s quite frustrating at times when you’re just locked in a room without being able to progress and it is not clear how. The previous games weren’t like this, it feels really gimmicky that you have to use a newly introduced gadget for that one section.
There are various new enemies introduced to try and curb Batman’s overpowered abilities in previous games, such as a medic that resurrect enemies you had taken out or enemies that can scan for Batman’s location. Unfortunately, all these new additions make some of the fights very cumbersome where the combat does not feel as streamlined as previous games. As touched upon earlier, the Batmobile outstays its welcome, in particular the overreliance on tank battles for missions. Once the invincible types of tanks appear where you must shoot them from behind (and waiting five seconds in the process so the weapon can charge up), it drastically slows the pace down and is frankly not fun. It becomes a massive chore as you stay out of their sights and track them down. Having them able to destroy the Batmobile within two hits just makes it worse.
Later in the game there is also a boss tank battle which is one of the most poorly designed sections in the game. It is horrendous and exacerbate everything that is bad with the Batmobile tank. To make matters worse, the boss has an annoying gimmick. It is such an uneven experience that it is enough to ruin the game. Then as if that wasn’t enough, the developers thought it was a great idea to put an even worse Batmobile boss battle soon after. It is enough to make you want to give up on the game. It’s harder to understate the excitement and relief that you feel when the section is over and that was the last of the Batmobile missions.
The plot focuses on Scarecrow who had developed a biological weapon. This weapon forces the evacuation of most of Gotham, leaving only remnants of the police and the criminals. Batman then tries to track Scarecrow to take him down and in the process, is met by the titular villain, the Arkham Knight. The Arkham Knight is a perfect match for Batman, able to anticipate and counter his moves.
Sadly, despite all the buildup and hype, the story and ending is disappointing. It doesn’t really grip you. Not only does the game not have proper boss battles but the ending is messy and out of reality. The reveal of the identity of the Arkham Knight was anti-climactic and there’s no big final bang to take out Scarecrow. The main story takes around 10-15 hours but that will not net you the ending. You must clear all side missions in order to unlock the full ending and this is a lot of (boring) work. The game takes the approach of quantity rather than quality for the side missions as you’ll be repeating the same types of missions again and again. While this isn’t so bad, the game has such a sheer number of these repetitive tasks that it’s more like the time wasting Ubisoft games than a Batman game so it loses its fun really quickly.
Half of the side missions involve the rest of the super-villains while the other half is original characters. While you gain experience from combat to level up and unlock perks, the game encourages you to complete side missions by providing more upgrade points in comparison. There are also a bunch of challenges where you’ll aim for high scores by completing certain requirements.
Overall, Batman: Arkham Knight is not a bad game but never reaches the heights it could have. While it builds upon the solid foundations of its already amazing predecessors, the fixation on providing so much content around the Batmobile backfires and drags the game down instead. The story is average and the side missions lose its appeal really quickly. It’s still a worthwhile game to play, but prepare for some frustrating decisions made by the game developers.
Downloadable Content:
Batman: Arkham Knight has a ton of DLC. The season pass naturally gives you access to all of them, and it is comprised of a lot of small DLC rather than big chunks. It encompasses single player content, AR challenges and skins.
The Harley Quinn Story Pack was included as a pre-order bonus, the Day 1 editions and the season pass. It is sent before the events of the game. You play as Harley Quinn and the DLC has various combat and predator sections. She plays slightly differently to Batman, mainly in the predator sections where all her takedowns are loud and thus will draw attention. However, she has a few overpowered abilities such as her jack-in-the-box explosive that draws enemies near and still be able to climb up walls to hide on. The story pack only takes around 30 minutes to complete.
The Red Hood Story Pack is the other pre-ordered bonus and is pretty much three challenges connected by cutscenes in between. You play as Red Hood, who has similar combat moves as all the other characters. There are two brawls and a predator challenge taking only 10 to 30 minutes all up. Red Hood brings nothing new to the table.
The Scarecrow Nightmare Missions are three additional challenges exclusive to the PS4 versions. Admittedly, these are pretty fun because you do a short race and then face off against a giant Scarecrow in the Batmobile. These challenges are reminiscent of the Scarecrow missions in the original Arkham Asylum.
A Matter of Family is the first big single player DLC for the game and it is set before the events of Batman’s final night. You control Batgirl and Robin, as they go to the amusement park to save Commissioner Gordon, who had been kidnapped by Joker and Harley Quinn. The DLC includes a brand new area which while small, has a few collectibles scattered around to encourage exploration. It is still a short DLC, taking around one to two hours to complete. It’s not hard and it has a nice final boss fight that puts everything else in the base game to shame despite it being just a basic brawl fight. Noteworthy is that Harley Quinn gets one of her iconic costumes back.
GCPD Lockdown gives you control over Nightwing. Penguin who had been captured by Batman is now planning an escape. It’s another short DLC with some brawls and a predicator challenge. The DLC is slightly harder since Nightwing has a low amount of health and there aren’t as many high hiding places. It takes 15 to 30 minutes to complete.
Catwoman’s Revenge has Catwoman breaking into the Riddler’s robot factory. Once again, it is comprised of brawls and predator challenges, so nothing new here. This DLC is filled with gimmicks making it really annoying to play. During the predator challenge, Catwoman cannot alert enemies or knock anyone else. Perhaps the worst part is the final battle in which you are on a floor that slowly becomes electrified, making the usable area smaller and smaller. You’re tasked with fighting an outrageous number of robots and to top it off, there are two lasers randomly moving along the arena. Catwoman’s health is pitifully low and her combat has her flipping all over the place. The end result is a frustrating mess and poor game design that just makes it unfun. The reason it’s so bad is that it throws away everything the combat system was designed for. This is the worst DLC of the game and emphasizes the worst in a game with already poor gameplay designs. The challenge of the final battle masks the short length as you’ll only take 30 minutes to complete without any retries.
A Flip of the Coin has you controlling Robin. It’s another short story pack as Robin hunts down Two-Face. It takes around 30 minutes to complete and since it is more of the same, by this point, the DLC content is starting to become repetitive.
Season of Infamy is the last story pack and it is the biggest. It adds in four side missions involving four villains: Mr Freeze, Mad Hatter, Killer Croc and Ra’s al Ghul. These side missions are selected from the main game so you get to play through these as Batman. Each one takes around 30 mins to an hour to complete (but it’ll lean more towards the former). These missions add in additional brawls and predator challenges and for the most part, it is pretty decent. They don’t add anything new but it is nice that this is integrated into the game rather than selecting it from a menu.
The rest of the DLCs are additional skins, Batmobiles and playable characters. Each one tasks you with completing the new challenges as well as older ones. If you like this type of content, then there are hours of additional gameplay here.
Overall, the season pass is probably not worthwhile at full price but definitely a must-get when on sale (and it goes on sale often). You get five short standalone missions, one mid-sized DLC, the largest story DLC is comprised of four additional side missions, and the numerous challenges. As each story pack takes around 30 minutes to complete, you’re getting around eight hours of single player content, which is to be honest, is not too bad. The additional challenges are just icing on the cake but unfortunately, a lot of the content feels recycled and repetitive since it doesn’t add anything that’s particularly new or fresh.
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