Cross-posting my "review"
from the backlog thread (lots of pictures there that I can't replicate here for some reason....):
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I was initially excited to try this game. I don't do the "superhero" thing much (don't read comics, don't follow things closely) but Batman is not only my favorite superhero, he may actually be my favorite character in ANY work of fiction. By far.
Summary: A
huge love letter to Batman fans, and a game with lots of good ideas that can quite often be fun. And you can tell there was a lot of love put into it by the developers. But ultimately, the experience is handicapped by an overall mediocre story, poor encounter/battle design, over-reliance on the Batmobile in favor of previous mechanics, and a significant amount of open-world "bloat."
Pros:
+ The best-looking Batman game yet, with rich amounts of detail, fantastic art direction, great facial models, and a sprawling Gotham City that has some of the most ridiculous draw-distance I've seen in a game. Lots of pictures after the jump.
+ As I said above, a big love letter to Batman fans. LOTS of costumes for many characters (not just Batman), lots of Batman allies, an insane amount of villains from his rogues gallery, etc.
+ A continuation of the point above, they even reference several comics (and, I think, even the Batman Animated Series).
+ Free-flow combat (which is what you're going to be doing the majority of the time you're on foot) still feels great.
+ Traversal (whether on foot or the Batmobile) is the best in the series yet, and just moving across Gotham feels
great. Smooth as hell, and the handling on both Batman and the Batmobile are great.
+ Voice acting is absolutely top-notch, great job by all the voice actors. Of course a couple of key ones (Batman himself, of course) from the original Animated Series return here, but the rest of them all do a fantastic job.
+ Alfred is awesome, as always.
+ PC version, in 2021, runs great (exceptions noted in "Cons" below). On a GTX 1070 Ti GPU, I was able to get semi-locked 90fps (it's the highest framerate the game allows) at 1440p with a lot of detail and high settings.
+ If open-world/"gaming minute to dollar ratio" is your thing, this game provides FANTASTIC value. Based on that metric alone, this has got to be one of the best values in gaming for this type of game.
Cons:
- Generally mediocre story. A lot of story beats are thoroughly predictable (even the identity of the titular
Arkham Knight is telegraphed from a freaking mile away). Key moments that are supposed to deliver an emotional punch to the player are delivered poorly, and subsequently completely undone by later parts of the story. I have to say that, coming from Origins, the story here is a bit of a disappointment. Not only that, but the story keeps going in a nonsensical way (to pad out playtime). In the first 3 games, I wanted there to be more and was a bit sad when the main campaign was over. In this one, I
couldn't wait for the campaign to be over.
- Too much of an emphasis on the Batmobile, to the point where the Batmobile feels like a co-protagonist alongside Batman. I'll be coming back to this.
- Hand to hand combat encounters have taken a HUGE nosedive (they probably peaked in
Arkham City). Whereas the first 3 games in the series had balanced and fun encounters, here you may get (as an example): 10 dudes, out of which 5 have riot shields, 3 have electrocuting batons, and 2 "giant" dudes who can just punch you at any time. This is a nightmare and your free-flow will be broken so often, the thing becomes not fun. It seems that the player has
less tools to deal with groups of thugs than previous games.
- Probably the biggest loser, BY FAR, is the stealth (or "Predator" as it was known in previous games) portion of the gameplay. The encounters are terrible -- there are some predator rooms with up to 16 (!!!!) armed thugs. And, just like hand to hand combat, you have LESS tools to deal with them. The map design for the predator encounters has also gone downhill from previous entries. Maybe they're better in the non-campaign challenges? I don't know.
-
The Batmobile. The heavy emphasis on the Batmobile is probably why Combat and Predator took a hit. And the Batmobile is used for practically EVERYTHING. Riddler challenges. Extra tasks. Navigation. (Minor non-story spoiler) Even Deathstroke, who was an absolutely AMAZING boss in Arkham Origins (probably the best combat boss of any in the whole series) is a goddamn Batmobile battle in this game. Yes, you fight Deathstroke.... in the Batmobile. Think about that.
- Batmobile combat encounters have the double sin of being repetitive and poorly designed. And there are so many of them, too.
- Some of the main campaign boss encounters, especially towards the end, are beyond annoying (and several of them involve the Batmobile).
- There's a lot of open world bloat that can lead to real fatigue real fast (what happened with me in the end). The story just keeps going and going and going.... for no good reason. There are side missions, and then side missions on top of that. Then there are the Riddler trophies/riddles from past games, except that here, there are
two hunded and forty-three (that's right,
243) of them. And not only that, but in the past, the main story was separate from the side missions. But in this game, they had the fucking audacity to tie the ending to the main campaign on completion of the side stories (yes, even the Riddler one).
- As I mentioned above, the game runs great at high/max settings.
However, there are a few extra settings at the bottom, which they call "NVIDIA Works" or something like that. Those are awful, and there were moments where my FPS tanked as low as low-20's when I had that setting on. Stay away from that at all costs.
Anyway I really wanted to love this, I did. Asylum, City, and Origins are all great games. And this one is good, too... at times. But for me, the cons were simply just a bit more than the Pros. Unlike the other games in the series, I likely won't play the main story of this game ever again.
AK to this day is still a fantastic looking game, if someone had said it just came out in 2020 I would totally believe it.
