This game is the perfect example of why you shouldn’t listen to the crowd. It’s six years old and I’m just now playing it, partially because of the general negativity from fans, partially because I’m one of the people that actually played Arkham: Origins (and enjoyed it) and felt I needed a break from Batman games at the time.

It’s all to the good though, because six years ago I did not have an ultra-wide 1440p 120hz monitor and a GTX 3070. Good lord does this game still look amazing. It’s really the first game since I played Cyberpunk last year that’s made me consistently mutter to myself about how good it looks. Truly a technical marvel on a good PC with all the bells and whistles enabled.

I remember hearing at launch that the PC port was a disaster, but that seems to have been ironed out in the intervening years, or perhaps I’m just incredibly lucky. Other than a single crash to desktop and a single instance in which Batman got stuck on a piece of level geometry during the blimp sequence causing me to reload the last checkpoint I’ve had zero performance issues or bugs. Not even the typical open world staples. No enemies clipping through the floor, or cars spawning inside each other. Absolutely nothing. Even during the most graphically intense sequences I never dropped lower than 50 fps, which is no problem at all with G-Sync.

Alright, so with the preamble out of the way, let’s address my absurd claim that this is a better game than Arkham City. Let me preface that claim by saying that City is still, imo, a very good game. Like I said, I even enjoyed Origins. I think all four of these games are, at the very least, pretty good, especially when put up against pretty much any other open world game. Maybe I’m just biased because Batman is goddamn cool, but I’d much rather play Arkham: Origins than any Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry, and if you disagree I fundamentally distrust you as a person.

Basically what it boils down to is: do you like the batmobile? Both as a concept (do you see it as an integral piece of batman’s toolkit) and as a gameplay mechanic (do you enjoy how it controls in this specific game). For me, the answer is yes to both questions. I’d always thought it was a bit weird that batman’s iconic vehicles weren’t available in the previous games. They’re one of the most important things that elevate him from “just a dude,” to a one man army. And it makes sense that this is the game where the batmobile is finally unleashed, because batman is essentially at war and the battlefield is all of Gotham (not just the walled-off slums like in Arkham City).

Basically what I’m saying is that if you like the batmobile, you’ll like this game, because that seems to be the most common complaint. Too much batmobile combat/racing. And it makes sense that would be the main complaint, because if you look at JUST the batman stuff Arkham Knight is a better experience than City across the board. The combat has been both expanded and polished to a mirror sheen. The stealth has never been more fun. Batman has never been better to control. The iterative development process that makes game sequels more likely to be better than movie sequels is on full display here. Going back to City (which I did briefly to refresh my memory) is pretty jarring. That game hasn’t aged perfectly.

And just in general this is a meatier open world game. There are more sidequests to do, more repeating activities, more DLC missions. It’s a very, very lengthy game if you want it to be, and I definitely wanted it to be, because I enjoyed being batman in a fully open Gotham city, which is what Arkham city always should have been from the start.

I also enjoyed the main story a whole lot more. The main story in City stretched plausibility to its breaking point from the start with Hugo Strange’s open air prison that walled off a large section of a major US city. Like...what? What followed often felt like an excuse to cram in as many memorable batman characters as possible and often struck me as an amusement park ride. Arkham Knight is, in contrast, much more believable in its setup and much more straightforward, with a fun (though very predictable) mystery identity in The Arkham Knight, and the constant delight of Joker’s tainted blood remnant talking to you inside your head and occasionally seizing control of your body. And there’s just a lot more at stake personally for Batman, there’s some real pathos and suffering and self reflection that wasn’t present at all in the previous two games except for the ending of City with the Joker, which was, I admit, very good. But in general they were incredibly external event driven plots vs internal or interpersonal character conflict plots. Overall this is just a straight up way better Batman story than Asylum or City were. If you were to strip away the video game part and just make them comics, it’s the one that would be most interesting to read. As someone who has read a bunch of Batman comics I feel incredibly qualified to make such a claim. You wanna fight about it?

Soooo yeah. In summary, this game is absolutely fantastic, and people are very wrong about it, as people often are. My personal ranking of the series now would be:

Arkham Asylum = Arkham Knight > Arkham City > Arkham Origins

But the bottom line is all four of these games are great and you should just play all of them because why the hell wouldn’t you? Do you, like, NOT want to play good games? Good games in which you are Batman? Is there something wrong with you? Are you...crazy? Do you need professional help? Do you, perhaps, need to spend some time in an Asylum...

Knight reminded me of Shadow of War to a great extent. At times, it felt like a carbon copy concept of it. In both games, for the most part, the gameplay is great, the story is engaging enough, the visuals are awesome and the combat is an absolute standout. But the amount of filler content is insane, and the obscene quantity of repetitive tasks you need to do for what feels like hours on end, just to trigger a couple extra minutes of a final cutscene, supposedly revealing the ‘real’ ending, is absurd to an irritating degree. I will never like or approve of any game that does this, regardless of how much I love the core of what it offers. Knight clearly suffers from it too, which is extra disheartening because, in doing so, it kind of undoes the fact that the game grows on you as you make your way through the story.

The main addition to Knight is, of course, the batmobile sections, which are divisive for a reason. On the one hand they add a ton of different stuff and interesting mechanics and options to the game, driving feels pretty good, and stylistically it’s an obvious bonus. On the other, Gotham City - which is visually and artistically at its absolute peak here - feels too narrow to fully explore the vehicle’s capabilities and driving requirements. The destructible physics try to help with it, but ultimately something feels weird. And regardless of all this, I wasn’t a fan of any batmobile forced sections, especially the puzzle-platforming ones.

There are a few things Knight does remarkably well though. Like I already mentioned, combat is fantastic. It’s more spectacular than ever before due to a combination of the new batsuit, more fluidity, tag teaming with other super-heroes and the addition of multi takedowns. If there is one criticism to be had here is that, especially in the beginning, combat sections feel few and far between when compared to Asylum and City. This is a direct result of the amount of cutscenes you get throughout the first two acts, which obviously comes with a lot of gameplay interruption. Traversal, another staple in the series, is also further improved, especially with the inclusion of faster gliding. Everything is bigger and looks absolutely phenomenal, even by today’s standards, so gliding and grappling your way through the city is a pleasure at all times. Plus that cape looks insanely cool.

The story is very solid, and I’d be hard pressed to choose between it and City’s. It kicks off in a visually ‘brutal’ manner, and the way they tie and narratively adjust it to the previous game’s story is brilliant (having Joker act as a de facto mental demon of Batman’s psyche was an awesome choice). There are some obviously cornier lines throughout, and the way the game sometimes subverts expectations in the most cliché way possible (e.g. Barbara) is a turnoff, but the really impactful moments (e.g. Poison Ivy) and the unexpected, gripping finale are more than enough to offset the issues.

The main problem I have with Knight, which I already touched on, is all the extra unnecessary nonsense. There’s a lot of fluff that seeps into almost every single aspect of the game, and all the Riddler content reaches an all-time high in terms of absurdity, which considering the previous games is already saying something. Activating Knightfall Protocol is a complete nuisance in what it requires of you, especially with how little sense it makes narratively. And to be honest, even the story the game’s trying to tell suffers because of that extra length.

This - alongside some crashing problems that became annoying at one point - was my main gripe with Arkham Knight. But the game reaches impressive heights on occasion, and that alone was enough for me to look at it in a very positive light. I didn’t like it as much as City, but it’s still a great title and a worthy end to a trilogy that I appreciated considerably more than I thought I would. 8/10

Despite my love of comics (exceeding my love of videogames) and Batman in particular, I've approached each game in the much-acclaimed Arkham series with skepticism as to how much I would enjoy it.

I totally judged the first game by its cover, which for some reason reminded me of Kelley Jones' work on Batman covers in the 90s, an era in which I was mostly detached from the character (at least in the comics). I finally gave it a chance thanks to a well-timed Steam sale, and was delighted to experience what felt to me like a spiritual successor to Neversoft's Spider-Man game (one of my favorites growing up).

My skepticism returned with Arkham City. I tend to find open-world games overwhelming, with too many competing points of interest shouting at me from every angle. Thanks again to another Steam sale, I was proven wrong. Though the game had a different "feel" to it than its predecessor, its design did not overwhelm me. Arkham City allowed me to be the Batman in new and exciting ways, heightening the experience by just about any measure.

You'd think at that point I'd be ready to give any Arkham game a chance. But my hesitance returned between finishing Arkham City and the launch of Arkham Knight. I found Arkham Origins to be well-executed but comparatively boring (especially in terms of visuals)... it's the only Arkham game I've just gone "meh" partway through and abandoned. Its portable counterpart, Origins: Blackgate, fared a bit better for me (I'm a sucker for the 2-D Metroid formula), but failed to break any new ground.

But the biggest reason I avoided Arkham Knight had nothing to do with its immediate predecessors, or even the various issues that continue to plague its PC release.

It was the Batmobile.

There are three genres of games I basically avoid wholesale: Sports games, driving games and shooting games. The only way the Batmobile could have scared me off worse is if it had some sort of NFL franchise management component baked in.

Worse still, the addition proved extremely divisive, which served to confirm my fears for a good long while.

Then I received the PlayStation 4 version of the game as a Christmas gift. Knowing my past fears had proven almost universally unfounded, I decided to take the plunge and give the game a chance.

I'm really glad I did. Arkham Knight isn't just a great game, it's probably my favorite game of the series.

I enjoyed the main story (though as a comics fan I saw the loudly-advertised "twist" coming a mile away). I loved the side quests (I'm currently at about 94% completion). I even loved the Batmobile, which controlled much more easily than expected for me in combat mode. Though I've never been a huge fan of the series' character designs, the overall art direction is stunning... in particular, the environment really feels like Gotham City in a way that Origins failed to achieve. The voice acting is just as phenomenal as you'd expect, with one returning villain in particular really stealing the show in unexpected ways throughout. And as always, the DLC costumes offer plenty of fan service (I played through most of the main game in the 1989 movie costume with the 1966-themed Batmobile skin). I'm a sucker for that stuff.

Sure, I played on "Easy" mode (I'm a wimp, I know). Yeah, I'm not sure I buy the Batmobile being "non-lethal" as I send crooks flying into the distance. But Arkham Knight does the best job in the series of making you feel as powerful, as well-prepared and as clever as the Batman in basically every sense of the character. That makes this game a blast, my favorite in the series, and possibly one of my favorite games ever.

I'll try to keep that in mind the next time I find some unfounded reason to avoid whatever Rocksteady's cooking up next...

I loved Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. With Arkham Asylum, you got a close quarters games with excellent combat, amazing boss fights against Batman's storied cast of villains and some very clever puzzles. Arkham City built on everything in Arkham Asylum by turning up the combat and puzzle-solving several notches and adding an open world with many excellent mini Arkham Asylum-esque locales.

Arkham Knight adds the Batmobile; a really fun way to get around the world which introduces a new way of combat and puzzle solving. Overall, I did enjoy what the Batmobile added to the game, although one gripe I did have with the Batmobile was how finnicky the controls could be at times.

However, Arkham Knight feels like one step forward, two or three steps backward, as it seems that Rocksteady sacrificed some of the best parts of the previous two games for the Batmobile. Gone are the boss fights and environmental puzzles using Batman's utility belt tools, to be replaced by Batmobile puzzles. While the Batmobile puzzles will tickle the brain, they are never difficult enough to illicit an Eureka moment, something which the previous games constantly succeed in achieving. It is a shame that I could count the number of times I had to use tools like the line launcher in the entire game on one hand.

Story-wise, Arkham Knight succeeds at tying a nice bow on the trilogy. The main villain, the Arkham Knight is downright intimidating right from his first appearance and provides a first in the series, an equal to batman's tactical acumen and fighting prowess. On the other hand, Scarecrow is a perfect foil to the Arkham Knight's brawn as the game's secondary antagonist. While the Arkham Knight comes off as rash and even perhaps, angsty, Scarecrow exudes cunning and control. It is a testament to how well-written Scarecrow is that he is able to illicit fear in the main characters and the audience in every single scene he is in. Overall, I loved how well the Arkham Knight's story was fleshed out and Batman's story was closed.

Despite my criticisms about the lack of boss fights and the over-emphasis on the Batmobile, Arkham Knight is a fun game, albeit a deeply flawed one. I would still highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the previous two games. For everyone else, well, it does make you feel like batman.

Where to start with this thing? I think it was when they made it clear that they were actually making the game take place over the course of one night that I realized how incredibly stupid this game was going to be. An open-world game that takes place in a very short amount of time is not inherently a bad idea, if done properly, i.e. by actually making that time limit real so that the player has to decide what they want to try to accomplish and what they'll leave by the wayside. But an open-world game that takes place in a very short amount of time that lets the player 100% every side-quest requires gravity-defying levels of suspension of disbelief. Which is an even bigger problem for a game where we're supposed to believe that guy smashing someone's head into the ground with his armored fist and driving into people at 60+mph with a tank isn't killing them.

So from the get-go I had low expectations, and for a while the game failed to exceed them. At the point where a character is shown killing themselves, I almost stopped playing, because the game had not earned the right to put me through that. But, ever-so-slowly, it actually got better. I started to figure out some of the mechanics that the game just assumed I remembered from playing previous Arkham games. I got some gadgets and upgrades that actually made the gameplay fun instead of boring and frustrating. The stories were actually kind of interesting at times. And there were some legitimately well-designed moments. At one point you step in the elevator at Wayne Tower as Batman, and step out as Bruce Wayne. The player is supposed to assume that you just changed in the elevator (it's your elevator, it's certainly plausible that you'd have some built-in costume-changing thing). So you're walking around your office as Bruce Wayne, and then Lucius Fox comes in and you use him to steal a bunch of money and then knock him out. And the player is like "Oh crap, I guess he finally snapped!"—and then it's revealed that was a flashback and the person you were playing as isn't actually Bruce Wayne. It's a really well-executed fake-out.

Then there's some great foreshadowing about the identity of the Arkham Knight, which itself foreshadows that another character isn't actually dead—but also this leads to great examples of how crappy this game can be. The Arkham Knight is the TITLE CHARACTER, so you'd think he'd be pretty important. And he is for a while, and the reveal of his identity is well-done—but his arc's "resolution" is a two-second shot at the end of the game. He's barely even there. Oh, and during your final fight with the Arkham Knight (which, again, does not happen at the end of the game named after him), Jim Gordon is tied to a chair the entire time and is never once used as a hostage. This is arguably explained by a reveal later on, but should have seemed suspicious to """"The World's Greatest Detective"""", and in the moment feels increasingly dumb as enemies just walk by him while he's actively cheering you on.

And that character who isn't actually dead? That moment where you find that out was when I found myself thinking, "You know what, I might actually be sold on this game." It is then immediately followed by this exchange:

Character A: We're surrounded by tanks! Where's the Batmobile?

Batman: It was destroyed.

Character A: What?!

Batman: Don't worry, Lucius made me a spare.

Not Character A but should have been: MAYBE LEAD WITH THAT YOU PEDANTIC ASSHOLE.

So yeah, it's a mixed bag. For every great scene (usually involving the Joker, who was consistently the best part of the game) or fun mission there's some terrible dialogue or pointlessly frustrating challenge. I felt so conflicted over whether or not this was a good game that I did something I almost never do with open-world games: I 100%ed it. Yup, I solved all 243 Riddler challenges just so that I could see the actual ending of the game. Which was really disappointing.

There's definitely a version of this game that could've been great, but it doesn't seem like anyone was providing a coherent vision for what they actually wanted it to be. I mean, you called your game Arkham Knight (and honestly, that's a great pun) and then made the main villain Scarecrow. Oh man and I didn't even talk about the one time in the entire game where they give the player an actual choice (it's in a side mission so it's slightly less jarring than if it happened in the middle of the very linear main story, but still, they were really throwing everything at the wall with this.) There's just no consistency here. If you're a huge fan of the series and are willing to slog through the crap I'd say go for it, but if you've just played Arkham City I think you'll find this just isn't worth the time.

If you have played any of the preceding three games in the series - Asylum, City or Origins (yes, I see you there and I'm not going to pretend you're invisible like so many others do) - you are getting more of that. The production values have been ramped up and there are a few more mechanics sprinkled in but it is essentially the same game.

What I want to highlight over the next couple paragraphs is how they really pushed the envelope on the cinematic style of story telling in this entry and how they integrated a presumably dead Joker to great effect.

This game is masterful in its direction of pseudo cutscenes/QTEs where you lose control of your character or the camera so as to draw your attention to a really cool cinematic moment. An early one that occurred when interrogating a 'thug' that Batman just served a beat down has Batman using the newly introduced Batmobile as an improvised torture device, spinning the wheels deathly close to the poor guy's head.

Next I want to highlight the strength of the story and how they cleverly integrate a character to emergently explore Batman's neuroses and condition than I have seen to date..

The Batman's arch-nemesis we all know and love was killed off in the previous entry, however with time we find out he is far from dead. After coming to from a run in with 'The Scarecrow', we find Joker is with Bats permanently--often appearing after an interaction with someone, a guilty-clown-conscience of sorts. An ever present sidekick in your head providing color commentary. Rocksteady plays with this really well. It allows them to explore how integral the Joker is to Batman’s being and we are provided with a rather open and comical introspection into what makes Bruce Wayne tick by way of the Joker. This is a treat as the staid chivalrous upright demeanor of Batman is so seldomly peeled back. I really enjoyed this conceit because it also brings you the player into the craziness Bruce is often battling, and it blurs the lines between whether he’s experiencing everything due to the fear toxin or his own insanity. Because let’s be honest, Bruce is insane. It’s by Gotham’s sheer luck that he fell on the good side. Some great uses of the Joker making an appearance were when he would appear as one of the thugs you were fighting randomly--one would simply look and act like the Joker, but it was never referenced or commented on by Bruce. Similar to how someone losing their marbles might not want to bring too much attention to those lines blurring. Another great example was randomly, when grappling up to a rooftop, before you pull yourself up over the edge, Joker would appear for a jump scare, and fill the whole screen with his hideous grin and laughter--’You should have seen your face, Bats..”

With the game being ported to the Switch imminently, I hope more people give this game a shot.

The only other Batman game in this series I've played is Arkham City, and I thought that was a fantastic game. This one topped that game for me. I really liked the addition of the batmobile missions and gameplay. I had fun switching back and forth between flying and driving. The combat is still really solid and satisfying, and there are tons of gadgets to acquire and upgrade to vary the combat. I was really surprised to see so many different heroes and villains included in the game and I enjoyed all of their various storylines, though some were obviously pretty basic. Every time I booted up the game I felt like I could tackle a portion of the main storyline, a few side missions, and finish feeling like I had a great time with varied gameplay. The way the devs staggered some of the side missions so that you had to finish portions of the main quest first was very well done. The sneaky combat options are top notch and there are plenty of Riddler puzzles that will scratch the itch of anyone who enjoys that sort of thing. I purchased this on sale with all the DLCs so there's just tons of content here to play. I'd say this easily makes it into one of my top 10 most entertaining games for me as I've almost 100%'d every side mission, and I don't normally do that.

Here's what frustrated me but didn't take away from my overall experience

• Joker is annoying. He would interrupt some of my dialogue with his blabbering. I know he's necessary, but he's still annoying.
• Some of the missions that require you to beat up on a lot of enemies can get super overwhelming. It's frustrating, but I guess it does make you think about what alternative tactics you could use. However, sometimes it just felt like I got RNG'd to death with how the enemies attacked.
• Some of the missions (involving the batmobile) can go from challenging to straight up insanely hard. I was okay with the challenge, but the difficulty on some of the missions ramped up so fast I was clenching pretty hard until it was over, if you know what I mean. :)

Overall I had a blast playing this and would recommend it to anyone who wants to just sit down and have some fun beating down the criminals of Gotham. I used an Xbox controller for gameplay.

P.S. Bill Finger should have been named in the credits.