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Batman: Arkham Knight Review

By Matt Leslie (@Lesmocon) 

• Batman: Arkham Knight
  
• Developer – Rocksteady Studios
  
• Publisher – Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
  
• PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
• Rating - M

You know what was a pretty good videogame? Batman: Arkham Asylum. It wasn’t exactly top class literature or a shining beacon of game design, but it was something that could be valued as a strong Batman experience. The concept of tossing Batman in the asylum and having to fight all his enemies at once on their own turf was strong, giving comic fans all kinds of neat Easter eggs and interesting locations while all the top Bat baddies got their own unique sequences. Shame about the ending, but for the most part Asylum showed off how to effectively use a licensed property in a videogame.

Then two years later Rocksteady pumped out Arkham City, and just like the title the Asylum expanded into an entire city. Batman went OPEN WORLD, sure there was still a central linear story at the heart of it, but it’s hard to describe Arkham City as anything other than “bloated”. The concise and coherent Asylum exploded into a far stretching sandbox with side missions, an absurd amount of Riddler trophies and anything else they could throw in to meet the #content quota. We went from punching goons in Asylum because the goons were blocking the path to the next interesting thing, to punching goons in City because we are in Goon Central USA. Goons are there to be punched, we are Batman to punch goons. 

Arkham Knight provides us a different Goon Central USA, but this one is much shinier, and has a car in it.

This time round “Arkham City” has been replaced with the actual Gotham City. Scarecrow takes the reins of lead villain and things kick off with a gas threat which causes the entire city to evacuate overnight. No, really! Over 6 million people bail from the city because of a terrorist attack at a local diner, and nothing is done to fight this because of “god damn bureaucrats (sic)”. This leaves the entire city of Gotham as a giant empty playground for Batman, his increasingly ridiculous villains, a few cops, an implausibly large amount of hired goons and all of their DRONES. Oh, also there’s some intrigue regarding the identity of the titular “Arkham Knight” character whose main purpose in the story is to taunt Batman over the radio and launch a drone strike whenever the game starts to slow down. The mystery of the Arkham Knight is so hilariously obvious and instantly forgotten about the second it’s revealed it’s not even worth dedicating a paragraph of this review to it. So let’s not.

Most of Arkham Knight’s new ideas come from the much hyped up inclusion of the Batmobile; an eye-rolling addition to some and a pant-wettingly awesome one to others. The Batmobile can be used for fast transportation around the city, which is nice, however it is mandatory for MANY vehicular combat sections and puzzles throughout the game. A lot of people were disappointed in the decision to make so much of Arkham Knight about driving sequences and shooting, which is understandable, but the negative reaction to the Batmobile content reveals so much more once you stumble across its secret; it’s perfectly okay

Honestly, there is very little actually wrong with the inclusion of the Batmobile. The car itself feels appropriately loose considering its high tech nature, handling and boosting can take a little time to get used to considering most driving games feel heavier than Arkham Knight does, but once you get the power slide down it works well. In “combat mode” you slowly slide the car around with dual analogue control dodging clearly marked projectiles from enemy drones like a beached turtle avoiding six pack rings. It never feels unfair, and it rarely gets frustrating, but it does regularly get boring. Ultimately, the inclusion of the Batmobile contributes, perhaps to its tipping point, to the Arkham series’ biggest longstanding issue; it’s a convoluted collection of unconnected mechanics that are merely okay.

The hand to hand combat is okay, mashing the attack button will make Batman pound on guys in a rhythmic and aesthetically pleasing manner which only proceeds to feel better once you start perfecting the counters. It starts to fall apart however whenever the game realizes it’s too simple to hold interest for long and attempts to make it more complicated. By the end of the game there’s so many different kinds of counters to remember for differently coloured attack indicators and enemy types it feels like you’re playing the most mentally exhausting round of Guitar Hero ever. The combat in the Arkham games could not support a game by itself.

The stealth sections are okay, although they seemed a thousand times easier in Arkham Knight than the other games. This time around Batman has a brand new suit that is more resistant to bullets, making armed guards significantly less threatening. Clumsily switching through your dozens of gadgets and planning out a strategy is less appealing when most of the time you’ll be fine nailing dudes with the glide kick then quickly getting out of dodge. Batman can also move around these arenas a lot faster than before, with one button press you can grapple into an air vent and instantly be inside the floor. These parts can still be interesting when the game changes the rules on you or limits your options, but they’re basically business as usual. The stealth in the Arkham games could not support a game by itself.

The detective parts are okay, there’s still very little reason to not have Detective Mode turned on all the time which is a shame considering how good Arkham Knight looks. There are some genuinely decent little puzzles in the game where Batman has to deduce leads or clues by investigating multiple security tapes, but most of the time being “The World’s Greatest Detective” actually means “The World’s Richest Detective” in that Bruce Wayne is the only person in the world who can afford to put the chip in his brain that tells him all the answers. Navigating environments in the Arkham games generally boils down to searching around the room with Detective Mode on, finding the highlighted thing then using the gadget that you’re told works on it to advance. Outside of the stealth and combat most “level design” in Arkham Knight is a parade of locked doors in which you are immediately handed the key as if the part where you get to turn your wrist is the interesting bit. The detective bits in the Arkham games absolutely could not support a game by themselves.

There you have the mechanical makeup of the Arkham games. Individually all of the components are fine, together they make the game feels like you’re operating four forklift trucks at once. There’s so many gadgets, moves and commands that have one contextual use and one use only that I regularly forget they exist at all until the game is forced to remind me. The Batmobile isn’t ruining the game for some people because it’s any worse than the other stuff, it’s just that its inclusion further reveals Arkham Knight for the Frankenstein’s monster of interaction that it is. 

 Not that many people would argue that the Arkham games have THE BEST combat or THE BEST stealth. However, there is a line of praise that has floated around these games for six years that has covered for this; all of these parts add up to make you feel like Batman. That is where these games supposedly succeed and ascend to true greatness, but unfortunately this is where Arkham Knight crashes and burns.

It’s pretty silly to assume that a part of popular culture which has endured for 80 years has one interpretation, so rather than assume that the ability to “be Batman” is inherently good we have to take a look at what Rocksteady’s idea of Batman is. It’s interesting that they flat out refuse to allow any real non-goon citizens in their Batman playground. Everyone in Batman town must be a goon, and therefore worthy of punching, any sense of humanity must be ejected from Gotham so we don’t feel conflicted about punching anything in it. Scarecrow’s main goal is to destroy Batman and remove him as a symbol of hope, the Arkham Knight has no motivation to do anything outside of pursue Batman, and he brought his ridiculously huge drone army with him to do it. All of the villains obsess over hacking all the screens in the city, making taunts and threats aimed at Batman straight to camera like they’re evil professional wrestlers. Batman is not a lone vigilante fighting for justice in a corrupt world, he is the god of a universe that couldn’t exist without him.

Then there’s the fetishization of Batman himself, who over the course of the Arkham games has firmly established himself as one of the most absurdly capable fictional characters ever. It’s an incredible achievement to build your game around one man being trapped in a city fighting an entire army by himself and still have none of it be actually threatening. The Batmobile is so high tech hundreds of drones combined have no chance of stopping it. Even when the Batmobile is eventually destroyed, Lucius Fox almost immediately supplies a second one. The armed militia force can’t touch Batman, and they cower in fear as soon as they know he’s coming. Swinging around the city you’ll pick up banter between thugs on the radio discussing how awesome Batman is, and it’ll even mark their location on the map so you can go teach them a lesson if you don’t like the cut of their jib. Batman still angsts about his code to never kill people, which is supposed to make him morally superior to his victims, so we’re supposed to assume that there are no casualties among the thousands of goons he beats down or power slides through in his electrified Batmobile. Not to mention the embarrassing amount of slowdown speedup motion effects and dropping the bass going on, implying that the intended audience for this game should be screaming “HECK YEA!” and fist pumping their controller through the ceiling at least once every 10 minutes.

There you have Rocksteady’s core idea of Batman; an incredibly rich and unstoppable white man who is very good at punching things. Arkham Knight has no interest in his duality, nor the complexity of his villains. They are “crazy” and therefore evil. Arkham Knight has no interest in humanity, not even for the sake of juxtaposition against the more colourful cast. Arkham Knight has no interest in women, containing an embarrassingly low amount of female characters for a game of this size, and most of those exist to be kidnapped or murdered. In all honesty it’s hard to say whether Arkham Knight has any interest in fiction at all, since what does appear in this game all exist to cram in as much recognizable faces as possible and make Batman look as awesome as possible. It is a shame to see a series that once showed potential to grow into something more plummet inescapably into complete schlock and juvenile excess. To summarize; in Arkham Asylum Rocksteady’s idea to incorporate The Riddler was to put actual riddles into the game, in Arkham Knight their idea was to build The Riddler’s ROM hacked Crash Team Racing tracks for the Batmobile. 

Arkham Knight is a visually stunning and hyper polished open world that is bursting with gallons of #content that the kids love. You can see, hear and feel every bit of the three and a half years of work that was pumped into this game. As silly and vapid as the central plot is, it is not without its decent sequences or memorable moments. In a rarity for large mainstream studio productions, Rocksteady has absolutely lived up to their own tagline and Arkham Knight genuinely does let you “Be The Batman”. 

 I’m sorry to say Rocksteady, I don’t want to be your Batman, your Batman sucks.