I’ll be honest Batman: Arkham Knight is probably one of the biggest disappointments of 2015 for me, I am the biggest Batman fan at ICXM and this was my most anticipated games of this year, I expected this to be my game of the year! But sadly, it just doesn’t live up to the hype I built up for it. By no means is this a bad game, it’s just not a great Arkham game and it certainly isn’t a good final entry for the legendary Arkham series.
The game takes place about a year after the events of Arkham City, the crime rate is low and everything is sound. All until Halloween, Scarecrow returns with full force after building his master plan for years after escaping Arkham Asylum. Scarecrow plans to unleash fear gas across all of America and Gotham, all to torment Batman. Batman must step up to take down Scarecrow and even a new foe, the mysterious Arkham Knight, who has a strong vendetta towards Batman and the training of Batman physically and mentally.
The story has always been the best part of the Arkham games, it takes some of the best characters from the Batman mythos and puts them in beautifully crafted stories with brilliant twists. Each game took the story to a new level, Asylum put Batman in a terrifying claustrophobic environment with a bunch of psychopaths which gave it a unique feeling of horror in a superhero game. Arkham City took Batman back into his natural habitat by putting him in a sectioned off area in Gotham City which served as a larger prison with few guards, it opened up new possibilities such as prisoners taking sides with certain villains and forming gangs in Arkham City and creating wars and tension with each other. Not only was the landscape huge and had many villains to find such as Mad Hatter and Calendar Man but it had one of the best stories ever crafted in a superhero game. It made you feel pity for a despicable character like the Joker, it brought urgency to the story because Batman’s life was literally hours away from ending along with Gotham’s annihilation. Arkham Knight still has some of these elements, but I didn’t feel as if it took it to the next level like Arkham City did.
There are moments in the game that hit you hard and are shocking, making you think “Wow, Rocksteady has a lot of balls to do that” but then they backtrack on those shocking moments by using cheap “Ha, gotcha!” tricks. Not only do those cheap tricks take away from the emotional moments, it just makes you realize they didn’t want to do anything too risky with this game. In Arkham City they literally killed one of the biggest characters in any comic-book ever, something so ballsy I am shocked DC Comics allowed them to do it.
I must say I was heavily disappointed they decided to bring Joker back with Scarecrow toxins, while he is there for mostly comic-relief throughout the game, I wish they would have left him alone. They rely on him as a crutch throughout all the Arkham games, while I was fine with it in Arkham Asylum and City because it made sense, it’s obvious they’re relying on him heavily here. Without getting too much into spoilers regarding The Joker, they still managed to make him the main villain in this game even though he’s dead. That’s right, the main villain in ALL of the Arkham games including Origins is The Joker. I don’t want to say what it is that makes him the main villain in Arkham Knight, but once you beat it and think on it you will realize what his whole plan was and why that makes him the main villain.
One of my other problems with Batman: Arkham Knight’s story is that the character of the Arkham Knight is not a new character like we were promised, I won’t spoil it but if you know anything about Batman you can probably guess who this character is. He even turns into the actual character he is in the comics after he is unmasked in the comics! Rocksteady basically knew this was not an original character and straight up lied to us.
I can’t stress this enough, Arkham Knight’s story is NOT bad. It is merely disappointing to a huge fan of the Arkham series like myself. Rocksteady did an amazing job of nailing the character of Batman himself, showing his struggle to not break his rule of killing, struggle to save the city against all odds, and of course the physical brutality Batman unleashes on his enemies.
The combat in Arkham Knight is as swift and clean as ever, chaining together combos to break the ribs of a thug, counter-attacking three targets at once and doing one solid swift kick across all three of their faces, and picking up weapons such as baseball bats to inflict incredible amounts of fear and pain into your opponents. There isn’t a whole lot to say about the combat, it’s the same as the others with small new improvements and tweaks to make it feel even better then it did in Arkham City.
The most noticeable new feature is the fear takedowns, lurk from the shadows and strike fear into you enemies to bring devastating attacks down on them. The fear takedown system adds a new layer to stealth and the stealth takedown system by using the Batman’s key weapon, fear. When you’re hiding in the shadows of a room with a large group of enemies Batman can lunge on to one enemy using a brutal takedown and briefly slow down time to select his next target and lunge towards another enemy allowing you to quickly pick off the strongest targets and eliminate them from the fight. You can upgrade this mechanic to takedown large groups of enemies ranging from 3 or more! Not only is this a great way to implement the weapon Batman uses the most, it’s incredibly fun to watch Batman lunge on top of someone and smash their head into the ground and then jump across the room at another guy with a gun and watch Batman disarm the enemy and break the guys arm and then have Batman jump into battle with a bunch of terrified foes.
Another new feature in Batman: Arkham Knight is the Batmobile. For the first time in the Arkham series, Batman’s signature vehicle is available to you. The only problem is, it’s not very good. Sure, driving it through the streets of Gotham is fun. You can clip the side of a building with your Batmobile and see bricks fly off the wall and continue to speed down the road to your destination, ram your Batmobile into bad guys driving what are probably stolen cars, and even eject Batman hundreds of feet into the air using the momentum of the Batmobile. The bad stuff is when you get into combat with the bat-themed tank. You’re Batmobile transforms into a tank that acts like it’s on a slip and slide and fights drones. Yes, drones. How’d they get billions, maybe trillions of dollars worth of incredibly disposable drones into Gotham City? No clue, but that’s beside the point.
Throughout the game you are forced into numerous combat scenarios that require the Batmobile, not only are they incredibly frustrating because the Batmobile is clunky as hell, they aren’t remotely fun and they feel way too forced and unneeded. I can understand wanting to include a few Batmobile sections, but the amount of times it’s used just seems incredibly unnecessary, they don’t do anything to make the sections feel any different either. All they do is add more drones, over and over again to the point where it made me just laugh at how many drones were on the screen at once. There is a section near the end of the game where there are over 50 drones on the screen. If they made using the Batmobile in it’s “battle mode” was fun, then I wouldn’t have much to complain about, but it’s dull, forced, and annoying.
Despite it’s flaws with some gameplay mechanics, Batman: Arkham Knight is one of the most visually stunning games I have ever played. You can see individual rain drops fall from the sky and land on Batman’s suit and run down his chest forming tiny rivers of rain on him, neon sights shine across the city and reflect off the numerous rain puddles in the city, and character’s faces are more emotive then ever before making it feel like your watching real human beings act out these scenes in front of you. Batman: Arkham Knight is a visual marvel!
While the game is beautiful, I experienced many bugs while playing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be driving around Gotham in my Batmobile when all of the sudden my Batmobile just falls into an endless abyss of grey, I can see myself falling and look up and see the city of Gotham getting further and further away. I would also sometimes hit a wall when driving to fast and go through the wall and get stuck in an area that was never meant to be explored. Characters would sometimes fall to the ground after I beat them to a pulp and their bodies would glitch out so hard they would start break-dancing even though I just knocked them into a coma and broke their ribs. Sometimes these glitches can be super funny, but a lot of the time it’s just frustrating to have your Batmobile fall into an endless grey hell.
Overall, Batman: Arkham Knight isn’t a bad game. It’s a great game aside from some forced Batmobile sections, it just isn’t a good finale for the Arkham series in my opinion. I wanted more risks to be taken with the characters of the Batman universe, I wanted a big explosive finale and I felt as if I didn’t get that even if the game does quite literally end with an explosion. If you’re looking for a new game to play, you won’t be disappointed with your purchase. If you’re a massive fan of Batman and the Arkham series like me, you may find yourself a bit disappointed with this game’s story knowing this was the final chapter in the Arkham series from Rocksteady and we may never see the sheer brilliance of Rocksteady’s creative talents in a Batman game.
Cade is a games journalist, Gaming Writer at ComicBook.com. They contributed 108 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, and Xbox news: served as Editor-in-Chief at GameZone before joining ComicBook.com.