Batman: Arkham Knight

Arkham Asylum, the first Batman game from Rocksteady Studios, had the sense of a fresh beginning for superhero action games. Batman: Arkham Knight has a sense of finality. It builds on the revolutionary strike-and-counter fighting style with powerful new moves and enemies; it expands on Arkham City’s open world with a larger, more detailed version of Gotham; it introduces a new fully playable Batmobile and makes it an important part of the action and puzzles; and it brings all of Batman’s closest family of Gotham superheroes and rogues together for an amazing, great-looking finale. User_image Review by DAN STAPLETON REVIEWED ON XBOX ONE AND PS4 / 19 JUN 2015 BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT REVIEW Share. Good Knight And Good Luck BY DAN STAPLETON [Editor's Note: Heads up: the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is experiencing major performance issues at launch.] Arkham Asylum, the first Batman game from Rocksteady Studios, had the sense of a fresh beginning for superhero action games. Batman: Arkham Knight has a sense of finality. It builds on the revolutionary strike-and-counter fighting style with powerful new moves and enemies; it expands on Arkham City’s open world with a larger, more detailed version of Gotham; it introduces a new fully playable Batmobile and makes it an important part of the action and puzzles; and it brings all of Batman’s closest family of Gotham superheroes and rogues together for an amazing, great-looking finale. Batman Arkham Knight Gameplay Demo - IGN Live: E3 2015 24:12 Roughly 12 hours’ worth of story missions do a great job of playing up the long history between Batman, the three Robins, and Jim and Barbara Gordon. The plot does stray a little too far into the supernatural for my tastes -- in that I generally find the Dark Knight at his finest when the threats he faces are at least remotely grounded in reality -- but in doing so it drives wedges between allies and delves into Batman’s psyche in an interesting way. While the mystery of the identity of the Arkham Knight (a militarized anti-Batman who serves as co-antagonist along with the Scarecrow) fizzles out, there are other surprises to fall back on that kept me engaged in the twisting story. Plus, several strong performances gave it personality: the unsettling monotone voice of John Noble makes this the eeriest version of the Scarecrow yet, Mark Hamill returns for some excellent, darkly hilarious posthumous Joker lines and reenactments of some of the most famous scenes from the comics, and of course the definitive Kevin Conroy stars as Batman. Here and there a few cheesy, wooden lines pop up, mostly in the side quests, but the same is true of nearly any game of this size. And its size is significant. We’re now free to explore three islands of the dark and intermittently stormy Gotham City, which is given character and color by its many bright neon lights and noticeable landmarks like the Chinatown district, Wayne Tower, and Ace Chemicals. All of which are beautifully detailed, and the lighting effects reflecting off wet streets and capes highlight impressive texture detail. The city has been evacuated again, which conveniently makes it impossible to accidentally or intentionally beat up innocents, but the streets are far livelier than in past games thanks to vastly increased populations of criminals, both on foot and engaging in high-speed pursuits with Gotham Police cars. (The animation you get from countering them when they try to run you down is hilarious.) Notably, we don’t return to the Batcave in Arkham Knight, which is fine by me considering how much time was spent there in the past two Arkham games.