You may have noticed the absence of GameWatcher’s review of a certain infamous port starring a flying rodent. The fact is, after a long discussion we’ve decided to wait. We will now be running our review of Batman: Arkham Knight after the game returns to sale on Steam.
Why? Simple: it’s not available to buy, we want our review to reflect the version that gamers will be playing, and when it returns to sale the game will hopefully be wildly different from the version that was made available when the game launched. Our Review-In-Progress gives the worst of it, and can basically be boiled down to: great game, terrible port.
After Batman: Arkham Knight reappears on Steam we’ll see how the game plays then and put the final review up. Until then here’s a second Review-In-Progress to tide you over.
First off, and this undoubtedly won’t change come the game’s re-release, the DLC is crazy. For example, I own the Premium Edition (the game plus the Season Pass), which I didn’t buy from Steam direct but I still pre-loaded. I didn’t get the Harley Quinn DLC, and I didn’t get the Gotham’s Future skin pack either - which is exclusive to Steam. Hang on, I have it on Steam. You mean even though I have it on Steam it’s only exclusive to Steam as a retailer not platform? Do PS4 owners get a free skin pack if they buy it on PSN rather than a store? Of course they don’t! That’s utter nonsense! I don’t want to have to wait until September to play as Batman Beyond dammit!
Okay, ignoring all performance and technical problems… Batman: Arkham Knight is excellent, but I admit it’s not gripping me as tightly as even Arkham Origins did. Origins may have had problems, but the story in it was fantastic and had plenty of cool twists. Arkham Knight however is highly predictable, right down to the identity of the titular Knight who Batman fans will guess the second he opens his mouth and everyone else will long before the actual reveal. There is one really cool twist early on that sees the return of a popular character, but otherwise Arkham Origins’ story had me more gripped. John Noble’s Scarecrow is great, but like Arkham City’s Hugo Strange he’s not in it enough. That goes for a lot of the best villains, actually. What happened to Scarecrow teaming up with Two-Face, Penguin and Harley that we saw in the trailer? Those three are completely doing their own thing!
The Batmobile will also be divisive. I don’t mind it, but I don’t like how combat-heavy it is and how it changes the game into something completely different once you get in it. Any time when you’re forced to race with it however and I curse Rocksteady even harder than when I first saw how the game performed on my PC. It’s especially annoying when the camera zooms out and it becomes even harder.
Overall though, I still love Batman: Arkham Knight. It’s Batman, it’s all of Gotham, it’s got all the villains and allies, loads of Easter Eggs, some great moments, and gameplay-wise remains huge amounts of fun. Rocksteady have put a huge amount of effort into making Gotham feel fun to explore, and reminds me immediately why Arkham Origins’ Gotham just felt wrong. This is a game I’ll be playing through several times, and will surely 100% it.
Y’know, once it’s fixed. Stay tuned.
- Chris Capel
