Link to my Arkham Knight review - https://www.backloggd.com/u/Flameyboy928/review/1419456/

My second favourite of these episodic DLC's. Basic premise sees Red Hood trying to run Black Mask out of Gotham. Neat to see Black Mask back for all of 5 minutes. Red Hoods design is pretty cool and running around gunning people down is fun. I think what really drags these down is the fact they are all like 10 minutes long. I would still recommend this one as it is different enough to warrant the price but you could watch it on YouTube and save yourself the cash.

Over the years I (and many others) have discarded the old notion that a game must be lengthy and packed to the brim with content to be worth playing. The DLCs for Batman Arkham Knight laugh in the face of the base game being a bloated, unfocused and bland mess with short and sweet scenarios that are at the very least worth one play through.

I always have to commend Rocksteady for masterfully portraying body language through animations, Red hood’s walking, fighting and take down animations convey him as a savage, rage filled brute who does not fuck around. Jason Todd’s pure ruthless nature leads to brutal neck snaps, pistol whips and hip firing his dual handguns to make you feel like a savage.

The handguns can not be abused for easy victory in free flow segments thanks to them being well balanced with a long startup animation, cleverly conveying to the player that it should only be used against a charging thug, this makes Red Hood’s free flow sections slightly more difficult than Batman’s. But not impossible, as you simply have to be smart with your X presses and not mash and catch yourself getting punished with a magnetized leap towards a stun baton enemy.

Red Hood’s sole predator segment is a challenging but fair scenario. His reckless brutality will sometimes have him shooting a thug during a take down, forcing you to memorize the layout before you act. The lack of grates and the AI also making sure to search the grates addresses one of Knights biggest issues, being that the predator maps in the campaign had an abundance of them to shill the overpowered fear take down (which is thankfully absent in most of the DLC). The AI’s tendency to pair up means you’ll also be forced to strategically use your flash bang grenades to divide and conquer, as the abundance of open doors means you can’t just crouch walk and take down with out a second thought. It’s one of the best predator maps in the series, which is high praise given how great they generally are sans base Arkham Knight.

Unfortunately the poor Boss fights that plague Knight once again rear their ugly head here. The Black Mask boss fight is nothing more than just beating up his thugs till a Y button prompt shows up every 20-40 seconds, then whacking LT and repeating. I was truly hoping for a predator segment where you would have to outsmart him ala the MR freeze fight in City and Origins, but sadly Rocksteady decided to take the low effort option to cap off what is otherwise a good DLC.

The visuals are as outstanding as always, Red Hood’s hood sways and shakes subtly depending on how fast you are moving, the scratches and scuff marks on his chest plate show plenty of detail, and the rain effects and dark lighting contribute to a killer brooding atmosphere.

The music is rehashed from the main game once again, the continued lack of music that could fit the theming of each character continues to be a big mistake, as the same tired high energy string sections get old fast.

The story isn’t anything special but it gets the job done, Red Hood sets out to kill Black mask and does exactly that. In the few cut scenes the DLC provides, Red Hood finds what he is looking for and then kills his targets to make sure he leaves no loose ends. The final scene where black mask begs for his life, and you assume Jason might spare him, since you may have done this many times as Batman, only for Jason to kick him out of a window with out a second thought, excellently portrays the callous no nonsense lethality of the character.


There’s a lot to enjoy with the Red Hood DLC, two solid game play segments, fantastic visuals and great character writing carry the ten minute plot very well, though the continued mediocre music and terrible boss fight leave much to be desired.

7/10.

This review will contain spoilers for the base game of Arkham Knight, I'll reiterate this when I actually get to the spoilers.

Red Hood is essentially the easy mode of Arkham Knight. It's a lot easier to be a vigilante when you can sit on a perch and fire pistols off from afar, along with being able to flash grenade enemies and pull them with a Batclaw. It can be cathartic taking thugs out with no issue whatsoever, but it definitely takes away a lot of the challenge. There's not really much more to say, this isn't a deep character in terms of stealth.

In combat, it's not much different. Red Hood is definitely more well-equipped in combat compared to Harley - his pistols can still be quickfired to dispatch enemies at the push of a button (although, you are rather vulnerable while doing so), and the Batclaw can bridge the gap between Hood and distant enemies. This is otherwise your typical Arkham fare when it comes to combat.

Now time for the spoilers.

So, calling this a spoiler is honestly kind of a lie cause who doesn't know Jason Todd is the Arkham Knight by this point? The game itself pretty much spoils it for you long before the reveal, it was a prevalent fan theory before the game's launch, if you know Jason Todd exists, it'll be your first guess, and worst of all: this DLC was announced before Arkham Knight came out and it takes place after the main story. Did Rocksteady themselves care about the mystery of the Knight? It's so insane to have this new character that your game is named after but make it abundantly clear who's behind the fish bowl before you're even close to it happening in the story.

This is also probably the simplest story of the DLC which is pretty crazy since it's the character with the most mystique by the end of Arkham Knight. Red Hood tries to find where Black Mask is so he can kill him. He finds out where Black Mask is. He kills him. That's the story. It takes longer to read the fan wiki page of this DLC than it does to actually play the DLC - did I mention this is the shortest one? A brief combat scenario, a brief stealth segment, and another combat section that includes a kind-of-but-not-really boss fight with Black Mask.

Arkham Knight's DLC is so weird, man. There's a lot of it technically speaking, but all of it is so short, no more than an hour for the longest one. Am I just spoiled, or is it just really lame to do this?

At least the costume is mostly nice? It could use some more red, but it's a fairly good adaptation.

El final de la historia de máscara negra es brutal, cuando vemos un DLC así, pensamos en la cantidad de villanos muertos a lo largo del universo Arkham: Joker, Ra's AlGhul, Poison Ivy, el retiro de Mr. Freeze, etc. muchos en una muerte o despedida trascendente, aquí Red Hood se encarga de Black Mask en un DLC corto, muy corto, pero con un estilo de pelea enfocado en la muerte directamente, un vigilante. Con DLC's así, entendemos que el final de la era Arkham, es algo lógico y que, la ciudad se vuelve un poco más justa.