Arkham Knight makes you FEEL like Batman (sorry not sorry), whether it be with the new bone crunching fear takedowns or standing side by side with your allies to incapacitate foes. This emphasis on Batman’s allies throughout the story really raises the stakes as Gotham’s deadliest come after those closest to him. The Arkham Knight himself is a bit of a lacklustre main antagonist, with Mark Hamill’s performance as the Joker once again taking the centre stage, and his identity is far too telegraphed. Gotham City is a wonderful playground to traverse through, but the focus on quantity over quality with much of the side content made getting the 100% completion required for the ‘true’ ending a chore. Driving round Gotham is a blast, but the Batmobile overstays its welcome, being shoehorned into far too much of the game. Overall, Arkham Knight is a fun, but flawed package with the many things it gets right outweighing the few things it gets wrong.

I admit I do not know much about Batman. By that I mean I played the Arkham games, read The Killing Joke, watched the Nolan trilogy along with catching bits and pieces of the Adam West show, the Burton movies, the Schumacher movies, so on. I also know a few memes, more on that later.

If so, why do I feel the worst element of Arkham Knight is they got Batman himself completely wrong?

The Batmobile got a lot of shit from the Internet, but it was my favourite part. There is something soothing about driving around Gotham, chasing trucks, playing hide and seek with tanks. Even Riddler's challenge weren't too bad. Batman himself controls like a charm, and I'd lie if I said I didn't enjoy laying waste to enemies, or simply messing with them.

The issue is, there is too much happening. As with all the other games, Arkham Knight chronicle Batman having an especially bad night, but this time the playground is no longer a prison or even a closed section of a city, but a near entire metropolis. The enemies are no longer loose inmates, but an entire army. As silly as it sounds, I had this nagging thought I wasn't playing Batman, unlike Asylum and City: I was playing a meme.

In wanting to be even bigger and better than its predecessors, Arkham Knight's protagonist is "Batman, given infinite prep time". And even not knowing much about the mythos, even as the story was all over the place, this is the worst thing could say about the game.

The game was okay, I guess.

Arguably underrated. I think a lot of people dislike this game for the Batmobile stuff, and because of that the criticism drowns and overshadows most of the game's positive impacts. I think Rocksteady took a massive risk with the story and didn't fail to make something beautiful out of it. Sefton Hill is well aware of the batmobile problem, but his opinion on it is respectful. The game is still pretty good and I'd prefer to play it over a lot of other stuff. I think it introduces a lot of new features that would've been nice to have in previous games.

The game is at its best when it's just focusing on its core combat, too bad like 50% of it is done in the car. I don't hate the Bat-tank but I don't love it either; and while I enjoy seeing the physical progression on the prison it still doesn't stop all the open-world side missions from feeling like busy work. The story still sucks and I will not move on this opinion, there is no way you can prove me wrong on this.

When I played Mass Effect 3 I understood why people didn't like the ending for the game but I could still see good quality the game had to offer, this is my Mass Effect 3.

Arkham Knight is magisterial. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City were terrific games in their own right, and the way they steadily improve each entry is awe-inspiring. I was prepared to be a little offput by what one video derisively referred to as "the scourge of scale", but I was anything but.

I like to think as time goes on I'm becoming choosier about my games. I have decreasing patience for sprawling open world games with the same cookie cutter mini-missions padding their length and justifying their existence. I was expecting to regard Arkham Knight as needlessly indulgent and my subsequent enjoyment of the game is partially owed to the delta between my expectation and the reality.

This game has it all. The story, the lore, the extras, the things to do, see, find, explore, unravel, solve, conquer, it's expansive. To the credit of the studio, the world is so enjoyable to be in that I WANTED to soak all that stuff up.

Is it in my nature to open one of these types of games and want to do it all? Yes. But I don't always enjoy it this much. The characters and actors are absolutely top tier here, though that surprises no one who's played the preceding entries in the series.

The gameplay has been refined to a stellar variety of options to engage with bad guys. It's varied enough to never feel dull but always feel like Batman. The better you get at it, the more second-nature your moves, counters, and combat decisions become. Being Batman is awesome.

I thought I had left off with everything except the Riddler trophies finished, but I recently learned I have whole DLC packs to this game that I never got to, not to mention other game types and modes that I probably haven't futzed with since Asylum. There's a veritable gold mine of content in this game, and I intend to wrap up the trophies and now the DLCs at a later date.

Arkham Knight is ultra satisfying. It's broad, it's deep, it has stellar visuals, great music, great acting, and it is brimming with content and things to do. Oh, and the Batmobile is so legit.

I could ramble about Arkham Knight even more than this, but I'll leave it here for now. Outstanding game.

Arkham Knight has a TON of flaws. The Bat-Tank segments are sluggish and not very fun, the Batmobile varies from being the fulfillment of Batman fans fantasies to a poorly designed mess. The Arkham Knight character is pointless and drags down the story's pacing quite a bit. But what makes up for these flaws is the evolution of the universe's Batman into a depraved, tortured murderer, creating the darkest superhero story ever seen in gaming. This is compounded by the excellent, detailed world design and enthralling side stories that give a ton of exploration and replayability. Could have been possibly the greatest game of all time if the direction was a bit more focused.

Even after all these years I can't not love Arkham Asylum and City..... Knight is just a game I have only soured on over the years.

Honestly I think the hand to hand combat is the best it's been in the entire series, it feels really smooth in this game and I dig a lot of Batman's new moves. Too bad combat is barely existent in this game.

While I love City, the open world was a bit hit and miss for me. I personally think these games lent themselves better to the Metroidvania formula of Asylum. Knight's open world wears out it's welcome fast for one simple reason... it's too big.

The Batmobile is undeniably the worst part of this game however. You're in it for 85% of the game due to the huge open world and any combat sections with it are a chore.... plus you have to do stealth segments with it and they're awful.

All this said however I can't really say I hated playing this, I was able to finish it from beginning to end and believe me I did appreciate the good aspects of this game. But my problems with it just make it one I don't really want to go back to.

I was in the unfortunate group of people that pre-ordered Batman: Arkham Knight for PC. Grave mistake.

Unfortutanely, I had my statue, art book and comic issue recalled, but not my season pass ;)

Arkham Knight was the only Arkham game I played at its time of actual release. Beautiful game, wonderfully new mechanics and a pretty meh story line at the end of the day. I probably have too much nostalgia for this game, however I've 100%'ed it about 4 times.

Woo!

Fuck the Batmobile to the moon. Mark Hamill probably boosted this from a 4 up.

4.5/5

Is a somewhat satisfactory conclusion to the Arkham saga, despite the ending being a bit underwhelming, which in fact I had to look up on YouTube because the game forces you to collect all the Riddler bullshit trophies before showing you the true ending.

Mechanics are not that different from past entries, just a little bit more polished and accessible this time. Graphics and attention to detail were amazing, loved when Batman is under the rain and you can see the raindrops sliding down his cowl. Absolutely hated the tank sequences, broken as hell and tedious to play through. Liked some of the character re-designs but others are just unnecessarily ugly.

All in all, great Arkham game but not better than City or Asylum.