Batman: Arkham Series Reviews
You can tell that for the finale of the Arkham games, Rocksteady wanted to go all out by making the biggest and boldest game they could. Arkham Knight's overworld is open and massive, the largest in the series. It features the most extensive cast, with over a dozen members of Batman’s rogues gallery and most of the core members of the Batfamily. It's filled to the brim with hours upon hours of content. Unfortunately, I think that Batman: Arkham Knight is a testament to the notion that bigger isn’t always better. Despite being filled with so much content, most of it is quite repetitive and stretched very thin. The game is also especially hindered by being so focused on its primary gameplay innovation: the Batmobile.
Arkham Knight further refines and polishes the core gameplay mechanics of the Arkham series to a mirror shine. This is the best Batman has ever felt to control, whether he’s in combat, in predator sections, or just gliding around the city. In combat, his moveset has been adjusted to feel more satisfying than ever before. The Fear Multi-Takedown as well as new gadgets like the Voice Modifier allow for even more unique ways to tackle predator sections. Since Gotham is as big as it is, gliding and grappling to surfaces has been made faster and even more fluid. All of these core gameplay changes to Batman are fantastic, which is why it’s so frustrating that for a majority of the game, you don’t play as Batman. Instead, you’re driving around in the Batmobile, which plays an obnoxiously large role in the game. The Batmobile is the biggest new gameplay feature that Arkham Knight introduces. Back in the day, I remember fans had been clamoring for a playable Batmobile in the Arkham series, and to appease those fans, it seems like Rocksteady’s highest priority was to figure out how the Batmobile can be used as often as possible. It's like the entire game was built around it, and I dislike it a lot. I wouldn’t mind it nearly as much if so much emphasis wasn’t placed on it.
The Batmobile is shoved into almost every facet of gameplay. It can be used as a high speed way to travel through Gotham, and this is when it's at its best and least intrusive. However, Arkham Knight is littered with a ton of combat sections where you have to use the Batmobile to fight unmanned drones. During these sections, the Batmobile transforms into a slow moving tank that fires missiles at these drones while dodging their oncoming attacks. The more damage you do without taking any yourself, the faster the Batmobile can utilize one of its secondary abilities, such as an EMP that will temporarily incapacitate the drones and render them harmless, or the ability to hack a drone and turn it against its allies. There are so many of these combat sections, especially in the second half of the game, and I just do not like them. I find them to be a slog and antithetical to what I like about the Arkham games in the first place. They’re not particularly engaging or fun, they take too long to complete, and there’s just way too many of them.
You also have to use the Batmobile in certain areas to solve puzzles, many of which involve trying to get the Batmobile deeper into an area. These will involve you constantly switching back and forth between Batman and a remote-controlled Batmobile, and I also really don’t like these. It feels like the Batmobile is this really big and bothersome gadget that you can’t just carry in your utility belt, so you have to figure out how to lug it along with you. It makes the Batmobile more of a burden more than anything else.
The Batmobile plays a pivotal role in the story, it’s featured in many of the game’s side missions… it’s everywhere. You can’t escape the damn thing. I barely did any of the Riddler stuff in this game because a majority of it involves the Batmobile and I just got too sick of it to ever want to do any of his race challenges (sorry Catwoman). When you’re not in the Batmobile, the game is great. Everything carried over from the previous titles is at its peak in Arkham Knight. It's just such a shame that so much of the game is built around a gameplay mechanic that I’m really not a fan of.
In a game featuring so many Batman villains, it's pretty surprising and disappointing that the game completely forgoes boss fights. I guess that between the three previous Arkham games it’d be difficult to think of any new characters or ideas they could use for a unique boss battle. They really peaked in City and Origins. Still, it's a noticeable absence, and it feels like the game is really missing something.
The story is a mixed bag. It starts off incredibly strong and very well-paced at first. There’s a real sense of finality all throughout the narrative, and I think that tarnishing Batman’s legacy by separating him from the myth and exposing the person underneath the mask is a great motivation for Scarecrow. As the game goes on though, it really falls off about halfway through, when it more or less just boils down to doing busy work in order to track down Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, or fighting hordes of drones in the Batmobile. Speaking of the Arkham Knight, this was Rocksteady’s original character for the series that, alongside Scarecrow, was meant to be this game’s primary antagonist. There’s a huge mystery surrounding the Arkham Knight and his identity that the game makes a big deal out of. For most Batman fans, deducing the Arkham Knight’s identity is extremely easy, in fact, most fans were able to correctly guess who he was almost immediately after the character was first revealed during marketing for the game, and Rocksteady had to lie and say they were wrong. Not only that, but the game spells out his identity so clearly that even if you’re not the biggest Batman fan, it’s painfully easy figuring out who he is, to the point where there is no real mystery. He’s just handled in such an incredibly lukewarm manner. There’s a lot more that I want to say about the story, but almost all of it involves huge spoilers, so I’ve made a Pastebin where I discuss them in greater detail.
The game has a huge amount of side missions, and this is where a lot of the game’s repetition comes from. If they don’t involve the Batmobile, they usually involve a series of tasks where you do the exact same thing several times. For example, the Man Bat side mission has you track him down on three separate occasions, and each time you catch him, it plays the exact same animation of Batman bringing him to the ground and sticking a needle in him either to extract blood or administer a cure. For the Firefly side mission, you have to chase him down in the Batmobile until he realizes he can’t shake you, and then do the same quick time event where you mash the attack button to punch him when you catch up to him three separate times. It's the same thing with stopping Two Face and his bank robberies, saving the fire fighters, etc, etc. I think this problem stems from the giant open world, and needing things to actually do in it besides fight drones in the Batmobile.
I also want to touch on the Hush and Azrael side missions. These are continuations of the ones from Arkham City, and I’ve always been extremely disappointed with how they were handled. The Arkham City side missions really hyped both of these characters up and made it seem like they were going to be very important in Arkham Knight’s narrative, but they don’t actually play any significant role at all. It feels like they had more grand plans for these characters that at some point got dropped in development. I’m glad they were at least acknowledged and not dropped completely, but the way they were handled was just so miniscule and boring, and I feel like they could’ve been very interesting additions to the main story.
Arkham Knight makes a lot of gameplay and creative decisions that I do not agree with and stick out like sore thumbs to me. The refinement of the core Arkham series’ gameplay was its biggest draw, but playing through a majority of this game felt like an obligation to me. Rocksteady tried their best at making a Batman game that would please everyone, and I have nothing but respect for them and their take on Batman's world. With Arkham Knight however, they sadly ended up making a game that’s rather bloated and boring, and a narrative that has a lot of great ideas but felt really really undercooked, especially in the second half. Despite its faults, Arkham Knight does get the job of wrapping up the Arkham series done. I don’t think it does so in an especially strong fashion, but the game overall is a satisfying enough conclusion.
You can tell that for the finale of the Arkham games, Rocksteady wanted to go all out by making the biggest and boldest game they could. Arkham Knight's overworld is open and massive, the largest in the series. It features the most extensive cast, with over a dozen members of Batman’s rogues gallery and most of the core members of the Batfamily. It's filled to the brim with hours upon hours of content. Unfortunately, I think that Batman: Arkham Knight is a testament to the notion that bigger isn’t always better. Despite being filled with so much content, most of it is quite repetitive and stretched very thin. The game is also especially hindered by being so focused on its primary gameplay innovation: the Batmobile.
Arkham Knight further refines and polishes the core gameplay mechanics of the Arkham series to a mirror shine. This is the best Batman has ever felt to control, whether he’s in combat, in predator sections, or just gliding around the city. In combat, his moveset has been adjusted to feel more satisfying than ever before. The Fear Multi-Takedown as well as new gadgets like the Voice Modifier allow for even more unique ways to tackle predator sections. Since Gotham is as big as it is, gliding and grappling to surfaces has been made faster and even more fluid. All of these core gameplay changes to Batman are fantastic, which is why it’s so frustrating that for a majority of the game, you don’t play as Batman. Instead, you’re driving around in the Batmobile, which plays an obnoxiously large role in the game. The Batmobile is the biggest new gameplay feature that Arkham Knight introduces. Back in the day, I remember fans had been clamoring for a playable Batmobile in the Arkham series, and to appease those fans, it seems like Rocksteady’s highest priority was to figure out how the Batmobile can be used as often as possible. It's like the entire game was built around it, and I dislike it a lot. I wouldn’t mind it nearly as much if so much emphasis wasn’t placed on it.
The Batmobile is shoved into almost every facet of gameplay. It can be used as a high speed way to travel through Gotham, and this is when it's at its best and least intrusive. However, Arkham Knight is littered with a ton of combat sections where you have to use the Batmobile to fight unmanned drones. During these sections, the Batmobile transforms into a slow moving tank that fires missiles at these drones while dodging their oncoming attacks. The more damage you do without taking any yourself, the faster the Batmobile can utilize one of its secondary abilities, such as an EMP that will temporarily incapacitate the drones and render them harmless, or the ability to hack a drone and turn it against its allies. There are so many of these combat sections, especially in the second half of the game, and I just do not like them. I find them to be a slog and antithetical to what I like about the Arkham games in the first place. They’re not particularly engaging or fun, they take too long to complete, and there’s just way too many of them.
You also have to use the Batmobile in certain areas to solve puzzles, many of which involve trying to get the Batmobile deeper into an area. These will involve you constantly switching back and forth between Batman and a remote-controlled Batmobile, and I also really don’t like these. It feels like the Batmobile is this really big and bothersome gadget that you can’t just carry in your utility belt, so you have to figure out how to lug it along with you. It makes the Batmobile more of a burden more than anything else.
The Batmobile plays a pivotal role in the story, it’s featured in many of the game’s side missions… it’s everywhere. You can’t escape the damn thing. I barely did any of the Riddler stuff in this game because a majority of it involves the Batmobile and I just got too sick of it to ever want to do any of his race challenges (sorry Catwoman). When you’re not in the Batmobile, the game is great. Everything carried over from the previous titles is at its peak in Arkham Knight. It's just such a shame that so much of the game is built around a gameplay mechanic that I’m really not a fan of.
In a game featuring so many Batman villains, it's pretty surprising and disappointing that the game completely forgoes boss fights. I guess that between the three previous Arkham games it’d be difficult to think of any new characters or ideas they could use for a unique boss battle. They really peaked in City and Origins. Still, it's a noticeable absence, and it feels like the game is really missing something.
The story is a mixed bag. It starts off incredibly strong and very well-paced at first. There’s a real sense of finality all throughout the narrative, and I think that tarnishing Batman’s legacy by separating him from the myth and exposing the person underneath the mask is a great motivation for Scarecrow. As the game goes on though, it really falls off about halfway through, when it more or less just boils down to doing busy work in order to track down Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, or fighting hordes of drones in the Batmobile. Speaking of the Arkham Knight, this was Rocksteady’s original character for the series that, alongside Scarecrow, was meant to be this game’s primary antagonist. There’s a huge mystery surrounding the Arkham Knight and his identity that the game makes a big deal out of. For most Batman fans, deducing the Arkham Knight’s identity is extremely easy, in fact, most fans were able to correctly guess who he was almost immediately after the character was first revealed during marketing for the game, and Rocksteady had to lie and say they were wrong. Not only that, but the game spells out his identity so clearly that even if you’re not the biggest Batman fan, it’s painfully easy figuring out who he is, to the point where there is no real mystery. He’s just handled in such an incredibly lukewarm manner. There’s a lot more that I want to say about the story, but almost all of it involves huge spoilers, so I’ve made a Pastebin where I discuss them in greater detail.
The game has a huge amount of side missions, and this is where a lot of the game’s repetition comes from. If they don’t involve the Batmobile, they usually involve a series of tasks where you do the exact same thing several times. For example, the Man Bat side mission has you track him down on three separate occasions, and each time you catch him, it plays the exact same animation of Batman bringing him to the ground and sticking a needle in him either to extract blood or administer a cure. For the Firefly side mission, you have to chase him down in the Batmobile until he realizes he can’t shake you, and then do the same quick time event where you mash the attack button to punch him when you catch up to him three separate times. It's the same thing with stopping Two Face and his bank robberies, saving the fire fighters, etc, etc. I think this problem stems from the giant open world, and needing things to actually do in it besides fight drones in the Batmobile.
I also want to touch on the Hush and Azrael side missions. These are continuations of the ones from Arkham City, and I’ve always been extremely disappointed with how they were handled. The Arkham City side missions really hyped both of these characters up and made it seem like they were going to be very important in Arkham Knight’s narrative, but they don’t actually play any significant role at all. It feels like they had more grand plans for these characters that at some point got dropped in development. I’m glad they were at least acknowledged and not dropped completely, but the way they were handled was just so miniscule and boring, and I feel like they could’ve been very interesting additions to the main story.
Arkham Knight makes a lot of gameplay and creative decisions that I do not agree with and stick out like sore thumbs to me. The refinement of the core Arkham series’ gameplay was its biggest draw, but playing through a majority of this game felt like an obligation to me. Rocksteady tried their best at making a Batman game that would please everyone, and I have nothing but respect for them and their take on Batman's world. With Arkham Knight however, they sadly ended up making a game that’s rather bloated and boring, and a narrative that has a lot of great ideas but felt really really undercooked, especially in the second half. Despite its faults, Arkham Knight does get the job of wrapping up the Arkham series done. I don’t think it does so in an especially strong fashion, but the game overall is a satisfying enough conclusion.