4.5/5 ★ – jdraco's review of Batman: Arkham Knight.

Me and this game have a complicated history Because for years I made the point-blank claim that this was the worst game in the Batman: Arkham series For years, I claimed that this was not a good game, that it was basically World of Tanks with a Batman skin on top of it And overall, that it was just a waste of time However, year after year, I watched my two brothers beat this game probably 20 times combined And year after year, it made me more and more interested in picking the game back up to potentially see if I was too harsh on it To see if my perspective had changed after all these years And I’m glad to say that it finally has, because this game is fantastic Now it’s absolutely not perfect by any means, but I’m just glad I can finally say that I truly did enjoy playing through this game from start to finish Which I never thought I’d be able to say So to start off with some of the positives, I just want to jump immediately into talking about the graphics Because they are absolutely phenomenal I know that it’s been pointed out before, but it is just so crazy to me that this game, which came out in 2015, looks better than the new Suicide Squad game that just came out recently from the same company It’s really just a testament to the pure talent and dedication of the team that worked on this game and worked on perfecting these graphics to the best of their ability Gotham is just so fucking vibrant and colorful, yet striking at the same time Not once are you ever bored looking around at the city The details of Gotham City are just absolutely insane You could turn a corner in an alleyway and stumble upon a shrine to Solomon Grundy, or open up a box in a shipping container to find some of Bane’s old gear And the details/easter eggs aren’t just within the city either; if you look in the background, you can literally see Wayne Manor or Wonder Tower (from Arkham City) Gotham again just looks absolutely beautiful, and this makes it an absolute joy to just glide around and take in the whole scope of the city That’s another thing too that I really like about this game, which is the gliding They updated it so that you can max out your grapnel boost, and this causes Batman to be able to glide at fucking unreal speeds Seriously, the velocity that he can reach is fucking unbelievable. If I were a criminal on the streets of Gotham and I saw Batman speeding through the sky like that, I would immediately just pack it up and move to like North Dakota or some shit It’s very fun, though, to just glide around, and I honestly prefer doing it over driving the Batmobile, but I’ll explain why that is when I start talking about the Batmobile a little later on Shifting to another thing that I love about this game, though, I have to talk about the combat because it's fucking fantastic The combat in this game is just so smooth and satisfying to play When you get into your bag, nothing can stop you You’ll just be moving back and forth in the blink of an eye, going from enemy to enemy, fucking them up The combat just flows so nicely, and it is completely enhanced by the multitude of new takedowns that are in this game, as well as multiple new special moves that you can use after building enough of a combo Some of my favorite combat encounters also take advantage of another new addition, which is the dual combat sections. Which are essentially just fighting with two characters and being able to swap between them, either on the fly or by doing what is called a “Dual Team Takedown” This is essentially where the two characters perform a takedown against an enemy, where they absolutely fuck them up, and the animations for these takedowns are always awesome And again, so are these combat sections in general; they just flow so seamlessly and are an absolute joy to play The predator sections in this game are also really good I feel like in this game specifically, they really want you to utilize Batman’s gadgets in these sections And I don’t mind that at all, because the gadgets are great Some of my favorite moments in this game are just using the voice synthesizer to lure an enemy to a fucked-up weapons stash to have him electrocuted Or using the disruptor on a medic’s pack so that when he goes to revive someone, he then immediately gets electrocuted It’s so damn satisfying and funny every time However, I wish they utilized the predator sections where you can control more than one character more often Because in the story mode, you only get to do it once with Batman and Robin And this is a shame, because it was one of the best predator sections in the whole entire game, and there’s so many creative things that you could do by being able to utilize both characters and their respective abilities It’s not a huge issue to me, though, that they didn't do more of these; it just kind of seems like a missed opportunity And I know that I was talking about positive things about the game, but while I’m on the subject of missed opportunities, I want to point out another one as well, which are some of the side missions and boss fights And the two that stick out to me the most are absolutely Firefly and Deathstroke Two of the best boss fights in Arkham Origins are reduced to fucking laughing stocks in this game All you do with Firefly is just chase him in the Batmobile for a little bit and then tackle him, and you do this like four times, and then he’s finished. It’s pretty laughable But I’ll say right now that nothing is worse than what they did to Deathstroke in this game They had the opportunity to make your fight with him so fucking cool because it’s been years since Batman’s last fight with him So it would've been fucking awesome if Batman had had to use everything that he learned over the years to take down Deathstroke in a hand-to-hand combat showdown; it would’ve been perfect But instead, you get the shittiest tank battle in the entire world that can be beaten in 2 minutes Seriously, I’ll never forgive Rocksteady for doing this to Deathstroke I don’t know how Deathstroke goes from being one of the coolest characters and having arguably the best boss fight in the whole series to being an absolute joke and having the most pathetic fight I’ve ever seen But it’s just completely fucked up They massacred my boy Shifting in a more positive direction again, though, now I'm going to talk about story, characters, and voice acting Which, in my opinion, are all pretty top-notch in this game The story in this game deals a lot with themes like fear, loss, and legacy, and it just has this overall feel of just finality, which is important for this game to capture because it is the last game in the series, and it absolutely feels like it Multiple times throughout the story, Batman says that “this is the end” or “this is the last time we meet” to another character And I think that the ending of this game is very satisfying I’m not going to spoil it or anything, but I think it wraps up very well, and the ending that you get for 120% completion (which is just full completion of the game) is very cool, and the last shot that you see is awesome Another thing that’s pretty awesome too is Scarecrow, who I think is a pretty great villain for this game I like how he doesn’t even want to kill Batman; his only goal is to basically just have him be scared and then dox him and make him look like a little bitch in front of everyone It’s a very respectable goal, and it probably would’ve worked if he did it to anyone other than Batman, who’s just an absolute alpha male Also, I want to bring light to this detail just to show what a stud Batman is, but if you go into Bruce Wayne’s office and then listen to his voicemails, he has messages from like 3 different women who call him “Brucie” and talk about what a great time they had with him He also gets a message from Lex Luthor as well, which I just thought was a cool little Easter egg as well (they need to make a damn Superman game, though) But back to the story: again, Scarecrow is a great villain for this story and is actually pretty scary and menacing every time you encounter him Although I will say that I do kind of miss the over-the-top goofy Scarecrow from Arkham Asylum, I just like him a lot in that game for some reason, because he was goofy and had a funny voice, but he was also still kind of menacing at the same time Now in this game, though, he has this weird Scandinavian accent, which I guess he developed over time; I don’t know However, Scarecrow isn’t the only main villain in this game, because there’s also the Arkham Knight Who I think is also a pretty damn good villain I’m not going to spoil the twist of who he is, even though everyone probably knows it at this point, but it’s a very good and effective twist and makes his character even better However, I will say that his identity and his relation to Batman are revealed kind of quickly, and I just wish that they were given more of a gradual buildup That’s really my only flaw with the character, though; in my opinion, he could’ve been handled slightly better in the story The Arkham Knight is still a great character, though And speaking of great characters, it would be an absolute crime, a punishable offense, not to talk about the two goats, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, who play Batman and Joker And honestly, what else really needs to be said about these two absolute legends Every performance that they give of these characters, they just completely knock out of the fucking park, and this game is absolutely no exception Kevin Conroy gets to bring this vulnerability to Batman in this game that we've never really seen in the series up until this point, and he absolutely nails it Every emotional beat that he needs to hit, he does, and it adds a great deal of depth and, again, vulnerability to this character, who we’ve never really seen show that in the series up until this point And then, of course, there’s Mark Hamill, who, like Kevin Conroy, is fucking amazing like always and, in my opinion, is at his absolute best here I fucking love Joker in this game He does absolutely nothing but roast everyone 24/7 Because he exists as just this apparition-like presence in Batman’s mind So after almost every interaction that Batman has with another character, the Joker usually appears and then just goes into roasting them, and it’s hilarious every single time He even roasts Batman, too Like in one instance, after you talk to Catwoman, he then shows up and gives you shit for not asking her out, and then brings up that he killed Batman’s girlfriend And then, in another instance, after Gordon has a heated confrontation with Batman and then leaves the room, Joker then shows up and says, “I think that went quite well” And there’s just so many great moments involving the Joker; again, Mark Hamill absolutely fucking kills it, and you can really tell that he’s having fun too I mean, he does a whole ass-fucking musical number in this game, and it’s absolutely fantastic There’ll never be another Joker like Mark Hamill And there’ll especially never, ever, ever be another Batman like Kevin Conroy Rest in peace And while I’m still on the topic of voice acting, I’d be remiss not to mention some other names, because everyone in this game does a damn good job portraying these characters Some of the names that stick out to me the most in this game are Troy Baker as the Arkham Knight, Nolan North as Penguin, Tara Strong as Harley Quinn, Martin Jarvis gives a great performance as always as Alfred, and Mike from Breaking Bad (Jonathan Banks) does a surprisingly good job as Jim Gordon Although I will say that in his opening monologue, when he’s talking about cremating the Joker and he says, “I burned the evil bastard myself,” all I could hear was Mike from Breaking Bad And actually another thing too that I’ll say about the character of Jim Gordon as a whole in the series, which isn’t related to what I’m talking about, but I’m still going to point it out Is how does his age fluctuate so heavily in all of these games For example, in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, he looks like he’s in his mid-to-late 70s, but then in Origins, he looks like he’s in his 40s, but now in this game, he looks like he’s in his mid-to-late 60s So I don’t know what the fuck is going on with this man’s age I don’t know if he’s like Benjamin Buttons or something, but his age always confuses me in almost every game in the series Shifting away from that topic, though, now I want to talk about the side missions (which I touched on pretty briefly) And, in my opinion, they can be pretty hit or miss, but the ones that hit are pretty damn good Obviously the ones that stick out to me are the Nightwing & Penguin one, the Two-Face side mission, the Mr. Freeze side mission, and then the Catwoman & Riddler one, which is my favorite side mission in the game, despite it teasing you at one point Because basically the side mission revolves around Riddler capturing Catwoman and putting an explosive collar around her neck, so then you have to team up with her in order to get keys to unlock it And to do this, you basically just have to solve a bunch of puzzles where you have to swap back and forth between Batman and Catwoman to unlock different parts/pieces to the puzzle And these puzzles are incredible, in my opinion, and really push the concept of swapping characters to its limit in a fun and interesting way However, the teasing part of the side mission comes in when you finally get the collar off of Catwoman, and then Riddler storms in in a fucking giant ass mech, and then he just kind of goes into the middle of the room and goes underneath the floor and basically just says, “Fuck you, you can’t face me until you get every single one of my Riddler trophies” I mean, what the fuck? That’s just such a tease And it’s even more messed up because there are 243 of those fucking things, and I had about 40 of them when he told me to do that Again, it was just messed up, and so is getting every single one of those god-forsaken Riddler trophies Because about half of the trophies are easy to get and are just out in the open, or you have to solve a pretty simple and creative puzzle to get them But that’s how they fool you, because then the other half of the Riddler trophies consist of shitty timed ones that you have to get to quickly, shitty breakable object ones that are tedious to get, shitty broken ones that involve armed robots that can snipe you from 20 miles away, and then the worst of all are the ones where you have to track down where the Riddler trophy is using the Batmobiles area scanner Fuck every single one of those Riddler trophies, and just fuck the Riddler in general It got to a point where I was just so fed up with this motherfucker and his trophies that I was legitimately hating on and violently cursing at this fictional character Like I was wishing death upon his entire bloodline; it got that bad It was so unbelievably satisfying to finally get to fight him and just kick his ass; it was beautiful When he finally gets locked in the cell, though, I want so badly for all the other villains in there to just jump him and kick his ass Then this game would’ve been a masterpiece Back to the other side missions, though, I like how all the side missions kind of wrap up all these characters' story arcs within the Arkham series For example, Mr. Freeze finally gets to be with Nora at the end of his side mission; Batman gets to say goodbye to Nightwing and tells him that he’s proud of him at the end of their side mission; and then Batman and Catwoman also get to say goodbye at the end of theirs Even Two-Face has a nice little kind of heart-to-heart with Batman in his side mission when you’re driving him to prison in the Batmobile He basically just starts talking about their history and how they were going to fix Gotham together, and then Batman apologizes to Two-Face at the end of the discussion for not being able to carry out that goal with him and for not being able to stop what happened to him as well It’s a little moment, but it does give great character building and is overall just a pretty good conclusion for Two-Face’s character in the series Taking the topic away from side missions now though, some of the other little things that I like about this game that I want to point out are all of the little character bios that you get throughout the game, which basically just describe every character and give a little backstory for them I also like the little 3-page stories that you unlock, which can sometimes be very funny In one of them, Riddler gets called a fag by someone on the internet, and it’s hilarious I also really like the concept art, the showcase models for all of the characters and vehicles, and, of course, all of the different costumes for Batman However, I will say that I wish that you could just change these within the game. It's stupid as hell that if you want to switch costumes, you have to quit the game, go to the main menu, and then select which costume you want to use. It’s, again, just pretty stupid And speaking of pretty stupid, now I’m finally going to talk about the most divisive thing in this whole entire game… The Batmobile This 25,000-pound piece of shit has haunted my nightmares ever since I first played this game This fucking behemoth tank was the entire reason why I completely abandoned the game on my first playthrough and didn’t bother picking it back up until now I fucking hated this thing But now that time has finally passed and I am more mature, I can finally say that I still don’t like it, but less so It does have some decent things about it. I like most of the puzzles that you have to do with it that have you swapping between controlling the Batmobile and controlling Batman in order to solve the puzzle I like that whenever you call the Batmobile to come to you, you can see it in the distance quickly coming towards you, kind of like an excited dog coming to see its owner And I don’t actually mind the tank sections this time around; they’re pretty mindless, but they can be kind of fun sometimes I will say though that the aiming in these sections kind of feels too sensitive, and I don’t know if you can change the sensitivity at all, but the sensitivity that it gives you just feels kind of imprecise And speaking of imprecise, now I’m going to talk about what’s dogshit about the Batmobile, starting with the driving It fucking sucks, It's terrible Because the Batmobile does this shitty thing where every single time that you so much as touch some kind of debris or whatever else, the Batmobile will like flip out and sort of redirect itself For weighing 1000 fucking tons, this thing is sensitive as shit, and it makes some of the AR challenges where you drive the Batmobile fast and precisely feel like you’re fucking ice skating through like a maze of thorns because you have to be so fucking careful, and it is just not fun whatsoever And again, that’s why I would usually just always opt to glide places instead of driving the Batmobile, because it just isn’t fun at all What also isn’t fun, even slightly, are the sections where you have to take out the cobra tanks These sections are just unbelievably boring; the sights on these fucking tanks are stupid as hell, and you always have to take out like seven of them Seriously, every single time I got to one of these sections, I just wanted to bang my head against my fucking desk. They are not fun at all And that’s honestly the problem with the Batmobile in general Its sections in the game just aren’t that fun I mean, they usually aren’t terrible, but I never in a million years would rather do a tank section, a driving section, or whatever else with the Batmobile Over just doing a combat or predator section as Batman That’s where the game is at its absolute best, and unfortunately, I feel like the developers of the game just don’t realize that They shoehorn in so many boss fights that you have to do with the Batmobile, where they should’ve instead just been creative 1-on-1 fights with Batman and whoever the villain that you’re fighting is And this is especially sad because the boss fights are some of the best parts of the previous games, but in this game they’re mostly just kind of a joke There’s no fight that really sticks out to me, except maybe Deathstroke’s, but that one just sticks out to me for how bad it is It’s just sad; they could’ve done so many cool things with the bosses too For example, in this game, they introduce the awesome mechanic of Fear Multi-Takedowns, where you get to take down multiple enemies at once Well, why not have like a boss in this game that’s kind of similar to Copperhead in Arkham Origins, in that there’s multiple of them, and maybe the only way that you can take them out is through doing Fear Multi-Takedowns? This next example might be fucking wild, but in the airship there are multiple locked-up monkeys that Simon Stagg does experiments on, and later in the game you get to copy Simon Stagg’s voice with the Voice Synthesizer So why couldn’t there be a boss fight where maybe you can free the monkeys and then bait them with Simon Stagg’s voice using Voice Synthesizer to attack whoever that boss is I don’t know, that’s wacky as hell, but still, they could’ve done so many creative things with the boss fights, but instead they just waste so many of them by making them Batmobile fights, and it’s just such a shame Those are really all of the negatives that I have about the game, though I still do think this game was a fantastic experience from start to finish And again, I’m just so happy that I can finally say that I enjoyed this game, because for so many years I wanted that positive experience that my brothers had with this game so badly But now I finally can, and it feels pretty damn good This game gives a great story, showing Batman at his most vulnerable; it gives you great gameplay (for the most part) with incredible combat and great stealth sections as well; and it just delivers on so many fronts Also, I will say that this is a slight spoiler for the game, so be warned But after Batman’s identity is revealed at the end of the game, I love going back to GCPD and hearing everyone talk to Batman and kind of give their reaction to the news Some of them are pretty funny, too There's one guy who says he’s going to sue you now that he knows you’re Bruce Wayne Firefly says that when he gets out, he’s going to burn down Wayne Manor, and there are just so many more interactions like that, and it just makes me appreciate this game and the insane amount of detail that they put in even more Even the criminals around Gotham City talk about it too, which, to speak about the criminals for one second I’ll say that probably my favorite moments from almost every game in the series are just from gliding around the map, hearing a criminal talk shit about you, and then going down there and beating the absolute shit out of them It is so satisfying and so funny every single time It’s fantastic And overall, so is this game So with that all being said, I’m giving Batman: Arkham Knight, a 4.5/5