Batman Arkham Knight

[xt1me]

So I actually finished Arkham Knight a while back but I decided to wait until after I had finished the DLCs to write out my thoughts on it. And then the Batgirl DLC chapter had a glitch in the final cut-scene which crashed the game. I tried a couple of times but eventually gave up and decided I'd do the other chapters later.
And then I didn't.
Admittedly I got distracted by Chants of Sennaar, but I did eventually get back to finish things but I still hadn't written anything. I have now also finished Lego Batman 3, which I had got in a bundle but never played, so I think it's about time to write about AK before writing about that game.

The first thing I can say about Batman Arkham Knight is whatever graphic setting they have absolutely wrecked my compute. I know my PC isn't new but AK is a old games by now, I didn't think It'd be that bad. I did find out googoling that on releace there was a number of graphical problems on the PC version but supposedly they had patched things. If this was patched I hate to see what it was like on the day.
I asked my sister (who had played it on release) how she had fixed it but apparently they had played the console version.
I eventually fiddled with enough settings to get it functional but it was still a bit jerky when entering a new area. But at lest it was playable.
They only thing I will say is that I know rain is very atmospheric and everything but I wish it could be turned off because My computer hated it.

Once I could actually play the game it was pretty good. Continuing from the last game that made it so you can't just play the whole game in detective mode (like you could basically do in the first one) there's still stuff it's better to see with regular vision so you don't miss all the work the graphic designers did.

Sound played a bigger part in this one I think. I definitely found a few missions more from the sound queues then vision. The main ones being the serial killer victims that had the classical music playing near them.
The sound queues from the cop scanner taking about riots in the area you are in is a great way to let you learn the names of the parts of the city you are in rather then remembering from the map.
Some of the conversations you you overhear from the rioters as background noise are pretty funny. I liked the one were the guy says he can't stay out rioting too late because it's his turn with the kids. Or the one were the guy complains that they can't risk running into Batman because the mob had already cleaned out the hospital.

The graphical trick they had to show Batman's decent into madness because of the Joker were neat. How they had signs change into joker signs but if you look away and then look back they'd be normal. Having the Joker just be hanging around in places as you travel the city works well. Especially that one bit were you grapple up a building like normal only for him to jump scare you. I glad they left it to only happen once. It would have lost it's impact otherwise.
Making so much of the game about the Joker even though the guy is canonically dead in the universe is a bit annoying though. Maybe it worked better at the time but we've had so much Batman content now and they always have to shoe-horn the Joker in somewhere I'm kind of burnt out on the character.

The main new toy in this game is of course the Bat-Tank. And yes, it is a tank. People do comment on it. It felt a bit shoehorned in if I'm being honest. I know a lot of the game depend on it to fight of the (carefully explained to be unmanned) enemy tanks and there's bits were you need it to find things and stuff but honestly? it comes off a bit forced in just to give a reason for the thing to exist in the first place. And considering it's big chunks of the game I don't think that's a good thing. Maybe it's just because I was so bad at driving it. The thing, quite literally, handles like a tank.
The Riddler being obsessed with it as Batman's new toy does make a lot of sense though.

I kind of felt the Riddler trophies were harder to find this game. They had the green question marks all over them of course but, maybe because the backgrounds were so colourful or something, I really had to rely of the Riddler map for a bunch of them. Interrogating the goons were carried over from the last game but now sometimes they fight back, which surprised me so much the first time he got away. Unfortunately, this game, not all the Riddler trophies appear at once. You have to get to a certain point in the game for ones to appear but you can still interrogate goons and get the location even if they haven't been set up yet. Which is confusing.
They obviously tried to keep things even since there's only so many Riddler goons at any one point along the plot-line but it must not have lined up right.
I did like that one of the cops turns out to be working for the Riddler . Makes sense since Gotham cops are notoriously corrupt and they are Riddler trophies to be found in the GCPD building.
 

As for the plot, it's fine.

Spoilers ahead just fyi:

I knew about who the Arkham Knight was well before I even bought the game so that wasn't a surprise. I do wonder how it would hit to someone not in the know though. I do feel asshole Batman was showing a bit too much. I get that it's his game so you need a reason to not be helped by the other Gotham vigilantes (since there are so many these days) but he could have stood to be less of a jerk about it. I get that him being taken over by the joker can explain a lot. But there's one bit where the game pretends you have a choice but just straight up doesn't let you leave things to Robin. It forces you to look him up so you can continue as Batman. Makes sens from a game-play standpoint but still a jerk move.
You do get to team up with your sidekicks more then in previous games so at least there's that.

I still don't like what they did with Tim and Barbra. I don't know why they changed things so that the Robin Barbra was Batgirl with was Tim instead of Dick. Maybe it was to match the Robin at the time or something. But It just doesn't feel right. It's just I've always felt like Dick and Barbra were in the same age range with Tim being in the same age rang as Steph/Spoiler (who, admittedly, is not in this game) so aging Babs down/Tim up so they can get married feels so weird to me.

The resolution with Jason is pretty obvious from a story standpoint but fells kind of rushed. I get the whole shonen protagonist, big-fight-and-everyone's-friends, thing but considering we spent most of the game hearing how much Jason hates Batman only for things to turn around from just a few lines of dialog feels a little quick. I don't know, maybe I was focusing too much on trying to beat the guy and wasn't paying attention to what was being said so it just felt a little abrupt.

The bit were Scarecrow's bomb goes off and covers all of Gotham is pretty cool.

The bit were Bruce fights Joker in his mind is unfortunately all in 1st person POV, which sucked for me and my motion sickness, but I know why they did it. Not only does it let the game feel like it's from a more intimate perspective but they can do all those perspective tricks and jump scares.

Finally the ending was not only obvious but also bullshit. Not that they didn't kill Bruce in the end, we all knew they'd never do that. Comic book physics is fine for beating the Joker for all it's kind of hand-wavy. No, I mean the whole operation Knightfall thing. It feels like they just wanted an excuse to do it because killing off Bruce Wayne to continue being Batman is the kind of stupid edgy thing that someone thought sounded cool.
Hush was right there! You have a whole side mission where you capture him and they make a point to mention that they are not handing him over to the cops until after everything is sorted. It would have been piss easy to just have a live feed from Wayne Tower of "Bruce Wayne" reacting to the fact that Batman is unmasked to cover themselves.

whatever, it is what it is I guess.

I'm don't think Gotham knights is in the same continuity or not but I wasn't going to bother playing it since I've heard mixed messages about it. The fact that there's apparently a lot of loot grinding put me off. But it was going for cheap on the end of year sale and I had a gift card so I ended up getting it.
I don't know when, probably not anytime soon though.