After Arkham City, a game heralded as the best Batman video game, Rocksteady began development for a third entry into the franchise: Arkham Knight. This project took four years to complete, assigning Warner Brothers Montreal to create a disconnected prequel game, Arkham Origins, to fill the space between City and Knight, and while this game is both regarded as the black sheep of the series, and filled with many of the best bosses, its status as a last-generation game (not being remastered like the others) meant that I was unable to play it, despite various references in Knight to events that occurred in Origins.
So, with all the time it took to produce Knight, did Rocksteady deliver a satisfying follow-up to City?
Arkham Knight occurs around 9 months after City. All of the criminals from City received compensation for their treatment by Strange and his militia, and were able to return to society, yet despite this crime was at an all-time low. That is, until a vengeful Scarecrow, last seen all the way back in Asylum, returns to Gotham, with the threat of unleashing a bioweapon to spread his fear toxin, forcing a mass evacuation. Both Scarecrow, and the titular villain Arkham Knight, have combined forces to physically and symbolically destroy Batman by going after both the city he protects, and those closest to him, pushing him to breaking point as he faces tougher odds than ever before, all while dealing with the psychological torment of the Joker.
Technically speaking, Knight is the best instalment of the series. It has the best graphics, looking stunning even now, five years on from its release. It also benefits from the most refined combat and stealth systems that the series has, and may ever have, with the greatest range of traversal, gadget and combat options to choose from, along with a new set of mechanics that comes with the much anticipated use of the Batmobile.
The problems mainly come in the world and story, which fail to capitalise on the same feeling of isolation and being outnumbered that the other two games did. Part of this is due to the world and level design, which although now bigger and more detailed than ever, lacks a huge amount of identity, choosing realism over style or substance. Now, huge areas of the map seem obsolete, and only serve to inflate the area of the world or provide access to a story area instead of providing meaningful lore or insight into the world. Another part of this is a huge amount of story problems and inconsistencies, which either drag out plot points from the previous games into convoluted messes, or completely neuter huge points of the game.
Examples of this include Scarecrow’s bioweapon threat seeming pointless considering that the city had been evacuated, and the only people he has to use it on are his own militia forces, or the other thugs and villains he has rallied to take down Batman. So this means that there are zero civilian casualties to this plan, and it calls into question why any of the criminals would agree to the plan instead of evacuating like everyone else, as they would essentially be willingly gassed into a state of terrified insanity just to prove a point to Batman. And it isn’t like City, where they are unwillingly imprisoned, constantly mistreated and then unknowingly attacked, they chose to stay there and riot, so it is their own fault if anything happens to them.
Basically, Batman is protecting idiotic thugs, the militia forces that chose to be there, and the buildings, instead of the lives of the citizens, all for the excuse to have a bigger open world than ever, which as I said earlier, has very little in terms of iconic locations and interesting areas to explore or visit.
Another problem is how these militia forces deploy tank drones against Batman, and not actual tanks with people inside. This is particularly annoying as the Arkham Knight claims to have a deep knowledge of Batman, including his abilities, tactics and principles, not to mention the fact that it is common knowledge that Batman doesn’t kill, so if he is faced with a tank with a person inside, he can’t simply blow it up. He would have to find some other way to deal with it. Having Batman on the run from tanks patrolling the streets, hiding either in dark alleys or rooftops would restore the sense of isolation and powerlessness of the other games, and can actually be felt when gliding to one of the militia-occupied islands that you can’t immediately access with the Batmobile, but this doesn’t last nearly as long as it should to have a big enough impact. Instead, you are given a tank-like Batmobile that can destroy most of these drones with a single hit. When you should feel helpless, you feel superior to the enemies that claim to be closer than anyone else to defeating you, which doesn’t make any sense when you combine it with the narrative of the game.
The Batmobile itself has been another controversial inclusion in the game – since Asylum, players had been waiting to be able to drive the Batmobile, another key component to complete the experience of being Batman, but when it did finally arrive in Knight, it was vastly overused for combat sections, puzzles and story beats. Making it more enjoyable to return to simply gliding around from place to place. I have to agree with this – the Batmobile wasn’t bad by any means, but it wasn’t integrated into the narrative very well. You were required to use it for problem solving in situations where it previously wasn’t necessary, such as traversing broken lift shafts or fixing electrical junctions. And, for some reason, driving into a thug on the street at 200 mph with a giant tank, or literally shooting with the turret only incapacitates them, when it would otherwise demolish one of the tank drones.
It would have been better if the Batmobile was used exclusively to connect various areas of the city, the less densely populated areas of Gotham, and allowing you to visit areas, like Wayne Manor, on the outskirts of Gotham for side-quests or riddles. Helicopters and drones could fly overhead, preventing simply gliding, and would chase you down the roads, putting you in the role of prey, and demonstrating Batman’s new vunerability, as he literally no longer owned the sky, instead of making him an even better hunter with the power to take on whole armies by himself.
These points, along with the usual Riddler trophy epidemic, a lack of memorable boss fights, and an over-reliance on the echoes of the Joker that overshadowed the actual threat of Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, make the plot more than a little disappointing, but it isn’t entirely bad – for one, the inclusion of the Joker leaving a psychological scar on Batman, resulting in a variety of hallucinations and flashbacks was very enjoyable, even if it was overused. Actually, something that you may or may not notice when playing the game, is that you can find Joker imagery everywhere when you turn your view away from a statue, sign or billboard and look back at it, in a way that isn’t overtly explicit, and further reinforces Batman’s degrading mental state, whether you fully realise it or just subliminally in the background.
Details like that are why I wouldn’t dismiss this game as entirely disappointing entry – the level of craft that went into it is a marvel to behold, and is twice as great as its predecessors, even if they did master the Batman mythos more successfully.
Overall, this game has earnt a solid 7.5 out of 10 in my view, which is on par with Asylum but under City, as both Asylum and Knight have convoluted stories, but the atmosphere and environment of Asylum rivals the pinnacle of gameplay in Knight, with City reaching a happy medium in between.
SPOILER SECTION
I actually really like the idea of the Arkham Knight character. This version of Jason Todd was tortured by the Joker in the Asylum for over a year, and there has even been speculation and theories that it was in the very cell that held Amadeus Arkham, the founder of the Island, based on the floor patterns in the hallucinations where the Joker tortures Todd, the fact that that it is the closest thing to the “abandoned wing of Arkham” mentioned, and the spinning wheelchair in the cell of Amadeus Arkham, and a wheelchair was what Jason was tortured on.
If you think about it, the “Arkham Knight” not only makes for a fitting call-back to the beginning of the franchise, but also makes the already dark and foreboding first game even creepier – the idea that you once walked right past this room, and like Batman, had no idea of the horrors that Jason experienced there, or even that Jason could have been elsewhere on the Island whilst all this was going on, changing your perspective of the whole series. The implications are terrifying, and to me that redeems Rocksteady saying that it wasn’t Red Hood, despite it being obvious that it was after seeing the character for five minutes.
As for the ending, with Batman unmasked and faking his and Alfred’s deaths to prevent being hunted down by criminals and the police, well it also seemed a little unearned. The Scarecrow just seemed to keep making up his plan as he went along, only escaping Batman on multiple occasions due to the Joker hallucinations that he was only partially responsible for, and altering his plan after Ace Chemicals, one of the earliest missions, to the cloudburst device, and when that fails his eventually kidnapping Robin and Comissioner Gordon, and using them as hostages to get Batman to come quietly.
Compare this to Hugo Strange in the last game – he had one key plan, Protocol Ten, which he stuck to, as his position in the structure of Arkham City made him nigh impossible for Batman to combat. This made him intimidating, and made it feel like he had all the power, despite Batman being preoccupied with villains including the Joker, and made that game have an escalating tension as to exactly wat would happen.
This made Scarecrow’s status as an imposing villain sworn to bring down Batman in a great scheme of revenge feel shallow, as he would have lost quite easily on multiple occasions if not for factors that he couldn’t control, like the conveniently timed Joker hallucinations. As such, Batman losing his anonymity to him, someone who was not as skilful or competent as the villain from the previous game, just feels like quite a cheap way to end the character as we know him.
Hugo Strange managed to work out Batman’s identity on his own, and his knowledge of such a secret along with the vast amount of power he had would have made it more satisfying if, along with destroying Wonder Tower in Protocol Eleven, he also released the Batman’s secret, and Knight could have explored how Batman would try to manage his life of crime-fighting with so much already known about him. His allies could be hiding in safehouses across the map, hiding from criminals and the police alike, working now with limited resources as opposed to the abundance of wealth that Wayne once had, and how he still had so much to fight for, and lose, with the Scarecrow now having a new and deadly means of striking at Batman at his lowest.
However, I have to give credit to some of the side quests in the game, “Creature of the Night” and “The Perfect Crime” in particular. I was always familiar with Man-Bat as a character from both the Lego Batman games I played as a child, and the Batman Animated Series, and seeing the character of Kirk Langstrom in the Arkham universe was very welcome, but I had very little knowledge of the character “Professor Pyg”. As far as I could tell, he was a more recent Batman villain, and sounded kind of silly, but his horrific experiments in Knight were chilling.
Unfortunately, Hush’s conclusion in “Friend in Need” was very poor, with the most that you do is watch a cutscene and throw a batarang at the right point, completely neutering the dangerous threat he was set up to be in City. That, and the final boss fight with Deathstroke that was just a repeat of the Arkham Knight Cloudburst boss fight from before, made certain elements of the game feel rushed, as if the incredible graphics took up most of the time and energy of the developers, so they decided to wrap up side quests that you had spent hours completing over all of the games in the most lazy and efficient ways they could.
UP NEXT
Sorry for this being a longer review than usual, but I felt there was a lot to be said on this game. The next set of reviews I will post will be on the Mass Effect series, which I hope to upload next week. This will include the original trilogy and Andromeda with all story DLC’s. I hope to see you then!
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