“Batman: Arkham Knight,” which was released June 23 of last year. The game is set after the events of the “Batman: Arkham” franchise, where Batman fights the ultimate threat against the city he has sworn to protect in the new game.
Scarecrow returns and has teamed up with The Arkham Knight, who was once an ally of Batman but disappeared mysteriously. To make things worse, Scarecrow also rallies together a despicable array of super villains including Penguin, Two-Face and The Riddler to destroy The Dark Knight and rid Gotham City of his meddling once and for all.
The story is one-of-a-kind, and is a chapter in a very immersive universe. If you want the full picture, you should play the other video games “Arkham Origins,” “Arkham Asylum” and “Arkham City.” Without giving too much away, you will get to fight The Joker, and your ward Robin will join in the fun.
The game also introduces The Batmobile, a drivable vehicle for the first time in the franchise. In the other “Arkham” games, it was just a soaring glide type gameplay but this time you get to drive. “Batman: Arkham Knight” offers a complete Batman experience as you rip through the streets and soar across the skyline of Gotham City.
As the Batmobile becomes an integral part of the game, it introduces vehicle combat as a new gameplay element to the series. Most of the combat is very repetitive with this new element in which you use the Batmobile as a tank to destroy drones. Other times you need it to solve puzzles or transport captured villains to the Gotham City Police Department building. But these entertaining elements did not mean the game was problem free.
On the PC version at release, the framerate was locked at 30 frames per second (fps), which cast the initial player reception in the negative. This makes the game run slow if the player is in-game. One year later, after many patches, the game has fixed most of the performance issues and bugs.
Gotham City is your stage once again, but this time you will encounter more elements from the open-world genre. These come in the form of various optional missions such as liberating towers, taking out drones or disarming land mines. You can treat them as time fillers or new opportunities to test your moves and gadgets. On the other hand, the villain optional missions are more fun and make a better part of the story with mini-boss battles and cutscenes at the end. All optional missions reward the player with Waynetech points needed for upgrading your suit, gadgets and Batmobile.
Combat on foot is on par to the previous games. It is still broken down into part melee encounters and part stealth sectors where enemies need to be taken out silently. A new takedown system and gadgets have been added to Batman’s inventory.
A worthy finale for the “Batman: Arkham” games as it could have been the perfect game for the series, if it didn’t suffer from technical problems at the start. Still, it was worth playing for the mind-blowing graphics and great atmosphere. Make sure to wait for the next Steam autumn sale and pick it up.
The Parkway West Pathfinder gives “Batman: Arkham Knight” a 9/10.
