Today we are focusing on one of the most prestigious video games, Batman. So its a 2015 action adventure open world game developed by Rocksteady and Published by Warner Bros. At the time it was released as the fourth and final Batman game of the trilogy and adding to that the year 2015 I consider it to be one of the biggest launch years in gaming because a lot of heavy weights came out, lets just briefly list some of them: The Order 1886,The Witcher 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat X, Assassins Creed Syndicate etc. That was roughly two years after PlayStation 4 and Xbox One had come out so their full potential started to show then. I played the game some years ago so I decided to replay it again recently. It was always on my mind to share this experience I had with you. I want to also do the first 2 games that came out prior to this one and I hope somehow I get a copy of Arkham Origins which truly wasn't a consistent synonym of the Batman franchise but still good in its own way. We will get to that in future hopefully soon enough.
Now I am going to say this if you have a list of your best games and somehow Batman is missing the only reason would be you didn't play it. Batman games are one of the best games you can ever come across and play. As we wait for Gotham Knights lets time travel to six years ago and find out how good this game was by virtue of subjective experience.
From the onset you are introduced to a well thought out menu presentation with your main character in the background who's sort of seemingly touting you towards an incredible experience you are about to find yourself in. Its a really good background theme oozing its atmosphere to you.
Graphics: My first impressions of the game were no doubt saturated with a good visual polish filling a fairly vast open world accompanied by a consistent dark rainy night. You who have played Cyberpunk night city you will certainly get an exceptional aerial view of a night city as you glide through with Bruce Wayne.
As far as I could find out it runs on Unreal Engine 3 but surprisingly looks like a UE4 game and even better than some modern games. Visuals in Batman games have never been a disappointment, this is just with a glossy look as an icing on the cake compared to the rest before it. Its also curious to note that among the great voice cast Breaking Bad Jonathan Banks features as Gordon, John Noble (Fringe) as Scarecrow.
Gameplay:
The most outstanding feature about this game is fluidity. It has that sense of ease during game world traversal. You can take a good amount of time gliding through the considerably large scale game world. I can never say enough of this but its a true testament to what gameplay enthusiasts adore, that smooth seamless experience. Combat mechanics kept themselves similar to the previous Batman games with the excerption being the addition of the Batmobile.
The Batmobile comes as a good companion and also facilitator to the traversal of the game world and also playing a critical role in both main missions and side quests. The only take away from this is the feeling of "you cant be Batman without the mobile" not entirely though.
The best thing about the gameplay for me is the smoothness of the combat, much like Spiderman, Batman games have unique gang fight engagements and take downs. Another interesting thing for this title in particular is that you use a variety of other characters which have their own missions/storylines provided you also download all the add-ons which are not free of course but affordable.
So in essence you are not getting the traditional Batman game with one main protagonist mostly all the way through but a total package involving not only the main character but his sidekicks. You get the joy and fun of being involved in combat than wishing it to end. Its the most satisfying feature within the gameplay.
There is a tone of ways to take down your enemies, the ease of it being facilitated by your very important character, gadgetry and vehicle upgrades. It can seem to be a little meticulous depending on your perception of its open world but its definitively confined and navigated by thorough game story direction rather than a never ending sidetracking to do list which is quite prevalent in some open world games. Sharing further on this its lovely how the story branches develop without overwhelming you. They are tagged with percentages and sometimes temporarily close themselves diverting your focus to other critical story quests of the game. Very similar to Days Gone if you have played it. Lastly not forgetting the intriguing detective investigations which have a good immersive depth.
It is clearly one of the generation defining games of last gen, my wish is if it could get another tweak in terms of frame rate or get some next gen support because consoles of the time were largely limited to 30fps. With the current gen consoles its very much possible to bolster the game a bit I would love a 120fps 1440p or dynamic/native 4k 120 whichever possible because it deserves it and has so much potential to do so. On PC I think you can get a good cranked up experience at 4k 60. Unfortunately I don't have the necessary tools to measure the fidelity and performance metrics for you but can only speculate based on the hardware I use.
The main story is definitely not the best of the series but its the total combination of the sub quests, gameplay, character variety and story which makes it the best of the series thereby fulfilling both quantity and quality aspirations a gamer would want to derive from experiencing it however I must say Arkham City for me has more to it than Knight especially in the main story segment but as mentioned we will hopefully get to that in the near future to find out why.
As for Arkham Knight secure it whichever way you can because you wont regret it, its worth the money, and it definitely goes down in gaming history as an antique. Cheers for now.
Comments