Wednesday, July 15, 2015
7/15/15 1:30PM |
On PlayStation 4, Batman: Arkham Knight proves to be a worthy conclusion to the trilogy created by Rocksteady. The combat is as fun as it’s ever been, and the visuals are very impressive. The story this time has Batman defending Gotham from an impending attack by Scarecrow, who has threatened to release a deadly toxin into the city. Rather than hit Gotham with a surprise attack, Scarecrow decides to warn the city’s inhabitants, who take his warning seriously, resulting in a city-wide evacuation. Although most of the residents have left, Batman and his allies have decided to tackle the uphill battle of saving Gotham, which is now overrun with super villains – including the new and mysterious Arkham Knight.
In order to traverse the city more effectively, which has had a major increase in density and size, Rocksteady has added a drive-able Batmobile, a new feature of the game which effectively integrates nicely both in terms of combat and exploration in the game. The Arkham Knight commands a militia who possess unmanned drones, which Batman must engage with using the battle mode that the Batmobile has. Vehicular warfare mixes up the gameplay a bit, but I prefer the base gameplay of fighting foes in hand-to-hand combat, as well as the predator sections which made Arkham Asylum so enjoyable.
DLC has been promised for the coming months for the game, but so far each addition has only added a few more moments from the base game to enjoy. While playing the Harley Quinn story pack, gamers can experience a roughly 15 minute experience as you play as the other person more affected by Joker’s leave than Batman. Harley Quinn has her own version of Batman’s gadgets, and controls in similar fashion as the Dark Knight. Overall, the content is over before it truly begins, and according to early reviews of the Bat-girl content, that pack isn’t enough to make you stray from the main story which is how I felt about the Harley Quinn content.
Batman: Arkham Knight on consoles performs great, but the success of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 version has been overshadowed by the current status of the PC version. It’s important to release a product to everyone with the same quality spread across each available platform, and Rocksteady and Warner Bros. have publicly apologized after consumers voiced their concerns about the PC version.
Major gaming publications have posted articles that revealed the issues with the PC Arkham Knight were known by the publisher for quite some time, and they made the decision to release the game anyway in its current state. Another delay would have hurt the game’s anticipated launch, but I’m sure everyone would have accepted it in the end rather than buy the released PC version on Steam and find it to be full of technical issues that it currently contains.
