Batman: Arkham Knight (Minor Spoilers)
Batman: Arkham Knight is developer Rocksteady's first leap onto current generation consoles, and the end of their trilogy that made Batman a symbol for what super hero video games can be. With the great combat of the last two games, and new additions like the Batmobile, there is a lot to love. Their latest work is a perfect conclusion that ends The Dark Knights tale with not a lot of questions left unanswered.
In Batman: Arkham Knight, the city of Gotham is under threat of two main villains; Scarecrow: The fear gas spraying lunatic that causes his victims to hallucinate their worst fears, and cause violence in crowded scenarios. The new face in Gotham goes by the name of The Arkham Knight, who's only goal is to break Batman down and show the world The Dark Knights true identity, and they develop an interesting and valid reason why this new villain wishes to do so. The game starts with Scarecrow causing a police officer to gun down innocent civilians in a diner, then threatens to unleash the toxin upon the whole city. The majority of Gotham is evacuated, leaving only the thugs and The Arkham Knight's militia. Classic villains like Two Face, Penguin, and many others begin to emerge and cause havoc in the evacuated city. Batman manages to get into some of Scarecrows toxin and is forced to deal with things that haunt his past throughout the game.
Batman still punches, grapnels, and glides his way through the city, but he has a new toy, the Batmobile. His race car/tank is simultaneously an amazing and frustrating addition to the series. The reason I find that Batmobile frustrating is that they simply make you use it far to much. Its fun when you are driving as fast as you possibly can with reckless abandon, but far to often in the main story I find myself in a battle with 20 unmanned tanks and you can't move on until everything is dead. This must happen at least 20 to 30 times in the story, with one giant fight of seemingly 60 to 70 tanks near the end. The Batmobile proves itself to be an amazing tool to get around the city though. I drove as fast as I could straight toward a building and decided I didn't want to slow down to make the turn. I instead ejected myself from the vehicle, over the building into a glide above the street. Over the city I called the Batmobile to me, fell into the drivers seat, and continued to speed away to my next objective.
Fans of the old games will feel right at home with the series defining free flow combat, use of gadgets, and solving Riddler challenges. In combat you have to time counters, dodge knife wielding foes, and stun giant brutes while being surrounded by groups of 30 plus people. This is where Batman shines. Achieving a 100 plus flawless hit combo is one of the most satisfying things in all gaming. You can also use gadgets such as batarangs, and grapnel gun in combat along with the addition of duel take downs. Duel take downs can occur when you are with another hero such as Robin or Night Wing. Its a smooth seamless transition with Batman tossing a foe at your partner for a take down, after which you assume control of the other character.
The launch version of Batman Arkham Knight on PC has had horrible performance problems. The game doesn't run well on the most powerful machines and is unplayable on most non Nvidia cards. The frame rate is capped at 30 frames per second, (unacceptable to most PC users) though you can uncap it by going into the .INI files and change it. Rocksteady has warned against unlocking the frame rate, but I played the whole game with it uncapped and had no bugs/issues, though I was getting anywhere from 70 to 15 fps depending on what I was doing. Rocksteady is working with the studio that ported the PC version to try and improve performance but as of this review (06/26/15) there has been no patch since launch.
Batman: Arkham Knight is an amazing game with a great story. A must play for fans of the series but new comers might want to play both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City before jumping into Arkham Knight.
