Gotham Knights

SPOILERS

4/10

Gotham Knights had a poor release with a slew of mouth breathing idiots comparing screenshots between this and Arkham Knight and saying THESE GAMES ARE 10 YEARS APART like that means anything. It's impossible not to compare the two but the issues with this game are so much deeper than comparing draw distance and rain effects. If anything, Gotham Knights is a fine looking game and, depressingly, the first game I played to completion on my new PC.

So, fine, graphics. The city looks alright and most of the characters look alright. Jason looks like a Fable character and Tim Drake looks like a Sim I imported, but everyone else from Mr Freeze to The Penguin to Barbra Gordon look fine and are immediately recognizable. No visual glitches aside from clipping hair and capes though one word I would use to describe the whole style of the game would be uninspired. No one's coming in with surprisingly looks or bombastic effects leaving the world, enemies and boss fights as totally forgettable.

Gameplay is 99% mashing the punch button while three other goons kick at the back of your head. Combat lacks any kind of impact or feedback, you'll be mashing for a good two minutes on an enemy and then they'll suddenly keel over. Each "faction" has a regular mob, a shooter person, a BIG GUY and maybe a lil gremlin person to mix it up. That's the game play loop, there's a few bosses but they're either copy and pasted 6 times or just another massive HP bar to grind down. Mr Freeze had a big world event which was cool but then again Clayface's last mission was so boring and such a chore to bash square against I almost didn't finish it. Even navigating the world is hard, with the game being just TOO sensitive to the point where I always overshoot interacting with smaller items/opening chests or being totally unable to vault over some railing/getting stuck being perched on a ledge while baddies punch at my ankles. It's not smooth and it's awkward. Navigating the city is just as awkward, with driving being x0.5 faster than running no matter how many SPEED LINES you put along the outside of the screen and gliding is somehow the slowest way to get around? Who decided this shit, man.

Story is boring at the best times and totally convoluted or predictable the rest of it. Batman is dead, fuck, I guess I need to find it in myself to take the mantle and use the skills that were imparted on to me by BATMAN for years-... oh he's been resurrected and single-handedly saved the day before dying AGAIN. Haha, I guess that's a really fulfilling story! I guess that's fine I can just be the sidekick again (:

Ridiculous man, if you're going to make a story about the Court of Owls fucking tell the story instead of pulling in the League of Shadows and also the Freaks and The Mob and The Regulators are kinda here too idk TURF WAR! What an stupid way to handle a story about a SECRET SOCIETY than have them openly killing people in broad daylight full owl masks slaying people in the streets just like every other gang in Gotham. Boring. Batfamily and Alfred are also boring no one does ANYTHING COOL!!! Everyone just smirks and chuckles at each other then they fight and DISAPPEAR, TALIA JUST TURNS INTO SMOKE AND RUNS AWAY WHERE IS MY CLOSURE!! All this so Bruce can come back, ice my enemies and send me a new updated death vlog 2.0 idc fire the batjet at ME, Bruce.

Co-op would have been the only way to make this no quite painful, but even still you would have had to grind and deal with the same boring "5 waves of regular enemies, okay next cut scene" game in the end anyhow.

It's not totally fair to compare this to Arkham, but of course you're going to, you're also going to compare this to modern open world superhero games like Spider-Man which is a masterclass on how to do this type of shit. The world feels alive, crime pops up naturally and you feel compelled to do it, it tells a great single player story and has combat that makes you feel COOL. In Gotham Knights you punch big man for 3250 HP and he drops MATERIALS that I can use to add MODIFIERS to my Batsuit aaarrraAAAAAh borrringgg !!!!!!!!

This game has the bones to actually be something interesting, if navigation and combat were revamped it would have done a lot to service the whole product. Removal of MMORPG elements would also be nice but it makes it even more annoying to see something with promise shit the bed in so many different ways.

All this just so I could add another line of text to my Batman notepad of Bat-media I've consumed. I like this IP man, I cannot imagine a passive fan or someone casually picking this up and enjoying it they don't even tell you who Talia is or what happened to Jason, the dude is always just making jokes about crowbars. There weren't even any fun little references... no Kiteman mission or we find Bruce's pink suit or something.

Nevermind, 3/10