I bought this game from GMG and when I first started it it crashed. I then fought through an hour+ of tweaking setting, fighting frame rates, and just basically doing everything but getting into the game. I then quit it out and didn't play for the rest of the day thinking about how I should of just got a game like this for the PS4 and not the PC.

This morning I woke up and decided to try it again. Just set the setting on medium, all the advanced effects off, and just forced myself to play it. Now a couple hours later I am LOVING this game. After months of Witcher and Role Playing games its a pure joy to play a game of this type. I am so glad I gave this game another chance.

Put me in the camp of liking the Batmobile. Granted its still early but I really like where this is going.

-Gary-

Wow I'm surprised the Batmobile is getting so much hate! The thing handles like a dream, it moves just the way I want it to every time, and is super forgiving when traversing Gotham because it demolishes pretty much everything. You can also use it as a launcher for Batman which is freaking awesome, as is summoning it as you're gliding from a building and then having it spin around a corner just to arrive in time for you to land in it. SO COOL. I haven't had a single issue with navigating it through riddles or anything, not sure what's to complain about really. I think it adds a lot of variety to a formula that was becoming stale.

Pretty early on story wise in the game (as, as usual in a Batman game, I have been heavily distracted by side-stuff), and there's already been one twist the logic of which is a bit difficult to swallow. Think Liquid Ocelot, but somehow dumber. However, to make up for it, it does have phantom Joker appearing as a result of Scarecrow's fear gas which, despite clearly being a desperate ploy to still have that character in the game, works quite well, at least in my opinion.

Batmobile is forced a bit, but I like it, both in driving and in combat. That does put me in a minority, so feel free to ignore that if you want to.

Combat and predator parts; it's a Batman game. Works well, even if the crowding of the controller for all the special attacks does get annoying at times, especially if you can't remember what button combination does what. Not a fan of the fear multi-takedown.

I spent $30 on this, and I feel pretty okay with that, even if the first game I pre-ordered this year turned out to have a terrible PC port. Fortunately, I have a 970, so I can just turn off gameworks and brute-force my way through the shitty optimisation. FPS in enclosed areas/scenes is fine, but stutters quite a bit when fast traversal happens (or sometimes for no reason at all).

I'm only a couple of hours in but, technical issues aside, I'm having a better time than I expected. I hate the contrivance they use to once again justify a depopulated Gotham, but right from the get go it feels much more like a living, breathing city than it ever did in City or Origins. The Batmobile is fine; enjoyable, even. Although I can see how it might get frustrating if you have to use it to solve puzzle after puzzle. I dunno, I haven't played enough to form a concrete opinion, but colour me pleasantly surprised so far.

Local batman fanatic and duder checking in. Played about 5 hours last night. I love this game. First off, the looks are gorgeous! Combat is still the best in the industry in its fluidity and to me it is engaging. The Partner switching stuff is pretty neat and seems like a added on, unnecessary component. The story is pretty good so far as its kept me from doing too many side stuff because its sucked me into missions back to back. Some of my friends dont like jonathon banks as Gordon (Mike form Breaking Bad for those who do not recognize that actor), but his voice has brought more emotional depth to that character in the entire series ( i havent played origins so who knows). I like the batmobile. Driving is fun and takes some getting used to but when hell breaks loose and you start ramming cars and blowing shit up, its just satisfying as hell.

If the game itself is 9 or 10s including graphics, gameplay, controls, VA, story- the batmobile is probably 7-8. Its the weakest part because everything else is superb.

Back to playing see ya!

I think this is so you pre-plan fights before just jumping in. If you use the disruptor and plan where you're attacking from first, taking into account the fear takedown that can wipe out five dudes with the press of a button. I find myself being able to clear through rooms even faster than before with a little bit of planning. You have all the tools to deal with everything pretty easily. The electric zapper thing comes quite late in the game, I really do think the combat is the best it has ever been.

Depends on the platform. I've heard little about the console versions that track with the "The world is ending/proof your all fools for pre-ordering/We hate the company that released this!/How dare you say this game works for you!" coming out of a large (or at least loud) percentage of the members of the PC community.

Like, did you like the first two (and to a less extend I've heard the 3rd) games? Then this is the same thing, only it continues the story, there is more to do, the batmobile is cool in a "This is a super car that could never ever exist and plays more like an arcade game then a real car"..which is just fine with me.

That said I'm only a few hours in? So maybe it gets awful, but the combat is immediately satisfying in the same way of the old, the movement is fun, the story seems promising.

Of course I am also on a PC..and a fairly middleish/lower one. The game had the same issue many had for me. The moment you start the game and see your first face, it started jittering...

..and then I downloaded the latest drive (as I'm using a 960), turned all the settings down to low, bumped the resolution down and...the game works fine! Horray!

But, your own chances on the PC right now however seem to be a crap shoot. In a month? They, (they being the community or the publisher) will likely have it all solved. If you can at the moment though, I'd get it on a console.

I feel the widespread critical praise for this game is way off. I played the game last night for 3 frustrating hours. The PS4 version of the game looks quite nice in spots and runs well overall. My real frustration (shocker) is the damn Batmobile. While it's fun to turn on the afterburner and zoom around Gotham the platforming and the puzzles are mainly terrible and really cumbersome. They somehow find a way to shoehorn in the Batmobile at every opportunity and it's getting to the point where I might not continue playing the game because the experience is so unpleasant. The controls on the Batmobile feel REALLY outdated (think PS1/N64) and the navigation (we're talking about having to navigate the car on top of buildings, down elevator shafts, etc.) is imprecise and rage-inducing. Combat in the Batmobile is equally annoying and the constant barrage of enemy tanks is mindless and repetitive.

What will likely keep me going despite the Batmobile is the story. It has a neat story and, having played the Asylum and City, I'm excited to see how the trilogy concludes. I think I will probably turn the difficulty down to easy so I can get the story stuff and not be bogged down by the frustrating and sometimes difficult Batmobile sections. For a game that so heavily features the vehicle I feel like they weirdly underplayed its significance and prominence in the lead up advertising given the role it has in the actual game structure.

About an hour in and I already hate the batmobile.

I'm with Jeff on the Batmobile... "Who thought this was a good idea? It's not any fun." It's just a chore to slog thru those parts.

The rest is a Rocksteady Batman game and I'm all over that.

I'm running an NVIDIA card and get a pretty steady 60 (with the usual load under cutscene hic to the high 40's - which I only notice if I've got a frame counter up)... though I wish I could turn off the aggressive motion blur and grain effects...

I feel odd here but I like the Batmobile stuff. I don't think it controls particularly well, but it isn't something I couldn't get used to and begin ripping around corners and actually performing and looking cool moving down the street. More importantly the power fantasy of finally being able to roll around in this walking tank with everyone reacting to it in the world has me pretty hyped as well.

I'm not going to pretend it doesn't have issues, but I think a lot of is just a "play it till your comfortable with it" system. It takes a lot of getting used to imo. I still do a lot of gliding depending on my mood, but the game overall has been pretty great honestly. Populating the world with more to do and more named characters who have some interesting dialogue helps give the open city some added flavor that I felt AC didn't have.

So, not having played a lick of this game, I expect this exact detail to be the reason I'll end up loving the Batmobile stuff, warts and all.

In traditional Batman fiction, so few people ever actually see the Batman. He's a myth, an urban legend. Even amongst Gotham's common criminals--so often recruited by the city's more powerful ganglords--he's only a folk tale. So when shit breaks out and the Batmobile--THE Batmobile--is barreling through entire buildings and just generally fending off hordes of highly-militarized assailants, I would really want people in the area to feel completely stupefied at the very notion of having witnessed it.

This element has been handled really well in the past in all three previous Arkham games. I will probably totally ignore the tedium of operating the Batmobile if the game dresses those scenarios with the appropriate contextual gravity.

I've only played about 3 hours so far, but it's great and just what I wanted out of a Batman game. (Notice: I skipped Origins, so I'm not burned out on the formula in the least.)

It looks amazing, the combat feels great and quite nuanced already (and I've barely unlocked anything) and the Batmobile parts are also okay in my book. I think it handles rather well and aside from it being shoehorned in a bit too often and the Riddler races being the stupidest idea in any game in some time (They play...okay, but really? That's what the Riddler is doing now? Designing freaking race tracks for Batman? Oh, come on.), but overall it's enjoyable.

Story wise I'm not far obviously, but I like the set up and all the small side conversations that you can listen in on at the GCPD etc.

Yeah have no fear, the random chatter from thugs often pertains to exactly that. It also helps make you feel more like Batman honestly. It's why it was such a cry from fans of the old games to include it. Even if it was hard to do and make sense out of, you don't fully feel like Batman unless you can you know, jump into your Batmobile and Batmobile it up!

I've been on the fence about picking this up as well. I've really enjoyed all the past Arkham games. And I think Origins gets an undeserved bad rap. I found the story, quality of the VA, and portrayal of the characters to be a lot better than in either Asylum or City. Anyway, back on Arkham Knight, I just don't know if I'm ready to jump back into another one of these games. The batmobile stuff doesn't seem bad, per se, just sort of unnecessary. Like going around in car/tank thing blowing the shit out of everything isn't very Batmanly to me.

@zevvion: Its a Batman game made by Rocksteady, if you expect anything more or less than that, then you probably shouldn't play it. I'm an insanely HUGE Batman fan, and I'm about half-way through and its WAYYYY better than City.

So my question isn't thread worthy on its own, so I thought I would post it here.

Should I buy this game for Xbox or PC? I have a pretty beefy PC, but I heard the port is poorly optimized, while I have a perfectly functional Xbox One pretty much unused (unless I have friends over) in my living room, but I haven't heard how that version runs.

I'm aware of the enhanced grapnel boost, however it doesn't change the rate at which the momentum and height taper off once you run out of boost.

Also the "left trigger to tank" control configuration is bad, especially with brake/reverse mapped to a face button. Why it isn't a face button toggle with LT being the brake/reverse just like EVERY OTHER DRIVING MECHANIC IN THE LAST 10 YEARS is completely beyond me.

@korwin said:

You can change it in the settings so that LT brakes and RB toggles tank controls. That really should have been the default, though.

The PC version has performance issues for 95% of it's user base regardless of what settings you use and is missing graphical elements present on the console versions. Iron Galaxy botched the port hard.

about half way through the story. And the gameplay is really growing on me.

It's different than city and asylum and that's fine because those games still exist.

Bat mobile is still a bit hard to drive but it's still pretty fun and the combat seems less marshy than before

Run it on a console. I, too, have a pretty beefy gaming rig and didn't even want to deal with the potential issues with a console port. I'm glad I bought it for the PS4.

Update: I played a little bit more and got through the ACE chemical Batmobile puzzle stuff and was in general feeling a little bit more comfortable with the vehicle/mechanics and then I got to the Riddler race... That was absolutely awful and seriously frustrating. I've never had a rage explosion with a game before but this one nearly brought me over the edge. Holy Jesus.

This game should be appreciated at least for its sheer polish. It feels like everything in here is as good as they could've made it - which is (unfortunately) refreshing these days.

Just finished the main story and I still don't know if I like it more than Asylum, but there's a lot of really amazing scenes in this game, and I still think the gameplay - in and out of the batmobile - is superb.

Arkham Knight is the best game of this gen so far.

3-4 hours in, and I'm really, really enjoying it. I have little interest in the open world, but it's an extremely well done game in most respects.

And I keep taking screenshots because it's absolutely gorgeous.

Very helpful replies. Decided to buy it of Steam no less. I know people complain that it runs like crap (and I actually managed to buy it before it got pulled from the store), but I have a fairly powerful machine and if it is truly unplayable I'll just get a refund.

I know I'll probably won't like the Batmobile stuff, but otherwise I am kind of in the mood for this type of game and it seems like beyond the Batmobile thing, it is very much regarded as a great game by many of you so far.

So, I finished it earlier. It has some of the very best stuff in the series. The last hour of the main game is spectacular, truly wonderful as both fanservice and good storytelling.

There were a bunch of ultra frustrating parts usually involving the batmobile like the miserable last Riddler race and some tank bosses / huge fight towards the end.

The thing that pisses me off is that you're told you can get another ending if you get most of the side stuff done. Upon completion of it I'm told I need to collect the 200 Riddler trophies to see the True TRUE ending. Fuck that. That put a real downer on my endgame high... I watched the last cutscene on Youtube.

Oh man, I just hit the second batmobile bossfight and holy christ have they managed to turn me on the game. It's one thing to introduce a new gameplay system to the game, but making it the crux of the game is just a terrible idea, especially when it already has other really solid systems. I think I can pretty safely say that it's the absolutely worst stuff they've had in any of these games.

Yo, is Jason Todd the Arkham Knight? Because if he is, I totally called that shit.

@arbitrarywater: Yes! They might as well stamp it on the front of the box. They make is so, so obvious about 3/4 of the way into the game. It also doesn't help that there are Trophy listings for Red Hood missions. It doesn't really matter as the Arkham Knight is such a small part of the game.

Wow, lot of disappointment in here... well I guess it's time to move over Batman, we need a new hero to take on the genre! Bring in The Flash and then we'll talk! No, forget that, the Green Arrow would make a way better game! Boxing Glove arrow!

Enjoying the game so far. Just FYI, I have no technical issues whatsoever on my PC. Lucky me.

@arbitrarywater: Yep

From what I read elsewhere, The Riddler shit all over the map isn't mandatory, but you do need to rescue Catwoman. The rest of the side missions are a must for the true ending. If it does turn out that I do have to complete at least 200 of those stupid fucking riddles, I'm going to be pretty peeved.

It's an absolute disgrace how bad this game runs on PC. Even with a 980 it runs like junk. WB should be ashamed of themselves. Sure, Rocksteady didn't manage the port, but surely someone at some stage saw this and should have held the PC release.

This is the worst PC release of a AAA game I can remember. What a shame, especially as the game seems cool.

Arkham Asylum was pleasantly amazing

Arkham City was equally good, but overhyped/praised.

Arkham Knight looks to be more of the same, albeit in a much prettier skin.

Consensus from person who hasn't played it: wait until its 29.99.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: It is. There's an ending after doing all of the side stuff.(Which I did) The final cutscene only happens if you apprehend the Riddler... which requires all trophies to be collected.

@gunstarred: FUCK THAT SHIT!

There was only ever 3 options, none of them would have been surprising

• Damian Wayne
• Jason Todd
• Hush

I'm at 50% total completion atm (on PC).

The batmobile stuff actually appeals to me more and more especially as the challenges keep escalating. Driving it at 30 fps is still pleasant enough, so if it were 60fps while driving i'd probably be doing back flips at how much I love it.

They fucked up the M&K controls. Where before I could always state with confidence that the Arkham games controlled really well with m&k just as well as with a controller if not better for certain things. Now this is clearly a controller first game. I couldn't pin it down initially but as I started trying to do more no-hit/full-combo fights for funzies with tougher varied enemies the change became apparent very fast.

Before your moves/hits tracked to where the camera was pointing; now the hits magnetize to the direction of movement you are pushing at or nearest enemy by default (just as it does when using a controller. This is super significant to someone who 100% Arkham games several times over and went even beyond that a bit, because the mouse controls as they were basically meant that i could control the flow of combat, where batman would go next with A - pinpoint accuracy B - blindingly fast switching targets. This made a world of difference when all staring challenge rooms or going for high scores above the requirements. Now to control where batman will go next in a fight I have to use the WASD keys, which needless to say is clunky. I'm too far into the game to change now, but next time around after the patch it and stuff will be definitely using a controller.

Also this is kind of a super niche problem as I realise most people just used the controller in the previous games, I was a crazy outlier, so most people wont care about this issue.

So I just reinstalled Arkham City, to compare and contrast. Man the combat feels so much snappier and more responsive and on the ball compared to Arkham Knight. Even when I remove the 30 fps limit, and the combat in AK is flowing at 60 in a tight space it's just not as clean as the combat in City.

Come to think of it, the clunky way combat handles in AK feels a lot closer to Origins :/ I don't know if it's just because of the bad port job or because the additions they made overburden the base combat system, but the difference between City and Knight is very tangible when played side by side. At least for me the difference was instantly felt.

These are the kinds of hot takes I come to these threads for.

@historyinrust: I, pretty much, say that about every 60 dollar game these days. The value proposition of games at that price point is the lowest its ever been. Not saying whether I think it's good or not (I think it looks cool, don't know if it is)

No, I agree. Just giving you a hard time.

Yea the combat is straight up Origins levels busted.

So far I have experienced multiple cases of: attacks coming off screen where you couldn't see them, enemies canceling their counterable attacks mid swing, standard ground takedown completely breaks combos, hits still coming through even after you counter, batman simply refusing to jump to the next target if its sorta far away for the next hit instead of tracking to it like normal breaking your chain, enemies or you getting pushed onto elevated geometry (stairs/helicopter) and breaking combat, cape stunned enemies recovering while you only do 1 counter (for heavies this means when you try to continue the beatdown your combo is instantly broken if they are not stunned), certain combo takedowns not activating from time to time despite having meter. Probably still forgetting some. And just generally the dodges and counters not registering properly or registering too late to matter.

This is all fine if you are just slogging through combat and don't mind getting hit, but going for the perfect free flow results all of these little things become super frustrating because any 1 thing not properly registering and you break your combo.

@tennmuerti: Agreed. Sometimes it seems like batman is getting magnetically attracted to the baton guys.

I can see both sides, I liked the more simple versions from the first two games but the variety can make it interesting, personally I think it just slows it down and feel like so,e hits aren't my fault

I just had an electric fist bruiser get the red hit prompt after I jumped over him to hit another regular guy, do a snap 90 degree turn 5 meters away from me , and punch air not even in my direction but somewhere off to the right and hit/shock me in like a split second while skipping through animations.

And i lost count of how many times I've seen the cape stun go through a secondary target and do nothing instead of stunning and interrupting their attack. Other times it will barely touch them and still stun so you counter and whiff. Getting hit and dropping combos in a Batman combat system through no fault of your own? Fuck that. It's only a good system, as long as it's following it's own rules to a T, that polish in the first 2 games is a huge part of what makes it all work. This is why City is still the best that style of combat has ever been.

Still I am liking the story much more then City I have to admit. And with the motion blur properly turned off in the PC version now it's looking a lot better too.

I really didn't feel this one guys.

The story was surprisingly solid, despite the total lock of closure (think ME3's original ending), but the actual gameplay just didn't do it for me this time around.

As @tennmuerti stated, the combat is just completely "off". I lost count of how many times I had a combo broken due to Bats taking a swing at a stun-baton wielding thug as apposed to the bare-handed one right next due him. The counter window and auto-targeting system felt busted in comparison to AC, which is still the gold standard.

Then, there are those fucking god-awful, abhorrent, atrocious Batmobile sections. I felt as if the main story mission were thirty minutes longer than they had to be due to the nonstop Batmobile puzzles that constantly reared their ugly head into otherwise decent levels. Actually driving that thing is certainly possible once I got used to it, but the actual gameplay sections involving the car are among the worst slices of gameplay I've suffered through in recent memory. Playing through the AK Tank and Excavator battles left me not only frustrated, but completely confused as to how anyone at Rocksteady could them find enjoyable, let alone acceptable. Not to mention, THOSE ARE THE ONLY BOSS FIGHTS IN THE GAME.

The Arkham Knight is a fucking predator map, the villains in the side-quests are basically taken down with one-button commands, and Scarecrow is defeated in a cut-scene.

I still can't believe it.

Honestly, I know opinions are opinions, but the critical acclaim this is receiving is just mind-boggling.