Reviews are starting to hit

You're right, however, AO has by FAR the best narrative presentation in the series.

The writing and voice acting in that game is so far ahead of the rest of the games, and that makes it absolutely worth a play-through.

I got mine in the post today and I've just played an insanely long session of the game.(Pretty much from about 10 am to 4.45pm) and while I have enjoyed much of the game, I am seeing where Kevin VanOrd is coming from on this one. I get that the Batmobile is the new, newness, but not everything needs to use it "I need to hack this terminal, but I need the Batmobile to charge the power" "I need to blow up this wall using the Batmobile" "I need to pull this chain using the Batmobile, Batmobile, Batmobile, Batmobile. Everything uses the fucking Batmobile, and some of the puzzle elements are quite clever using you in conjunction with the Batmobile (Jeff has complained about this stuff on the Bombcast) but the combat is ok in small doses. It's all wave based and hasn't changed in all of my time playing it.

There is a series of side missions that involve a Bat-Villain that are very cool though. The Riddler section that required me to pretty much platform... or Batform with the Batmobile was pretty fucking miserable.

Punchy combat has been insanely easy with punches bypassing a ton of attacks without using the counter.

Storytelling has been mostly good so far, with a very nice twist introduced after a big set piece moment. Try not to have anyone spoil the game. It's a cool twist on something that could have been really lame. Kevin Conroy's performance bounces all over the place and at times is terrible, which makes me kinda sad. The game has been the best at propelling you forward with the story. I've done a bunch of side stuff, but I've never wanted to progress with the main missions as I have in this one.

Playing on PS4. Runs fine most of the time with minor weirdness from time to time, like getting stuck crouching for a few seconds or pauses in cutscenes. The frame rate takes a nose dive every single time you drive in the Batmobile.

Kieth VanOrd.

They were both great games. I like AO better then AC, but they were both an at least an 8 imo

You know... I'm a little skeptical about this. How can this game be given such high ratings, but most of the complaints are about forced batmobile sections that aren't fun, it's more of the same gameplay, and the story is supposedly the worst in the series? That doesn't sound like a game that deserves a 10/10 or even a 9 for that matter.

I couldn't bring myself to play Origins for more then about 15 minutes. I'll still likely get Arkham Knight due to the positive reviews, and I need something else to play while still slogging through the remaining chalice dungeons in Bloodborne(yeah still...).

I haven't played Origins but that does seem to be the consensus from all I've read. Asylum and City I've always thought had really poor writing and storytelling, and the voice acting is kind of middling overall. Mark Hamill's superb, yet Kevin Conroy I always thought sounded like he was phoning it in, especially in Asylum. Point being that hearing that Knight has kind of a bleh and unsatisfactory story doesn't surprise me and seems par for the course.

I just jumped on to Gamespot to check out the comments section of Kevin's review and, damn, are people cruel. This site should be proud of its higher level of positive comments. As for this game, it doesn't look to have evolved enough for being, technically, the 4th game of its kind. I bet it is still a good time though. I have 150 hours of The Witcher 3 to play while I wait for its price to drop.

It's actually really good, I bout it when it came out for 50$(what 2 years ago?) and finally just played and beat the game last week. Detective stuff is fun, story is good, and the voice acting is some of the best. The stuff between Batman and the Joker is quality character building IMO.

Brett Gerstmann.

Donald O'Dwyer.

Origins was great. I really dont get the hate for that game. Barring the bugs anyway. AA was the best, but AO was better then AC imo. People shit on AO like it was a 5. I really dont see how anyone can say it was worse then AC.

Kevin VanOrd

Alan Navarro.

Brian Shoemaker.

I simply won't allow this exchange to stop until we have alter egos for every person working in the game industry.

Daniel Ryckert.

Dustin McElroy.

Katt Klepek.

I've still got The witches 3 to play but I'm down for this afterward. Man I'm probably looking at playing witcher 3, Arkham knight and fallout 4 back to back to back

oh no what did this thread become

Wonderful! I suppose I'm in the minority, but I've loved every Arkham game so far (Yes. Even Origins) They're some of the few games that I can go back and play all the way through on a yearly basis. Even if this got average scores I'd be excited. So, to see these scoresmake me as giddy as a kid on Christmas. Haven't felt like that for quite a while to be honest.

Winnie Caravella

August Walker

Is it weird that I don't know any of these people?

I got my Batman key today!

Origins is fine but I was batman burned out a bit so I stopped knowing this would come out. im ready to play this kinda game one more time

I was late to the party, and only played asylum and city last year. and damn both were fantastic. If you like those games you love them, and if you dont, you dont. simple as that. Origins was a bit, well, shit, but i played it non the less, and already forgot about it, but thats why there is steam sales, to not feel bad when it only cost 10 bucks lol.

If this one is anything like city, or asylum for that matter, some nice graphics on pc, good acting, a decent story, and it should be as good as a time as expected. Not that i care about reviews too much, but why does gamespot have such a low score compared to everyone else lol. The reviewer is either the only one who doesnt like batman lol

From what I've seen, Gamespot has a history of kind of always having scores lower from everyone else.

Looks like Gamespot is probably the more down to earth score this time. Looking at the Polygon score makes me think that this new game fixed the "misogyny" thug dialogue and added some ethnic diversity.

Gamespot's community has been a cesspit for as long as I can remember. One of the worst I've seen was when Kevin gave RE6 a 4/10. Had to put up with 30-40 year old children and the like. I feel for Kevin, he deserves better.

As for the game itself, it's not really high on my list, but I'll still eventually check it out.

I can't stand this dude.

@maedhros925: I just don't trust the dude. I disagree with pretty much every score he has ever given.

Witcher 3

Dying Light

Far Cry 4

Dragon Age - Way off on this one

D4

@colourful_hippie: considering how flagrantly sexualized all the female characters always are in the Batman games I'm surprised Polygon let that slide without docking two solid grades for exploitation and misogyny or whatever else Arthur Gies conjures up these days.

@horseman6: Characterizing it as an issue of "trust" seems to imply that there is one correct opinion to have on any game, and that's simply not true. We all have our own preferences and sensibilities, and that's going to color our opinion on everything including video games.

Kevin's concerns are definitely the biggest I've had with the upcoming title. I've seen a bit of other gameplay, and it seems similar enough/refined a bit more. I'm convinced it will absolutely be a GOOD game, but if the batmobile really is that forced upon you, that doesn't sit well with me.

If it was like, a tutorial mission introducing it, then making it entirely optional I would be fine with it, but he states it absolutely isn't that. I guess we'll see how much it gets in my way when it releases, I already have it regardless from a gfx card purchase.

Most are giantbomb, gamespot and former giant bomb...

Who'd you buy from? I bought from GMG and still no key, is the preload available yet? I guess waiting a couple more hours is worth saving 45% on the game but i'm hoping i can get a code before tuesday.

The traversal mechanics in AO really put me off that game for a while. Too often it felt like I was in a dead-zone with no grapple points to extend my glide. Even buildings I remember I could grapple from in AC, had no grapple points in AO. The rest of the game didn't deserve the dump it got though, the whole not fixing game breaking bugs aside.

I didn't have a problem really, it had the mechanic where you could glide down and up again to boost your flight. (They don't tutorial it though i guess they expect you to remember from city. I did find that some of the taller buildings had no grapple points which was super wierd though.

I guess i avoided the game breaking glitches by waiting so long, i do remember them deciding to put out dlc instead of fixing it first which pissed everybody off.

I'll share some of both of these sentiments. Running around to do all the side mission stuff, riddler trophies etc I really noticed the lack of grapple points. But I also agree that the game got unfairly dumped on because it wasn't done by Rocksteady, and people were experiencing Batman fatigue. The Deathstroke boss fight is one of the best of all Batmans boss fights. Considering AA actually had some big let down boss fights, I thought as a whole they were best in AO. Story was intriguing, it was a bit tiring to see Batman/Joker again but they did it in a way that was intriguing.

I played it at launch on PS3, and it ran...acceptably. Not amazingly. Framerate had hiccup issues, I never had any game breaking bugs but I did have a few straight up freezes. I won't deny the game came out at the end of a console generation that like many releases back then it was certainly a PC and One/PS4 title being pushed too hard on last gen consoles.

Merle Kish.

A little genderbending, nice.

Alexis Navarro

I bought mine from CD Keys. I spent a while researching foreign keys before I bought it, and it seems activated keys are only disabled if they're stolen. CD Keys is a respected site.

No pre-load yet. Looks like I'll have to keep downloading it while at work.

Yes I completely agree!

Also, I've found that it had the best cut-scenes in the series. The shooting, lighting, direction and animation were noticeably better executed. Something about them felt like the director really tried to get that comic-book vibe, mainly by dramatic shooting angles and lighting.

I never played any of the batman games and am currently on the process of fixing that, I already had both asylum and city on my steam library for ages now, but is origins worth it? for what I read it seems it' s basically arkham city with a different location, or is it safe to skip it?

How is this not Domhnall O'Dwyer.

Depends. Plot-wise, it's not important in the grand scheme of things and it is very similar in gameplay to Arkham City. However, it has the best story, overall is a good game and I felt it handled the side-stuff better than AC did (which was just overbearing with the amount of shit you had to collect and how little notice you got whether you actually could do it).

Was not going to get into this game at all. But I got a Steam code for PC on ebay for 21 bucks... so that was a bit hard to pass up. im excited!

Does anyone know if you can use skins during the first playthrough of the game or can you not change your costume until New Game + like the previous games?