{"id":18175,"date":"2015-11-22T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T01:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=18175"},"modified":"2015-11-22T11:00:20","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T01:00:20","slug":"batman-arkham-knight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=18175","title":{"rendered":"Batman: Arkham Knight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"batmanposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Platform: \u00a0<\/strong>Playstation 4
\nDeveloper: \u00a0<\/strong>Rocksteady Studios
\nPublisher: \u00a0<\/strong>Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment<\/p>\n

R<\/span>ocksteady Studios made their mark on the video game landscape in 2009 with the release of their seminal\u00a0Batman: Arkham Asylum<\/em>, a\u00a0title that perfectly captured the spirit\u00a0of the Dark Knight’s comic book series as he battled a colourful cast of villains and inmates at the titular Arkham Asylum. \u00a0Everything about\u00a0Arkham Asylum<\/em> felt note perfect. \u00a0The dark, gritty presentation running on the Unreal 3 engine was as good as we’d ever seen Batman in interactive form. \u00a0The play mechanics – which incorporated a ‘detective’ mode, a combat system that emphasized stealth over brawn and a compact environment that became gradually more accessible\u00a0in Metroidvania fashion all combined to make a scintilating gaming experience and one of the best ‘super hero’ games ever made.<\/p>\n

Since then, both Rocksteady and their fans clearly had aspirations to see this formula applied on a larger scale. \u00a0Bigger, better and in an open world environment. \u00a0Rocksteady took one step towards realizing that goal\u00a0with\u00a0Batman: Arkham City<\/em>\u00a0which took place in a much larger environment than\u00a0Asylum<\/em> but still stopped short of giving players access to all of Gotham City. \u00a0With\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em>, their first game on the current generation of consoles, they have finally got there. \u00a0Not only can players traverse all of Gotham City, they can do so in a new mode of transportation – the oft requested Batmobile finally makes its debut in the series.<\/p>\n

\"batmanarkhamknight\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Full scores to Rocksteady for delivering on wish fulfilment for their fans. \u00a0They were clearly attuned to what their audience wanted and made that game accordingly. \u00a0As expected, the game looks as gorgeous as ever and as an open world environment, Gotham City looks incredible with its distinctive art deco architecture, bright neon lights and neo noir landscape of rain and mist.<\/p>\n

The story picks up where Arkham City<\/em> left off. \u00a0Comic book deaths don’t normally mean very much so to drive home the finality of the events in the last game,\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> opens with Joker’s body being fed into a furnace. \u00a0The stage is set for\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> when Scarecrow puts Gotham City on notice by threatening to release a new toxin city-wide that will turn anyone it engulfs into a crazed killer. \u00a0The city is evacuated and aside from a handful of cops and firefighters, the city becomes overrrun by Gotham’s criminal underworld.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As Batman races to find the source of the toxins, he crosses paths with the mysterious Arkham Knight, a masked vigilante who appears to have a personal vendetta against Batman and who also seems to know everything about him. \u00a0If that wasn’t enough, all of the usual cast of Batman villains begin to run amok and one of Bruce Wayne’s closest allies is afflicted with Scarecrow’s toxin and commits suicide in a fit of mental anguish.<\/p>\n

As you might imagine,\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> is everything you’d expect from a closing chapter to this hugely popular series. \u00a0The landscape is vast, the cast has never been bigger and the stakes are as high as they’ve ever been. \u00a0That’s why its so disappointing to discover, after the initial buzz wears off and you have a chance to delve a few hours into the game that its not quite as well executed as you’d hope.<\/p>\n

Firstly – let’s talk about the environment. \u00a0It’s great to have access to Gotham City but personally, when I think about wanting to see\u00a0Batman roam an open world city, I\u00a0meant one that was actually populated with regular citizens of Gotham. \u00a0Gliding around a near empty Gotham that is only populated by pockets of nameless thugs that take a couple of button clicks to dispatch wasn’t really what I was hoping for. \u00a0Also, although Gotham looks more or less in line with what you’d want – that classic gothic cityscape of the Tim Burton films – its actually rather difficult to navigate in practise. \u00a0There aren’t really many distinctive looking landmarks and even late into the game I found myself often referring to the map to get my bearings. \u00a0It all looks rather samey.<\/p>\n

\"arkhamknightpic2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Next up – the Batmobile. \u00a0Kudos to whoever it was at Rocksteady that decided that the Batmobile should handle like the cars from Criterion’s\u00a0Burnout<\/em>\u00a0series. \u00a0It encourage driving at breakneck speed and the generous physics when the car collides with its surroundings means that players should spend most of their time travelling at a million miles an hour and not having to focus on carefully navigating tight corners or other vehicles on the road. \u00a0Having said, whilst I’m happy with how the Batmobile moves in general, it is also shoehorned into the game in other ways that feels incredibly contrived and silly. \u00a0Taking its queue from the recent Nolan films, the Batmobile can be converted into an armoured tank that handles like a mech – it can strafe sideways and fire missiles and a grappling hook. \u00a0These mechanics are then applied to several puzzles in the game where the vehicle needs to be navigated around\u00a0incredibly tight, confined spaces as it is used to take out obstacles, work as a pulley and traverse through areas that Batman can’t reach alone. \u00a0The use of the Batmobile in this fashion feels incredibly forced and incongruous with how the vehicle is utilized in the franchise. \u00a0Another thing – entertaining\u00a0side quests are the lifeblood of any open world game worth its salt and sadly the ones in\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> involving the Batmobile are dull and repetitive in the extreme. \u00a0There are just two mission variants. \u00a0One involves shooting about two dozen tanks. \u00a0The other involves racing a van and trying to run\/shoot it off the road. \u00a0These two tasks have to be repeated over ten times each. \u00a0It’s a real chore to do and feels like a blatant padding out of the content in the game.<\/p>\n

In fact, side quests in\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> in general are very, very poor. \u00a0Considering the rich catalogue of villains and Batman lore in which Rocksteady had to draw upon, this is very disappointing. \u00a0The game was also done no favours by launching so close to CD Projekt’s\u00a0The Witcher 3<\/em>, another open world game that spoiled gamers for content and was notable for how distinct and varied the side quests were. \u00a0The Arkham Knight<\/em> feels like an open world game from ten years ago with most side quests being blatant collect-a-thons that repeat the same task over and over. \u00a0Find twenty firemen. \u00a0Take out a dozen tanks. \u00a0Deactivate a bunch of\u00a0mines. \u00a0Find two hundred Riddler trophies. \u00a0Meh.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"arkhamknightpic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sadly, the storytelling in\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> is also pretty rough around the edges and a cut below the previous games. \u00a0Perhaps in the past it had been a case of ‘less is more’. \u00a0There was just enough information fed to you and Batman grunted just a handful of lines as necessary to tell an effective tale. \u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em>, with its greatly enhanced production values, has a much more complex tale to tell with many more twists and turns than the previous games. \u00a0The problem is that the dialogue\u00a0is subpar and Batman’s lines make him sound like a selfish man-baby who doesn’t work well with others. \u00a0He is written to be\u00a0totally devoid of any charm. \u00a0In Arkham Knight<\/i>,\u00a0the Caped Crusader\u00a0spends most of the game refusing help, ignoring the\u00a0advice of others and talking in a soporific monotone voice that kills dead any sense of drama or pathos that the script attempts.<\/p>\n

I think for a simplistic story that is also bordering on Saturday morning cartoon quality, it doesn’t earn the right to use the window dressing or the narrative beats that it does. \u00a0In a bold indifference to any social changes in the video game community over the last eighteen months, the women in\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> are often scantily clad and blatantly sexualized for no good reason (what happened to Poison Ivy?!). \u00a0The game also uses subject matter such as suicide and torture as pivotal points in its story which feels out of step with its otherwise juvenile and lightweight storytelling.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Batman: Arkham Knight<\/em> seems like a cautionary tale that bigger isn’t necessarily better and we should be careful what we wish for. \u00a0Having an open world environment for Batman to explore seemed like a good idea. \u00a0As did incorporating the Batmobile into the game. \u00a0But in retrospect, it becomes much easier to appreciate just how important\u00a0the tight, carefully designed environment of the original\u00a0Arkham Asylum<\/em> game was to its success. \u00a0How much more fun it was in that game to stealthily take out four guards in complete silence compared to the combat in\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> where players often finding themselves mashing buttons endlessly as Batman wipes out twenty goons at a time.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of moments in\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em> that are still fun to play. \u00a0It’s a gorgeous looking game and gliding around Gotham City is still a thrill. \u00a0But the extra layers of content add very little. \u00a0Having a quest tracker that gives you dozens of missions to do is all well and good but not if most of them aren’t fun to play. \u00a0The game’s appeal is a mile wide and an inch deep. \u00a0At this point, I’d happily see Rocksteady move on from the\u00a0Arkham<\/em> series and try their hand at something else. \u00a0They’re clearly very talented developers and\u00a0Arkham Knight<\/em>\u00a0at its worst is still a mile better than the next best super hero game but overall, this feels like a bit of a misstep. \u00a0How they recover and what they do from here will be interesting to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The closing chapter to the Batman Arkham series is bigger but not necessarily better<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2301,2302,404,406,2303],"class_list":["post-18175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-arkham","tag-arkham-knight","tag-batman","tag-rocksteady-studios","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18175"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18535,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18175\/revisions\/18535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}