Batman: Arkham Knight

In order to hype myself up for the finale of the Arkham series, I was reading comics and watching animated batman movies all year. I thought I'd get burnt out and eventually would lose hype for Batman: Arkham Knight. I was glad to be wrong because hands down, this is easily one of the best games I have ever played in my whole llife despite its shortcomings. Sadly those drawbacks are not easy to ignore.

Batman: Arkham Knight starts really slow in comparison to the climactic event we experienced with Arkham City but it slowly and progressively turns to be a masterpiece that I will always appreciate. I cried rivers to the story and I can safely say it used one of the best narrative techniques I have seen in the video game medium. Not a single comic gave me goosebumps aside from The Killing Joke as much as this game and even that was referenced. So many references to different Batman mediums. 

The game asks a lot of questions and gives out many theories to the characters we always loved. It also showed a lot of heartfelt moments between a lot of characters that are always in the series. I really loved the developers's choice to take a lot of brave decisions regarding the story in this series. Arkham Asylum is still my personal favorite, but this game really puts a whole other meaning to "finishing touches".

Let's visit Gotham City one last time

I really loved every second of the game, but it is time to address the minor annoyances to me that may have been quite major to the rest of the players and I completely understand that it is our right, as gamers to receive a complete copy devoid of any performance or graphical issues. The quality of the game is in fact, very low for the PC version. I'm afraid that I have to admit that it is a bad decision to buy this version and preferably move to the console ones. On the other hand, for me at least, I figured I'd take a lucky shot in the first 2 hours of the game and hope for a game breaking bug that would push me to refund it. However, the performance issues started a bit later into the game and I stuck with it. The screen would freeze for me when there is a lot going on, sometimes when batman opens a door, I would wait for about 5 minutes for it to load the next screen. Sometimes when I'd grapple I'd find myself on the other end of Gotham City in the blink of an eye. All these are minor annoyances to me since I was mostly entranced by the story. 

Now that I've addressed the issues that prevented a lot of players from thinking twice about playing it, it is time to head onto my experience or opinion of the actual game. I loved the campaign, it really made me feel like there was a lot to do and despite me doing side missions, I was never distracted from the main story. The only side mission that I didn't feel obligated to do were the riddler trophies. Then we'd move onto the popular opinion between those that favor the batmobile and those that hate it. I generally dislike driving in games and being the batman, I feel more involved with the character if I am gliding around and overlooking the whole city instead of crashing into signposts and civillians, only to find them respawning later on. It felt uninvolving and I found it funny that every cop car I crash into, they'd apologize to me. Now onwards to the batmobile in Battle Mode, that's a whole different story to me, to which I wholeheartedly enjoyed fighting in the batmobile. Which really puts me in the middle between two opinions.

Meet your new best friend, you wont be leaving its side any time soon

Combat is the same as previous games and there are a few skills here and there, but alas, I felt that I played with the batmobile for more than half of the game that I didn't feel it was necessary to upgrade my skills that much. Upgrading my batmobile armor was more essential and sure enough, I beat the game without the need of using combat on foot as much. I easily recommend Batman: Arkham Knight and I don't recommend the PC version. I think it is humble of a developer to apologize for their shortcomings in a port but at the same time, it is pretty weak to do so. I'd rather you buy the console version. Regardless I'll leave my thumbs up here because it is that good.