Batman: Arkham Knight

You want to talk about a game that’s earned itself a ridiculously bad reputation, you talk about Arkham Knight. Like its namesake, this game has been beaten to a pulp and held over a cliff overlooking the precipice of disaster due to its miserable PC debut. Developer Rocksteady even providing full Steam refunds for anyone who purchased the game irrespective to when they purchased it or how long they’ve played it for.

I was one of those people in that enormous refund line, disastrous framerates and glitch gameplay had blinded even MY love for the Bat. UNTIL!

A random 4GB patch was applied to the game that supposedly fixed some of the issues, but they’ve promised us such patches before and I was a little more than just cautious, but I downloaded it anyway. And let me tell you I was whisked on one of the grandest journeys through Gotham I am ever likely to experience from here on out (Unless you can top it, no pressure Telltale).

Picking up shortly after the calamitous and landscape changing events of Arkham City, Arkham Knight tells the story of a world without Joker, and more importantly, a Batman without one. For fans of the comics, the game touches up on storylines such as A Death in the Family, and the Killing Joke, which are by far some of the strongest arcs in the Batman lore.

Scarecrow arises and has Gotham at his mercy as he threatens to blast it and the entire east coast with his world famous fear gas, he orders the entire city to evacuate (Which they do, why do people still live in Gotham?). But he is not working alone, as our Dark Knight sets out to stop the dastardly Dr. Crane, he encounters a cowled anti Batman that calls himself the Arkham Knight and his mercenary army. And it seems that at every turn, the Arkham Knight has Batmans number, GADZOOKS BATMAN! WHAT DO WE DO?!

You do what you do every Arkham game, you take to the skies of Gotham in a free roam experience of liberating the entirety of your city from everyone who seeks to take advantage of the evacuation, with many returning favorites, and some new faces that I shan’t spoil!

And you don’t have to fly if you don’t want to, because this game introduces the very hyperpowered Batmobile, which you can use to cause absurd amounts of damage to the sights and hotspots of Gotham. Also you need it to take out mercenary tanks and stuff, but to me that was very secondary to scenery destruction.

The game also introduces some fairly sick new combat features (In addition to the old, night stalker stealth vibe familiar to the Arkham series, that’s still all there.) with the introduction of the occasional dual fighter free flow events, where you and AI ally take on a large number of enemies and free flow combo through them in (if you’re good enough) seamless and poetic combat, I’m always hungry for more after those sequences and I don’t get nearly enough of them.

The framerate issues have been fixed, the graphics are slick and the story is too rich for fans of the Arkham series to pass up, many a heartjarring moment and anus clenching encounters keep you pretty edgy for the most part if you time your primary and side missions properly.

The Steam version includes several new skins for the Bat, the Batmobile, and several Arkham Stories that have you playing through little mini missions as Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Batgirl, and more! (Play the main story first, don’t bother looking at the Arkham stories list as it may spoil things for those who have even a remote idea of lore.

Bonus Harley Quinn original butt shot!