The Bat Returns: Arkham Knight
I’m not going to lie, this is a game that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time now. Arkham Asylum was the first game in a long time that just pulled me straight into the narrative and gameplay immediately and with a vengeance. I played it and City on the X360. I pre-ordered Arkham City at the time, and when it launched, I played it like it was my job, and tore through that game. I felt like Rocksteady had presented such a very impressive version of the character and the entire Batman universe. Needless to say, AK had a lot to live up to, and in short, if the game had come out a year ago or more, I think my opinions would be different, but a lot has happened in that time that have shaped my updated world view, and this game suffers from a bit of lack of self reflection from the developer.
TL;DR version: I enjoyed this game, it was a solid entry in the franchise. It did not surpass Arkham City for me. If you enjoyed the first two, play this one.
WARNING: Many of my issues with this game are related to the plot, and as such, there are going to be spoilers in this post. Sorry, but it is what it is.
To start out with, if you have played the previous entries (and honestly, if you haven’t - you really should at least play Arkham City before you even fire this one up. Direct sequel here), you will be familiar with the control scheme and mechanics. This both works as a positive and negative. Because of the length of time between entries (I’m going to ignore Origins for the sake of argument, and also for it not being part of the actual story trilogy), the lack of consistent callouts in the early game for things like, “Which button was parry again?”, can cause some issues. Especially for folks that might have jumped consoles like myself - jumped from 360 to PS4.
Anyway, the controls are solid for the main game play. Oh hey, they added in a complete new entry in the game - the Batmobile! Cool, right? Well .... not always. Whoever decided that the Batmobile should be able to run loop-de-loops through sewer tunnels, and up the side of walls really needs to be sat down next to some new playtesters so that they can hear (and feel) first hand just how BAD these implementations were. Mostly, the car bits are fine except for when you need to do these things. Then the controls start to fight you because the camera does not follow the vehicle, and should you get even momentarily turned around, you will immediately lose speed, and you cannot regain it without completely starting over from a much earlier place. Given that some of these challenges are timing based, this just adds an unnecessary level of frustration to an already difficult thing.
The one completely positive thing I will say is that the graphics are gorgeous and the sounds are spot on. These are the voice actors (at least for Batman and Joker) that most folks are going to be familiar with, and embody classic interpretations of the characters. Rocksteady takes full advantage of the current gen hardware to produce some very impressive visuals, and the atmospheric effects in particular are super pretty.
OK, enough of that; let’s get to the meat of this, the story. Just a secondary warning, from here on in, I will be talking specifics of the game’s plot, so if you don’t want spoilers of this or the trilogy in general, leave now. You’ve been warned.
The game opens on making you actively be the person that cremates the Joker’s corpse; I was waiting for him to open his eyes when the on screen button prompt to incinerate the body came up. Yep, that’s a good way to draw me in at the beginning. (No sarcasm here - player agency is key.) We get into a solid intro showing how you get to a point where the entirety of Gotham is filled with only criminals, and no real civilians. Contrived? Maybe a little, but no worse than any other comic book story.
So now we start getting into some issues. As Batman, one of the early things you have to do is rescue Poison Ivy from Scarecrow. *sigh* OK, the damsel in distress thing is ancient and unnecessary, but fine, we’ll deal with it and move on. Next, convince Ivy to play on your side and help out against Scarecrow. By appealing to her humanity? By pointing out that you just rescued her when Scarecrow would have undoubtedly done horrible things to her? No, by using the ages old empty threat of, “I’ll kill all the plants in the city!” Really? Seriously? We’re going to rehash this again? And she’s going to fall for it? AGAIN?! Fuck, whatever, move on.
Hey, Oracle is helping out on intel; this is excellent! I love Babs, and her as Oracle is fantastic. Sure this means we’re following post-Killing Joke, pre-new Batgirl comics, but there’s a super strong, super awesome character there. Right up until the point that Scarecrow kidnaps her. *sigh* Didn’t we already do this? In THIS GAME?! Fine, next damsel in distress, time to go rescue her.
Cue Riddler. Can I just take a moment and say, “Fuck this guy,” in this series? He has been added as the completionist bullshit entry in the franchise. He has some stupid number of niggly bits you need to do in order to get the “full” game completion. Very, very few of his little “challenges” are riddles, which breaks character too much for me, sorry. I love the character of Riddler, and there are so many cool things you can do with him. Turning him into what he is, especially in this entry, is disgusting. Whatever, we can deal with the wife beater wearing idiot claiming to be Riddler and move on. What? He somehow kidnapped Catwoman? We’re going to do this a THIRD TIME ALREADY?! The damsel in distress bit is getting seriously thick, and causing me some mental disconnect. Have the developers of this game been living in a cave for the past year? Knowing what I do of game development, I can say this isn’t entirely implausible, but given the fact that they specifically address and poke fun at the GG idiocy that’s been plaguing the industry in the past year, obviously they haven’t been; they’re just being lazy. At least Catwoman has a small bit of her own agency as she has to be an active member in her own rescue. This does not excuse the lazy writing that got us to this point. At all.
OK, time to go back to Barbara. Hey, that looks like the same chamber they were holding Ivy in earlier. Why is there a gun on the table next to her? Filling the room with fear toxin? Nonono, they are not about to .... *BAM* .... and they fucking put Barbara. Fucking. Gordon. in the damned fridge. (If you don’t know this reference - check Google for Women in Refrigerators) I came --><--- that close to throwing the controller across the room, popping the game disc out of the console, and stopping right then and there. The only reason I kept playing the game? Because the devs have done amazing things in this game to put you inside Bruce’s head, and showing how he is gradually going crazy over the course of the game due to exposure to the fear toxin himself. I have to assume that some amount of what is going on here isn’t what is really happening.
So to bring us back to a positive thing, what the devs have done with making the game environment change WHILE you’re playing the game, and in such a way that you don’t see it happen, is absolutely the most amazing thing I’ve experienced in a game in a very long time. Making the character you are playing as an unreliable narrator? I like this. A lot.
The story continues, and for the most part the rest of the plot is unremarkable as far as anything controversial or innovative. Solid, good stories intertwining in the classic Arkham style, some things pushing forward while others take a back seat.
I am glad to say that I was right, and while they do not explain (nor do they really need to) what really happened in the scene where you see Barbara Gordon shoot herself, it did not happen, and she returns to continue her role of, as Joker puts it, Batman’s IT department. They start to build a bit of a romantic interest between her and Tim Drake as this iteration’s Robin, but it doesn’t really go anywhere or get explored at all. Given the focus of the game on Batman and his own budding schizophrenia, this isn’t entirely surprising, but a little bit disappointing to me.
A final thought on this before concluding. When you finish the main story mission (the Scarecrow story), you are given an interaction with Alfred where you instruct him to initiate the Knightfall protocol. If you have not completed enough of the side missions, you will be sent back into Gotham to finish cleaning up in order to see the actual ending of the game. Unfortunately, they’ve made some poor choices with the UI and text elements that caused me some confusion. When looking at the quest status, what I saw was, “Capture 4 of Arkham’s Most Wanted to initiate Knightfall protocol.” Cool - I’ve already captured like 6 or 7 of these jokers, I’m good. No, really not. What it should have read was, “Capture 4 MORE ...”, because the real status bar was near the top of the screen and not near where my eyes were focused each time I hit that screen. Seriously, Rocksteady; hire some fresh eyes to come in and do some UX testing. This is basic stuff right here. I did finally get through the rest of the necessary missions, and hit Knightfall. I haven’t read this story line in the comics, so I don’t know how closely it mirrors it, or how much they pulled from it for the game. It was a good ending, but didn’t have the same impact that Arkham City’s did.
Ultimately, I feel like this game is a solid ending to a great trilogy of games. I feel like it falls back on tropes that are tired, and have been getting more and more visibility shone on them. The developers showed both their willingness to acknowledge things going on in the outside world, and completely disregard them at the same time when it suits them, even when what they’re ignoring is problematic. As I said, if this game had come out a year or more ago, my personal feelings may have been a bit different here, but I have grown, and had my eyes opened to a larger world that I hadn’t fully seen before now. I think it is long past time for developers to do the same thing.
At the end of the day, I would probably still put this one over Arkham Asylum, but I think Rocksteady peaked with Arkham City. Is this a bad game? Not at all. Is it perfect, as Polygon’s perfect 10 rating would suggest? No. I don’t think there is such a thing as a perfect game, so that 10 might as well not exist as far as I’m concerned. I enjoyed it; I acknowledge its problems; I hope that Rocksteady recognizes these problems and learn from it to put the necessary effort to improve on whatever they go on to do next.
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