LK ranking:
- Batman: Arkham City
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Batman: Arkham Origins
- Batman: Arkham Knight
- Gotham Knights
- Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate
- Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (GAAS hence worst rating, no need to play it :P)
Personally I found Knight best of the first four games by good margin
The batmobile + dead Joker constantly making fun of Bruce just made my day…and incredible graphics even to this day
I remember doing the Batmobile’s transformation from combat to race (?) modes, while driving round some cool corner and thinking whoa - next gen is here :)
Knight took away my favorite thing from the previous games, the Metroidvania aspect.
Hmm, I don’t particularly care about that. But didn’t City and Origins already dispense with that approach? I remember them being open world too, albeit smaller.
I didn’t play Origins, but City still had many elements that were basically discrete levels, a la Asylum. Even Knight did, but only a handful and very short.
Personally Asylum is still my favourite for that reason, though I liked a lot of the QoL and polish that City provided. It really had a sense of place, whereas the open world never really added much to City (and while it made more sense in Knight with the vehicle emphasis, the game suffered overall.
I don’t get the description of Asylum or City as Metroidvanias. They take place in a world that is interconnected and gated by acquiring tools and abilities, but the way they give access to those tools and abilities is entirely scripted and linear. There’s no exploration, you never choose when to take on a boss or go back to explore a new area of the map that was previously inaccessible. You go to sewer and fight the sewer boss when the game decides it’s time.
By the time we get to Arkham Knight it’s more open, but in an Ubisoft way.
Finished this morning. I enjoyed it quite a bit. No, it is not as good as rocksteady trilogy, but it kept me well engaged for some 30 hours, all of it playing as Batgirl. Combat is mechanically simpler, the loot mechanics are annoying and unnecessary, writing is not particularly great. But the main missions were all fun, with some nice atmospheric interiors, the city is also good looking, Batgirl is likeable protagonist with great booty to boot. The “main” sidemissions about going after Freeze, Clayface and Harley were all fun to play through too. There is a chase sequence with Clayface that was particularly awesome.
Regarding the technical state, I had two strange framedrops from 60 to zero that required game reload to fix. Other than that, no bugs, no crashes, no framerate dips below 60. So I consider PC version to be near flawless now.
7.5/10
DLC?
Just grabbed this on a sale the other day. I’ve played through the opening mission and fights 4 or so different times and I’ve settled on Nightwing to be my main character. We’ll see if I change it up during the course of the game or not.
I’ve been playing it off and on with Nightwing as my main too. Sometimes I pretend it’s a Daredevil game.
I still don’t fully understand the upgrade and crafting systems—I played one “night” as each character and it felt like I was doing something wrong because things I thought I was collecting or unlocking then weren’t available when I switched characters. So now I definitely just stick with Nightwing.
I think the Batcomputer mechanics as a whole are pretty obtuse, but I’m having a good time with the game so far. I can’t believe my Arkham muscle memory hasn’t kicked in in protest against the different controls. I was thankful to be able to remap so I could switch the momentum controls to the Rt Trigger.
From reading reviews, I seem to be in the minority because I love driving the Batcycle around Gotham. My only gripe is I’d like a more distant camera for that.
I wonder how come that never happened. Seems like Daredevil would be a solid candidate for an open-world game. Lawyer by day, bad-ass melee vigilante by night. He’s even got a successful TV show.
Actually, wait, come to think of it, there do seem to be unique challenges involved.
I would have a great time with a Daredevil game that amounted to just a competent ripoff of what worked in the Rocksteady Batman and Insomniac Spider-Man games. No frills, just another perspective on the Marvel world, lots of cameos from DD’s allies and enemies, with a competent 3rd person beat ‘em up structure and traversal somewhere between webslinging and grappling-hooking. His echolocation/sonar would just be another reskinned version of the bat-analysis/spider-sense/assassins creed/press the d-pad to highlight objectives feature.
And I bet there’s some brilliant, mind blowing, version that truly sets itself apart with an engaging take on his lawyer adventures, and an incredibly clever way of implementing his blindness in a way that enhances the action while providing the expected thrills and not compromising the AAA visuals.
But we’d probably get something that falls in the middle, a clunky bolted on lawyer mini game and a blind/sonar effect that turns combat into a chore by being different but not better, probably blacking out the screen and making us do a weird audio QTE to finish off every mini-boss.
And I don’t think the DD license would ever command the budget and resources Batman and Spidey can anyway.
Right? But like the combat dancing in Batman and the webswinging in Spider-Man, we have to wait on some enterprising game developer to invent it. Because all I can think of would be some dumb analogue to Predator Vision ™.
There have been games about blindness, right? About characters who rely on sound? I seem to recall one, but I think it was just a point and click adventure game.
Okay, you’ve turned me against the idea of a Daredevil game.
Holy Shit, you can play Spy Hunter in the Batca…um, Belfry!
Also, I just noticed that the 4 characters on the Main Menu screen reflect your current loadout. Nice touch. Sony’s Spider Man did the same thing with their loading screens.
Two observations from today:
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I really dig the Penguin’s character in this so far. Quiet, subdued, not a hint of Cockney.
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I just met the Court and it feels like the game has just stepped up a notch. I could swear some shots were straight from the comic. Very, very creepy.
I also apologize if my bumping of old threads is annoying. I’m always behind the times.
Next up: Myst!
( I kid)
Just finished the main game, basically mainlining the story missions and putting off as much of the side stuff as I could. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I don’t see how it was the original intent to have the main character be interchangeable. Everything felt like my Nightwing’s story, down to my conversations with Alfred and the final scene with the video feed and the NW logo closing out the game. What if I’d swapped throughout the entire game? Who would close out the final scenes?
Anyhoo, all good fun.
I’ve just finished the case files for Clayface and Mr. Freeze, and those were definitely the worst boss fights I can remember across this loosely defined franchise. Just tedious damage sponges to chip away at. Yuck.
Welp, I guess I’m done with the game then. Until NG+