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Is the Batmobile the worst AAA gameplay mechanic in recent memory?

Zakalwe

Banned
The only awkward thing about the Batmobile for me is braking. I always hit LT instead of X by mistake - switching to tank mode when I meant to drift around a corner. Other than that, the Batmobile is cool and I think the game uses it well without it feeling forced. Those moments when you're trapped by your enemies then you realize that you can remote control the Batmobile to take them out from behind are pretty awesome.

Switch the control mode to toggle in the gameplay settings.

Moves Break and Vulcan cannon to L2.
 
It makes sense for Sonic to be playing pinball in Casinopolis. He has to. However the game designers choose how frequently he has to do something that's not typically how the player expects to interact with the character.

Noted about the rogues gallery though.

Honestly, if you do the sidequests, the Battle Tank is a relatively small portion of the gameplay. The batmobile itself is a much larger percentage but the non Battle Tank aspects of the batmobile don't seem very divisive.

Critical path the Battle Tank is used pretty frequentlybut that's because critical path is where you are fighting the Arkham Knight. Even then most of the time it's essentially used almost as favor in short segments outside of regular, more traditional Arkham style gameplay. However there is a stretch from about 70-80% of the game that is almost all Battle Tank and that seems to be the breaking point for people who don't care for it.
 

Zakalwe

Banned
I'd quite like to read what the exact ratio is of all gameplay types.

Combat, exploration, predator, tank battles, pursuit, etc...

Ultimately I know it won't matter to people who feel like it's too much, but I'm still curious.
 

SomTervo

Member
Honestly, if you do the sidequests, the Battle Tank is a relatively small portion of the gameplay. The batmobile itself is a much larger percentage but the non Battle Tank aspects of the batmobile don't seem very divisive.

Critical path the Battle Tank is used pretty frequentlybut that's because critical path is where you are fighting the Arkham Knight. Even then most of the time it's essentially used almost as favor in short segments outside of regular, more traditional Arkham style gameplay. However there is a stretch from about 70-80% of the game that is almost all Battle Tank and that seems to be the breaking point for people who don't care for it.

Exactly. 100%. The batmobile only becomes a problem if you mainline the story missions.

The point is that it's an open world game. When you get tired of one aspect, go do something else. Whenever i got bored of/irritated with Batmobile stuff i'd go do side missions for an hour or two. Then the fatigue would be gone and i'd return to story missions where it's more prevalent and be fine with it.
 
Exactly. 100%. The batmobile only becomes a problem if you mainline the story missions.

The point is that it's an open world game. When you get tired of one aspect, go do something else. Whenever i got bored of/irritated with Batmobile stuff i'd go do side missions for an hour or two. Then the fatigue would be gone and i'd return to story missions where it's more prevalent and be fine with it.

Most of the main-story parts where the game locks you into what you're doing so you can't tackle any sidequests are also parts where you are pretty much exclusively using the Batmobile.

Also, the drill/excavator boss battle is so hilariously bad.
 
The battle tank was awesome and I loved the arena battles and puzzles. The batmobile chases however are boring as hell and way too simple.
 
I hated it. Ruined AK for me. Combat in it wasn't fun at all. And traversal wise it was a solution to a problem that never existed. Getting around the city in Arkham City was easy as fuck.
 
It's not great, but I honestly give it a pass for the occasional moment where you perfectly take a corner - and the camera just perfectly stalls as you boost out of the drift. If you boil down 'game feel' to singular seconds, that's a good second. Helps that the game is fucking gorgeous to boot.
 

Melchiah

Member
I'd say it's the worst in the recent memory, as it made me quit the game after two lengthy tank battles were followed by a similar boss fight. And I had no problems with completing AA and AC.


EDIT: Oh, this was a thread resurrection.
 

Andodalf

Banned
Liked driving it, hated driving it on walls. That was super broken. As such, I hated to drill "Fight". I loved normal Bat tank combat, that was top notch. Loved taking on the high levels bombs, I'd try to beat all 50 enemies without taking a hit!
 

JoduanER2

Member
Is not like that the batmobile is a bad gameplay element per se its just that the rocksteady's batman games are much better without it.
 

cordy

Banned
The game wasn't horrible but the Batmobile definitely decreased my fun time a bit. Man, using that was annoying.
 
For me it's just that strafing around an arena blowing up dozens upon dozens of enemy tanks is not enjoyable. I don't want to do it, and there's no way to skip it or mitigate it in any way. I loved Asylum and City because I found it so fun to be Batman; loved stealthing, loved fighting, loved gliding, loved solving puzzles. Arkham Knight still has all that, but mixed in with those things I do like are what feels like endless tank battles that I actively do not like. I don't want to do them any more. I just don't want to shoot another tank, end of story. So when I think about maybe replaying Arkham Knight one of these days, I'm just completely put off by the thought of having to blow up like 500 tanks per playthrough.

Honestly, take the cannon off the Batmobile and Arkham Knight becomes a much better game. I actually loved driving it around Gotham, and I mostly liked all the puzzle solving you get to do with it. I even liked the Riddler races. It's solely the sections where you get locked into a circular arena and have to shoot dozens of drone tanks that I hated, and there are so many. Just cut that shit out. Change the story so that the Arkham Knight doesn't have hundreds of drone tanks ready to drop into the city and bingo bango, it's a better game. Still not an amazing game, but a much more enjoyable one.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Detective mode is far more hurtful to AAA-gaming since it severly impacts gameplay design. But in recent memory I'd go with FLUDD. No way that's getting off the hook. First time a Mario platforming game was bad.

But, this is just hyperbole. There are so many bad gameplay decisions every year--every month even! And poorly implementing a batmobile in a Batman-game is hardly worth noting in that context.
 

Spinluck

Member
It was cool for like 30mins.

There were parts of the game where it just had no business being there. I couldn't overlook the lazy design decisions they made which were just centered around somehow cramming the Batmobile into very practical scenarios. The combat in it was also really boring and tedious.
 

Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
WTF is wrong with you people? Batmobile mechanic is awesome in Arkham Knight, the problem is that there's just TOO MUCH Batmobile gameplay in the game. I think Rocksteady just didn't understand that Bats only using his Batmobile (and Batwing) very rarely, only on special occasions and not the whole time when and if something goes wrong.
 

score01

Member
WTF is wrong with you people? Batmobile mechanic is awesome in Arkham Knight, the problem is that there's just TOO MUCH Batmobile gameplay in the game. I think Rocksteady just didn't understand that Bats only using his Batmobile (and Batwing) very rarely, only on special occasions and not the whole time when and if something goes wrong.

Well that's the problem though isn't it? No matter how awesome a feature is, if it's overused, it will eventually outstay its welcome. I didn't find the batmobile bad but found it changed the direction of the game - in a way I didn't care for.
 
It was cool for like 30mins.

There were parts of the game where it just had no business being there. I couldn't overlook the lazy design decisions they made which were just centered around somehow cramming the Batmobile into very practical scenarios. The combat in it was also really boring and tedious.

This is what I felt. The way you had to deal with tanks by sliding around out of the way of other tanks' laser sights and then blow them up over and over and over just felt insulting to my intelligence and also Batman's intelligence (or should I say, his image as being a very smart person).

This review of the game articulates well the frustrations of the Batmobile, as well as making several other great points.

Edit: link fix and some extra thoughts
 
The batmobile was fine. People are just upset they couldn't act out their masturbatory batman fantasies in the usual way.

What was not fine was the lack of enemy variety in the tank sections.
 

Alienfan

Member
There was a bit too much tank combat towards the end game, but other than that it was a great mechanic to use- made everything feel fresh, despite not the game not changing in most other areas. I had just as much fun with it as I did with the only two games, will be great having all three on next gen soon!
 

Ushay

Member
The batmobile was awesome. The only issue I had was that it was overused. Calling it the worst mechanic is a little overreacting I think.
 

Greddleok

Member
Not played any Batman game, but have you ever played Skyrim? The combat in that was straight up awful. I don't know how it made it past QA.
 
I hated the tank combat a lot, but worst AAA mechanic?

With a console generation that has had Roach, Fallout 4's dialogue sytem, and Doom's glory kill system
(though I still like the game, I hate that mechanic with a passion)
, that is far from the worst.
 

AHA-Lambda

Member
Hell no! It may not have been as polished as needed but the batmobile hate is waaay overblown and at least added something new to the series
 
It's not like you're unable to exit the batmobile. There are just a few batmobile sequences between each levels and 3 levels that requires the batmobile to various degrees.

The game was amazing, get over it.
 
It's not great, but I honestly give it a pass for the occasional moment where you perfectly take a corner - and the camera just perfectly stalls as you boost out of the drift. If you boil down 'game feel' to singular seconds, that's a good second. Helps that the game is fucking gorgeous to boot.

I remember the Batman Begins game had a really good Batmobile (Tumbler) where those sections were pretty much Burnout!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_V4p4bmtYE&t=8m25s
 
batmobile was used for combat, racing, platforming, puzzle solving, and stealth.

batmobile combat was the only thing that was fun imo. Everything else was tedious (especially stealth and puzzle solving)
 
Is the bat mobile the worst AAA gameplay mechanic in recent history? I cannot think of a single AAA franchise that has introduced a gameplay mechanic that essentially becomes the entire game.

It feels as if we are playing Batmobile the video game, featuring batman. The entire game is a fetch quest in which you go to X location, grab the bat mobile to either compete a race, wench something, jump over a gap, etc. I don't think i've ever seen anything like this before in gaming, in which a mechanic is introduced and instead of becoming a part of a video game, it becomes the game itself.

And the mechanic doesn't even work well, just type in "fuck the batmobile" in twitter and you will see tons of responses about how bad it is and people wishing that it wasn't in the game.

Not to go on a rant on this, I'm sure that a good chunk of those who have purchased the game understand the frustrations that come with the batmobile, but to go talk about other franchises, has anyone seen something like this happen before? In which a mechanic is introduced that ends up taking over a franchise that has a set gameplay system? Is there any mechanic worse than the one featured in Batmobile the video game?

Fully agree with this. It took one of the games I was most looking forward to and ruined it for me. Hell at this point Rocksteady has gone from a buy day one, to wait for reviews and buy when on sale.

Terrible, terrible, overly used addition.
 
The Batmobile combat isn't even bad, it's just used too much and isn't particularly appropriate for a Batman game. Vehicular combat shouldn't really be a pillar of gameplay when you already have exploration/traversal, puzzle solving, stealth encounters and regular combat encounters. The game doesn't need that extra variety, just the added features of the Batmobile for puzzle solving and traversal was perfectly fine.
 
Adored the Batmobile in every aspect. The Tumbler is my favorite iteration of the car in film and its ridiculous traversal capabilities remind me of a great line in Batman Begins ("...he's flying on rooftops!"). The default control scheme allows for seamless transition between car mode and tank mode (and glide mode), which was essential for the later battles and especially with Deathstroke.

Tank combat reminded me of Armored Core. I loved it and its maneuverability enough to never upgrade the Batmobile's armor throughout the game, which made the double dash a godsend. Turning tanks into allies was also invaluable.
 

KORNdoggy

Member
i found it quite good tbh. i only felt like it overstayed it's welcome if you went out of your way to use it, or did a lot of the side activities that required it. but through the course of the story i thought it was cool way to get around and a nicely incorporated feature for puzzle solving. i mean, a big part of what makes batman batman is his batmobile, it has a big role in the movies and comics, so why not the game? it's why arkham knight felt the best for me. it's open world felt considered. whereas in city, it felt like a game that was just trying to be like the popular kid (open world games)
 
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