• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

LttP: Arkham Knight - My first visit to Arkham City

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
2849315-arkham-knight-and-batman_3.jpg

This game is my first Batman game (I played Asylum and City both for about 15 mins each, so I hardly count them). It's, uhh... hm.

I like it and hate it in equal measure.

First of all, let's list out what I like:

+You play as Batman doing Batman things
+It's absolutely gorgeous
+The combat is fun even if it's not that deep, punching guys has weight to it and I love the "oomph" the sound effects and visuals put into a knockout
+The story is moderately interesting, nice use of classic characters like Alfred, Oracle, Scarecrow, Nightwing (!!!!) and the Knight himself is sufficiently menacing and mysterious
+The open world city is pretty well done, and there's a lot to do in it
+I don't actually hate the Batmobile, it's pretty fun
+Downloadable skins are neat, especially Batman Beyond

Things I HATE:

-Ubisoft style collectathon Riddler trophies
-MANBAT
-Any puzzles in this game are complete garbage. I hate moving blocks on the airship, I hate hacking doors, I hate the ever-so-frequent moments where I find myself stumped as to what to do only to find out I was missing an air shaft or was supposed to use the batmobile remote or something.
-Some of the battles are just hordes and hordes of guys. It's made somewhat interesting when a good amount of them are armed or can detect your detective mode and you have to work your way around that, but sometimes the game just throws a bajillion unarmed guys at you (with one or two big guys you have to grab and JoJo punch to death). It's overly tedious.
-
I'm getting sick of seeing Joker featured prominently in all Batman media. Feels like he's very overexposed at this point
-Filler content as DLC. Most of the DLC seems to be reskinned Batman running through corridors and fighting guys. I played the Batgirl DLC first, which seems to be the only good one, so I soured my expectations by doing that, I guess.

I feel like I hit a wall in this game every 15 minutes or so. Right now I'm looking for some guy's handprints on an airship and I can't for the life of me find them. When it's good, it's good, but when it's bad, it's downright frustrating. I'm surprised the Batmobile was the major complaint about this game.

Overall, I do like it a lot, and for my first Arkham game, it's pretty friendly to me as a newcomer. I love all the data logs, character profiles, etc. I live for that encyclopedic stuff.
 
Why in the world would you start a trilogy with the ending? The story continues from Arkham City, which as well is a continuation of Asylum, not to mention you're playing the worse of the 3 games, city arguably being the best and where it should've ended imo. Origins is the only one that can be played standalone.
 
It's pretty fun, aside from the lack of indoor spaces and cramming the Batmobile into everything.

City is the best, Origins is just a rehash of that with worse pacing, Asylum is eh for me.
 

Flux

Member
I'd suggest going back and playing the games in release order if you can. From a story and gameplay perspective there is a growing payoff. Skip the riddler stuff for all of them. It's not worth it. Upgrade the Batmobile as much as you can to get thru those sections faster.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
I'm too far in to go back now. It's fine, I'll play those games after.

It's not a big deal for me (I also played Metal Gear Solid 2 before MGS1)
 
Isn't the "true", canonical ending locked behind riddler trophy bullshit?

Correct, so either youtube it, or try doing the riddler stuff. I enjoyed doing all the riddler stuff with the exception of asylum. The city ones were pretty great because more than half of them offered some good stuff about the lore and comics of the dark knight as well as the other characters, so if you're into that, they are worth it.
 
If you want better story and level design, play Arkham Origins. That said, Knight has the deepest combat and best open world hub. The Batmobile was well incorporated when it's optional, but much of the mandatory use of it is tedious. The airships are truly atrocious, never was I so bored in an Arkham game than when doing them.There are also some bad story beats in Knight. You'll know them as they appear. And you'really right--WB Montreal's Batgirl DLC is great but the rest is garbage.

Knight had some good ideas but it's many critical flaws make it the worst game in the franchise except for Blackgate.
 
Open world Batman was a mistake. I'm all for open level design though like Asylum had. That being said, Origins was my favorite.
 

Nev

Banned
I don't understand the batmobile complaints, after all IT IS WHAT YOU WANTED YOU GODDAMN ------S.

I mean who the hell couldn't see it coming? Everyone could've foreseen how fucking terrible of an idea it would be to put the car in an Arkham game. Yet they kept crying for the fucking batmobile since the moment the first game was released. And then they complain??? YOU GOT WHAT YOU DESERVE.

It's a good game anyways. Not as good as Asylum or City because of those dense "fans" who brought us the batmobile with their annoying whining but still a very high quality game. It could've been much, much worse. At least the damn car had responsive controls.
 
I don't understand the batmobile complaints, after all IT IS WHAT YOU WANTED YOU GODDAMN ------S.

I mean who the hell couldn't see it coming? Everyone could've foreseen how fucking terrible of an idea it would be to put the car in an Arkham game. Yet they kept crying for the fucking batmobile since the moment the first game was released. And then they complain??? YOU GOT WHAT YOU DESERVE.

It's a good game anyways. Not as good as Asylum or City because of those dense "fans" who brought us the batmobile with their annoying whining but still a very high quality game. It could've been much, much worse. At least the damn car had responsive controls.


The acme plant ruined the batmobile for me. The fact that it was used so much to solve puzzles, didn't make sense to me. i think that the superhero tag team mechanic is much more fun .
 
Things I HATE:

-Ubisoft style collectathon Riddler trophies
-MANBAT
-Any puzzles in this game are complete garbage. I hate moving blocks on the airship, I hate hacking doors, I hate the ever-so-frequent moments where I find myself stumped as to what to do only to find out I was missing an air shaft or was supposed to use the batmobile remote or something.
-Some of the battles are just hordes and hordes of guys. It's made somewhat interesting when a good amount of them are armed or can detect your detective mode and you have to work your way around that, but sometimes the game just throws a bajillion unarmed guys at you (with one or two big guys you have to grab and JoJo punch to death). It's overly tedious.
-
I'm getting sick of seeing Joker featured prominently in all Batman media. Feels like he's very overexposed at this point
-Filler content as DLC. Most of the DLC seems to be reskinned Batman running through corridors and fighting guys.

All of these are issues in every Arkham game.

Except for MANBAT
 

Harmen

Member
The Season of Infamy DLC is pretty good if you played the previous titles, as it gives closure to several secondary plotlines of past titles.
 

Slixshot

Banned
So my first playthrough of this game, I got all of the riddler trophies. I didn't realize how much of a bitch they were until like a year later when I started new game plus and the game was SO much more fun to play. Fuck the riddler trophies.

Game is god damn amazing even with them though. Lack of boss battles is annoying, but the entire experience is just so well put together.
 
IMO, you should have just played Asylum and quit there. The rest of the Arkham games have enough issues that they effectively drain the fun from them.
 

Harmen

Member
So my first playthrough of this game, I got all of the riddler trophies. I didn't realize how much of a bitch they were until like a year later when I started new game plus and the game was SO much more fun to play. Fuck the riddler trophies.

Game is god damn amazing even with them though. Lack of boss battles is annoying, but the entire experience is just so well put together.

Agreed. I just googled the post Riddler trophy ending myself though. Not worth the time to do them all in my opinion. Should've remained a neat extra instead of locking an actual ending behind it.
 
One thing thats amazing in this game is you actually feel like batman
Swooping through the sky seamlessly getting in and out the batmobile and taking down bad guys from the sky, its amazing
 

Sober

Member
I might replay Knight but I miss the large brawls in City and Origins where much of the goons in the arena were generic dudes you could bounce off of. Knight felt like too often they just put in too many specialized enemies together and told you to fuck right off.
 
I thought most of the puzzle stuff was boring "find a path to this trophy behind a grate" shit, but I did love the question mark perspective puzzles quite a bit. They could have just put fifty of those in each game (maybe a hundred for Knight) and made me happy.

I honestly would just play a game that is all question mark perspective puzzles. I liked them that much.
 

Shredderi

Member
How much does the season pass content add to the game? I got the whole thing dirt cheap a little while ago and I'm in no hurry to play it (Hitman is so fucking good that it's taking all my gaming time). I just don't much about the season pass and what came with it. Just asking for curiousity.
 
I might replay Knight but I miss the large brawls in City and Origins where much of the goons in the arena were generic dudes you could bounce off of. Knight felt like too often they just put in too many specialized enemies together and told you to fuck right off.

It was also nice to go around beating guys up and getting XP. Knight changed the way upgrades worked.
 
How much does the season pass content add to the game? I got the whole thing dirt cheap a little while ago and I'm in no hurry to play it (Hitman is so fucking good that it's taking all my gaming time). I just don't much about the season pass and what came with it. Just asking for curiousity.
It's only good when integrated into the main game. The skins and extra challenge maps are fine, but nothing that can stand on its own as being special.

The bonus side missions are similar in that they're fine when mixed into the main game (which they are), but not quite enough to go back to after finishing the game months prior.

The Batgirl thing is very barebones. It felt dated and basic. That's a standalone story, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as substantial as the Mr. Freeze DLC for Arkham Origins. Had the (non-challenge map) DLC for this game all been like Cold, Cold Heart, it would've been great.
 

TheRed

Member
I don't understand the batmobile complaints, after all IT IS WHAT YOU WANTED YOU GODDAMN ------S.

I mean who the hell couldn't see it coming? Everyone could've foreseen how fucking terrible of an idea it would be to put the car in an Arkham game. Yet they kept crying for the fucking batmobile since the moment the first game was released. And then they complain??? YOU GOT WHAT YOU DESERVE.

It's a good game anyways. Not as good as Asylum or City because of those dense "fans" who brought us the batmobile with their annoying whining but still a very high quality game. It could've been much, much worse. At least the damn car had responsive controls.
I loved the batmobile, it was the endless tank combat that bothered me. I would've been perfectly happy without any of that.
 
Top Bottom