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Gotham Knights | Review Thread

6f9lar7vuhv91.png
Didn‘t even need to go woke to get broke.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes

It just goes to show that Rocksteady are the best of the best of video game studios. Replaying Batman AK made me realize how AK was basically their magnum opus. Every little thing in the game is given the care and spark most games reserve for big setpieces or final cutscenes. Just the act of Batman getting in and out of the batmobile looks cool AND feels smooth and aids gameplay. Of course the graphics still look good. Their artists didnt just create some cool looking buildings, they lit each street with great art direction you'd normally expect from a linear action game. Gotham Knights is not a bad looking game. It's roughly on par with other open world games, probably below average, but AK's city was always well ahead of cities like NYC in Spiderman, all three Watch Dogs games, both cities in Division and the Mafia remake. I think only Cyberpunk comes close, but the art design in AK is simply phenoemenal and masks a lot of its shortcomings.

It's a shame that it came out right after Witcher 3, and was kind of dismissed because of the overabudance of Batmobile sections because the game is a masterpiece that belongs in the top 10 games of last gen.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
You can also scan street art and literally every piece of art I've seen involves either pride in some way, climate change or taking in refugees.

There's literally no in-universe or lore reason for these art pieces, let alone make them a collectable, other than some developers wanting to push their political agenda by making you look at them and giving you a prompt.

It's just completely unnecessary and honestly kind of vile. I stopped looking for them after the fifth or so because fuck that.
 

PeteBull

Member
You can also scan street art and literally every piece of art I've seen involves either pride in some way, climate change or taking in refugees.

There's literally no in-universe or lore reason for these art pieces, let alone make them a collectable, other than some developers wanting to push their political agenda by making you look at them and giving you a prompt.

It's just completely unnecessary and honestly kind of vile. I stopped looking for them after the fifth or so because fuck that.
Maybe that where their priority instead of performance/looks/gameplay/optimisation/ironing out all the kinks, but fk, game will vanish like saints row, few weeks after its launch, hopefully IP/series is huge enough so they dont cancel next one in the series, and for the love of god, give it back to competent dev studio, if not rocksteady like before then some other devs that actually got solid trackreckord =/
 
You can also scan street art and literally every piece of art I've seen involves either pride in some way, climate change or taking in refugees.

There's literally no in-universe or lore reason for these art pieces, let alone make them a collectable, other than some developers wanting to push their political agenda by making you look at them and giving you a prompt.

It's just completely unnecessary and honestly kind of vile. I stopped looking for them after the fifth or so because fuck that.
hey! keep looking around - maybe you're able to find a pair of roddy piper shades somewhere, & be able to see what the street art really says...

truth-obey.gif
 

Fake

Gold Member
You can also scan street art and literally every piece of art I've seen involves either pride in some way, climate change or taking in refugees.

There's literally no in-universe or lore reason for these art pieces, let alone make them a collectable, other than some developers wanting to push their political agenda by making you look at them and giving you a prompt.

It's just completely unnecessary and honestly kind of vile. I stopped looking for them after the fifth or so because fuck that.

Embarrassing.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
After a few hours the game does get better the further you get into it, but there are some weird difficulty spikes here and there and bugs. I got stuck in a fall animation on a pieces of geometry more than once. There was a fight where you had to keep disarming bombing while you fought enemies but when you run up to a bomb the camera automatically turns to the enemies so you lose the prompt. 😵‍💫
 

Reizo Ryuu

Gold Member
if the streets were more populated it wouldn't make sense maybe, with how much crime is going on. Theres something bad happening every 3 blocks lol.

there should be at least one area thats populated imo. Theres enough ppl around its just too consistent. Its the same amount everywhere. Maybe theres a lack of vehicles on the road? But as far as civilians/criminals/cops theres ppl every which way u turn
Nah there's areas with more groups of people, outside the nightclubs and in parks and train stations:
fIxEUCl.jpg


Sometimes something random happens on the road, and that's also when the cars disappear because they wouldn't be able to pass:
Bcik5fJ.jpg
 
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Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
as u see in the vid, regularry dips into 40s and at times into 30s when driving even in 1080p and raytracing off, really bad implementation of multithreading which creates nasty cpu bottleneck despite huge gpu power headroom (often below 50% gpu usage).
For the same reason even turning on dlss doesnt help, dips into 30s even in 1080p with dlss on balaance too =/

Ofc if u turn rt on it only gets worse and worse(1080p, dlss and rt, dips into 30s even while standing/walking, no enemies on screen;/).


This test seems horse shit. I have my steam FPS counter on always, and I spend 99% of my time way above 60fps on a 3080, 4k, and mostly max settings. Mainly have ray tracing off, view distance on high instead of highest, and shadows on high instead of highest.

I rarely get a dip below 60 and when I do it’s a fraction of a second.

Indoor areas which is the majority of the game, I have 120 fps. Outdoors can vary from 70-90, 60-80, etc but again, rarely below 60.

More people need to share their setting choices I guess, or tweak theirs.

Strange optimizing choices made here by the dev team.
 

sendit

Member
This game plays like absolute horse shit. Spiderman is the benchmark/bar for superhero games. This game feels so constrained in how the characters move.

Thank god for steams no questions asked refunds.
 
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Haint

Member
This test seems horse shit. I have my steam FPS counter on always, and I spend 99% of my time way above 60fps on a 3080, 4k, and mostly max settings. Mainly have ray tracing off, view distance on high instead of highest, and shadows on high instead of highest.

I rarely get a dip below 60 and when I do it’s a fraction of a second.

Indoor areas which is the majority of the game, I have 120 fps. Outdoors can vary from 70-90, 60-80, etc but again, rarely below 60.

More people need to share their setting choices I guess, or tweak theirs.

Strange optimizing choices made here by the dev team.

Either the game or test is definitely broke. GPU and CPU both showing less than 50% utilization while the game's running in the 30's and 40's.
 

PeteBull

Member
good vid/test for guys with lowrange/older rigs, r5 1600 and gtx 1660s, highest/high/medium/low presets tested, including bike travelsal, gives u idea what u can expect on relatively cheap mashines(1080p ofc),
Even on low preset i saw dip to 28fps durning bike riding, with 44%gpu usage, so yup, definitely some hard non gpu bottleneck somewhere, for more info would be cool to find vid of some topend cpu paired with midrange/budget gpu, to confirm it.

And to the guy above me, definition of stable 60fps isnt when u achieve it sometimes, but when always can keep fps at/above that number, even in most demanding/heavy scenarios, not when u are in small corridor facing 1 enemy :)
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
good vid/test for guys with lowrange/older rigs, r5 1600 and gtx 1660s, highest/high/medium/low presets tested, including bike travelsal, gives u idea what u can expect on relatively cheap mashines(1080p ofc),
Even on low preset i saw dip to 28fps durning bike riding, with 44%gpu usage, so yup, definitely some hard non gpu bottleneck somewhere, for more info would be cool to find vid of some topend cpu paired with midrange/budget gpu, to confirm it.

And to the guy above me, definition of stable 60fps isnt when u achieve it sometimes, but when always can keep fps at/above that number, even in most demanding/heavy scenarios, not when u are in small corridor facing 1 enemy :)

The game is usally locked in indoors and absolute fucking shit in the open world during traversal.

I had to settle for 30 fps on pc because the drops during traversal was making me crazy, but i switch to 60 during indoors missions.
 

Krathoon

Member
Maybe there will be a fan patch to remove the wokeness from the game. I am sure it would set off the copy protection.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
Anything in particular? I haven't seen anything remotely "woke". Perhaps I'm already desensitized.
It's more secondary stuff like the email or the big posters that you have to scan.

In the normal interaction that you are forced to see there is almost nothing woke.

Like someone said in another topic, woke devs like to put woke stuff in their games but most of them don't have the balls to put them in front line because they know that majority of people who actually buy the game gives 2 fucks about this shit.

So yeah robin is bi curious and doesn't only use his long baton for combat (if you catch my drift) but in the cinematics this stuff never comes up (but sometimes his baton magically disappear...)
 
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PeteBull

Member
Digital Foundry did pc performance review and added tons of info about console version too, very informative video, worth watching, tons of footage/proof there :)
 

PeteBull

Member
Do they have like optimal settings for pc?
2settings(3 if u count in rt) affect cpu usage, so indeed, u want those to be turned down for sure, ofc dont expect wonders, port/whole optimisation is botched and suffers from many issues, like explained in the vid
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
2settings(3 if u count in rt) affect cpu usage, so indeed, u want those to be turned down for sure, ofc dont expect wonders, port/whole optimisation is botched and suffers from many issues, like explained in the vid
Thanks, i'm pretty sure i have all those setting already turned off or to low.

rtx, density and what else?
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
So edgy, did a wave of rats bit you in the ass this morning?
But for real, no. The point of the video is trying to figure out the bottlenecks which Alex has determined to be mostly CPU-related. The game is heavily single-threaded and even an RTX 2060S is utilized at like 40-60% while the CPU has half its threads under 30% usage while some others are over 70%.

It's just not polished and is CPU limited due to poor utlization.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
But for real, no. The point of the video is trying to figure out the bottlenecks which Alex has determined to be mostly CPU-related. The game is heavily single-threaded and even an RTX 2060S is utilized at like 40-60% while the CPU has half its threads under 30% usage while some others are over 70%.

It's just not polished and is CPU limited due to poor utlization.
After the shitshow that was arkham knight on pc at launch, another bats game bite the dust.

High hopes for suicide squad running at 1080p30 on a 4090...
 
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Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
After the shitshow that was arkham knight on pc at launch, another bats game bite the dust.

High hopes for suicide squad running at 1080p30 on a 4090...
Suicide Squad is from Rocksteady who are far better devs than WB Montreal.

Also of interest, the PS5 dips in the same sections as the PC in the opening sequence and the drops are also very similar. It's very likely CPU-limited on consoles as well. Alex also tried turning off RT which boosts performance by a sizeable 25% at times but still not enough to maintain anything resembling 60fps with major dips into the 30's and huge frame spikes.

The odds of even getting a 1080p/60fps mode are extremely unlikely as this game is shit at utilizing the CPU.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
Suicide Squad is from Rocksteady who are far better devs than WB Montreal.

Also of interest, the PS5 dips in the same sections as the PC in the opening sequence and the drops are also very similar. It's very likely CPU-limited on consoles as well. Alex also tried turning off RT which boosts performance by a sizeable 25% at times but still not enough to maintain anything resembling 60fps with major dips into the 30's and huge frame spikes.

The odds of even getting a 1080p/60fps mode are extremely unlikely as this game is shit at utilizing the CPU.
Wasn't arkham knight made by rocksteady? because that game was an absolute stinker performance wise on pc at launch and even now i heard someone saying that is not completely fixed (but i could be wrong on the last part)

It's a mistery why this game is so cpu heavy, the game has barely any car or people in the street, basic physics, enemies have ragdoll when they die but they glue to the ground after one second, no destruction...
 
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Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Wasn't arkham knight made by rocksteady? because that game was an absolute stinker performance wise on pc at launch and even now i heard someone saying that is not completely fixed (but i could be wrong on the last part)
It was made by Rocksteady and ran fine on consoles. It was shit on PC but the port was done by Iron Galaxy who also ported Uncharted to PC. Incidentally, the PS5 version of Uncharted matches the performance of a 3070 on PC...a GPU that is theoretically about 50% faster than what the PS5 has.
 

PeteBull

Member
Thanks, i'm pretty sure i have all those setting already turned off or to low.

rtx, density and what else?
view detail medium, enviromental density on low, those are standard console settings but game defaults to them even on beefy pc rigs, including top cpu rigs(and in this particular game rt takes away at least 15% cpu performance too, sometimes more)
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
view detail medium, enviromental density on low, those are standard console settings but game defaults to them even on beefy pc rigs, including top cpu rigs(and in this particular game rt takes away at least 15% cpu performance too, sometimes more)
It's probably my 8600k then.

I'm not gonna lower the details lol, the game is basically locked in indoors and the slowdown in the open world are mostly during fast traversal, still annoying but not enough to make me lower the details.
 

01011001

Banned
Digital Foundry did pc performance review and added tons of info about console version too, very informative video, worth watching, tons of footage/proof there :)


how did they manage to release a UE4 game in 2022 that has such bad CPU utilisation?
 
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Agent_Nobody

Gold Member
Having finished it, ignoring the performance and the crashes, it was a kinda alright experience. It is a really fun game a lot of the time, getting the perfect dodging/attacks in is really satisfying, and the combat can be pretty fluid at times when you can chain it together.

But then there’s parts that they just kinda dropped the ball, like the level 30 talon ‘very high’ missions are just sponge damage to a ridiculous degree (like have fun spending 15 minutes beating on the same shield talon guy…who pops a heal to full health too), and the ending made me think whoever came up with that needs to take writing classes or something because WTF? Why in the living fuck would just pull the same twist you already did:


They kill Batman off, bring him back through the Lazarus pit, have one of the bat-family talk him out of being brainwashed, then he almost immediately kills himself again….by flying the batwing into the fucking Lazarus pit.
 
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the framerates improved on PS5 at least, with the patch. I like the characters and the movesets. i really like patrols. Story missions are a little hit and miss for me.
combat needed like another year of work. Its close just not fully there
 

Hot5pur

Member
Finished the game in co-op, took a little over 20 hrs to get all the side villains.

Pros:
- nice combat system + abilities (fairly basic but serviceable)
- good enemy variety with the different factions
- random encounters were interesting enough to pursue
- story is decent, nothing award winning but keeps you engaged
- production values generally quite high

Cons:
- combat system at times awkward on bosses
- upgrade system could have been done much better, so many resources, hard to target certain elemental effects, modchips are a pain to go through
- performance on PC is quite bad for how the game looks, but it's playable
- world is a bit bland and areas feel samey and not that impressive
- traversal is not particularly exciting, even with knighthood unlocked

Overall I'd give it a high 7 as a co-op experience and probably closer to a 7 as a single player experience, especially when you compare it to the previous games (which is a hard comparison not to make).

Would be nice to see more villain stories added as DLC. Hopefully the free survival mode or whatever is good enough to motivate more playtime, there isn't much incentive to keep playing once story is done.
Overall this felt like a slightly watered down Arkham game with streamlined combat, though I wasn't a huge fan of the parry mini-game in the previous games.
Definitely recommend picking up, but perhaps on a bit of a sale.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Finished the game in co-op, took a little over 20 hrs to get all the side villains.

Pros:
- nice combat system + abilities (fairly basic but serviceable)
- good enemy variety with the different factions
- random encounters were interesting enough to pursue
- story is decent, nothing award winning but keeps you engaged
- production values generally quite high

Cons:
- combat system at times awkward on bosses
- upgrade system could have been done much better, so many resources, hard to target certain elemental effects, modchips are a pain to go through
- performance on PC is quite bad for how the game looks, but it's playable
- world is a bit bland and areas feel samey and not that impressive
- traversal is not particularly exciting, even with knighthood unlocked

Overall I'd give it a high 7 as a co-op experience and probably closer to a 7 as a single player experience, especially when you compare it to the previous games (which is a hard comparison not to make).

Would be nice to see more villain stories added as DLC. Hopefully the free survival mode or whatever is good enough to motivate more playtime, there isn't much incentive to keep playing once story is done.
Overall this felt like a slightly watered down Arkham game with streamlined combat, though I wasn't a huge fan of the parry mini-game in the previous games.
Definitely recommend picking up, but perhaps on a bit of a sale.

Nice summary.

I'm waiting on a lull in my gaming schedule to get this, definitely when it is on sale. Hopefully it will make its way to Game Pass at some point.
 

nordique

Member
Just beat the game
Big Batman fan. Big Arkham fan.
Loved the Arkham games and insomniac’s Spider-Man games


Super, super disappointing. The more I think about the more I feel my impression is “man, this game really sucked”

Clunky, slow combat. Not fluid. It’s amazing how far behind it is from Arkham asylum, a game from 13 years ago.

I get this is not an Arkham game, but this team worked on Arkham Origins which is a far superior game

What could have been an interesting story was sub par at best.
bruce dead then alive then dead again is one of the stupidest things ever. The absolute back seat the court of owls took was terrible. Just a lazy, short story that didn’t stretch out the cast enough


I think that 5.5 to 6/10 is objectively correct but to me it’s below average game with clunky controls form movement to fighting and utterly disappointing so it’s a 3.5 to 4/10

I think 4/10 is generous.

Nice graphics sure. Lipstick on a very disappointing pig
 
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Meicyn

Gold Member
Beat the game, it was alright. There are parts that show a lot of care was put into it, but it really reminds me of Final Fantasy XV in so many ways.

You have a large world that is sparsely populated with content, having you move slowly in it with a vehicle. Looks great in areas of Gotham particularly if you play with the brightness, contrast and saturation (I recommend 70s for all three if you have HDR on), but doesn’t feel lived in. Even the graphics performance makes me think of FFXV and is constantly bogged down for some reason.

Then there’s simplified combat where one button attacks, one button dodges, and it emphasizes animation over responsiveness making it feel very delayed. Cool team finishers if there’s another player. Seriously, it has no more depth than playing Noctis in XV. It’s serviceable and can look really cool at times. But it always feels sluggish.

The story features a group of four characters that interact with one another that’s endearing in many moments, and yet feels disjointed. The entire game only revolves around whatever your current character is as though they’re solo, even when you’re playing co-op where the host is the star and you’re considered not even there in cutscenes. In the belfry, you’re a team. The cutscenes involve most of the cast. Outside the belfry? Solo affair.

Even the ending is focused strictly on the character you chose to finish with. The final cutscene involves that character speaking to Gotham by themselves. Since I played Robin all the way through, this game was essentially Tim Drake: The Game with cameos by Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson, and Jason Todd. Alfred had as much involvement outside of the belfry as the rest of the cast. At no point did Nightwing, Red Hood, or Batgirl participate in any scenario.

There was some cool stuff in there, it wasn’t all bad. I did notice that at the start, some of the citizens in town were talking down to Robin, essentially a wannabe hero, “hope you’re tougher than you look”, etc and as you get further into the game and complete more content, citizens start to respect him. There were some great tunes that popped up now and then, really dug the Iceberg Lounge and their take on The Penguin. The cutscenes were pretty good, and their character models are far better than what was in the Arkham trilogy.

It feels like a game that went through development hell, and there are signs of something special that never got realized. I hope they make a better not-Batman game someday. I know most folks want more Batman but I can’t be bothered with him anymore, he’s been done a zillion times already. There’s plenty of other DC characters around and I hope to see them.

6/10 as a single player game IMO. I started messing with it on co-op after beating it and the game is 7/10 material if you play that way.
 
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