Gotham Knights

.story

Batman fights and dies. Gotham Knights opening sequence is a 30 minutes despairing long cut-scene introducing a bleeding Gotham, unable to rise again, with new and old foes that cospiring to take control of the city. The first missions put many interesting characters on the table. Starting from the 4 Knights and Alfred we will have many chances to explore their personalities and inner battle they face after Batman departure. Many villains who, unfortunately, cover a side role in the story have a good narrative foundation and it's a shame just Harley and Freeze have proper questline while Penguin is relegated as NPC for random quests. The game is split between pure action in Gotham and briefing in the Belfry, the Hub where our Knights can interact each other and have some interesting insight and facultative bonding cut-scenes. Most of these secondary conversations explore well the dynamic of the group, their origins and their fears for the future...questions that remains unsolved as the ending completely ignored any growth they had through the game. Talking about the main plots of the game instead, that are summarized in Court of Owls and Talia al Ghul, they could have said loads, but they have chosen to go for less. The first of the two was heavily abused as marketing element for the game. Easy to say that they partially made use of the Court mainly for great darkish atmospheres but the plot never spikes and by the end it feels something is missing. Both these plots eventually converge but without a clear end and felt rushed after an exhausting research for evidences through the course of the game. GK does not share anything with the Arkham series, and not even the lenght, as Gotham Knights will only lasts about 8 hours for the main quest plus about 4 to do the -two- villain sidequests. Most of the story missions require to do some side-quests to find evidence before being attempted. What I didn't like about it that these side-missions are the same we find around Gotham: saving hostages or investigate a crime scene. Variety did kill the main plot by far as we are going to do the same kind of quests, about 4 different types of, in circle. Same goes for Harley and Freeze quests. Despite being composed of 6~ missions each, only 1 and 2 respectively feature exclusive content and fights. Gotham Knights is the classic example of taking advantage of a great content to have a commercial spotlight and then rushing through and make nothing out of it.

.gameplay

Achille's heel by far...Gotham Knights takes the best from the Arkham series and tries to find his own identity. Let's start by saying the approach of loot and RPG elements completely failed. Loot and crafting are rudimentary and barely developed. The result is basically a little number that goes up and up to show power is increasing. Each character shares the level but has own equipment and abilities. As far as it goes for the equipment all you gonna know is that as long as the power number goes up you are fine. There are elemental affinities and are possibly the only good addition to an already perfected gameplay from the Arkham series. Ice blocks enemies and along with confusion is great for insta-grabs. Fire inflicts DOT. Electricity stuns enemies and so on. Abilities are unlocked by a very classic skill tree and each character focuses on his own specialty. Batgirl plays like Batman and is a good all-around character. Robin focuses on stealth despite the game never really relies on it making unnecessary. Red Hood is the bulky one who can fight even with biggest enemies being able to grab them and has also AOEs with mines. Nightwing is largely focused on filling his momentum gauge to abuse the unique abilities. Each character has different ones and are unlocked by progressing the story and completing side-activies/defeating x enemies. Each enemy has different weak points and specific characters have advantage/disvantage against them. This system is done pretty well and despite some enemies being absolute sponges having the correct character makes life a Lot easier. After trying every character and getting the feeling we are introduced to Knighthood abilites. These are hidden behind a complete x side-quests barrier. I heavily advice to change the difficulty to Very Easy and rush through them as you have to complete 10 for each character and it might deplete all your patience. The Knighthood abilities are advanced skills that will make an easy feast of both group or single mini-bosses. Batgirl will unlock a powerful drone Momentum ability and the grappling hook for combat purposes while Nightwind will increase his range of attacks and the number of darts he shoots. Everything will depend on your playstyle because each of them will become a powerhouse after this power up. Knightwood will also unlock an easy-to-move around tool for the Knights. Batgirl will glide like Batman while Robin will teleport and Red Wood will literally jump on air. Most of them are useful but you will mostly use the hook to move around Gotham as it is the fastest method. We sure have the Batcycle but it is not that fast and versatile as being able to move over building and stuff. As I said the game features this level progression system that doesn't make any sense as it is just a +%stats with not good or intriguing passives skills. Lv cap is 30; 40 on NG+. Most of the game's hate goes to the controls and the combat's fluidity. We are all used to Arkham top notch levels so that's what everyone compare this game with. Controls unfortunately are not responsive as we expect from Any game and we are likely to get hit or detected and having nothing but to blame the game. Same goes for the fluidity and the animations which are Extremely cluncky, something that was well hidden in the commercials and might be easy to understand after watching some gameplay videos. Batgirl (or any other chara) will often target the absolute nothing, specific skillsor a grab strike (grabbing an enemy for a kill after depleting 70% of his health) won't trigger. You will also get stuck in the environment countless times and get spotted or Robin will decide to jump in the middle of the arena instead of quietly descend his observation point. All this seems born from a rushed development rather than incompetency as I have no doubt they will fix some of these aspects with future patches. As of now the game is a lot of fun, especially in coop where all the progress and loot are transferred to your own game as well, but at the same time is a huge work in progress and lacks of content. Gotham is beautiful to see but it's empty. There are just 8 main missions with relative side-quests as I explained before and tons of the same kind of beating thugs in the streets...and they always comes is few numbers so you don't even have the nice feeling of fighting hordes like in Arkham. Most of the challenge comes from the two side villains. The boss fights are some of the most spongy things I have ever played in 20 years. It will take a lot of punches to take them down and they hit hard as well. This said they are superb cinematic experiences. Overall Gotham Knights is a very fun game, despite all the flaws..this is just merit of the Arkham series though.

.sound

The Batcycle has the same 2 second loop sound going on and on... forever. The environmental sounds are copy pasted all over the game but they are not bad. Beating a Talon with a grab feels great along with our ranged weapons. Gotham is awfully quiet and empty. BGM has the right mournful tones but I would have overused these themes and pasted all over during the exploration of Gotham to make it more cinematic. VO is ready for an AAA level production. Every single voice actor did an excellent job and I would've gladly watched a movie of this. Batman is dead and you can feel it through their words and emotions.

.graphics

Gotham Knights has some cool features on PC that makes it work stable at rock-steady fps even on old machines. Dynamic resolution worked well indeed. Fighting is not crowded and there are no explosions of any sorts and fps drops mostly when driving the Batcycle..probably Gotham can't load her amazing neon lights and empty streets fast enough. Combat animations are so clunky and chain so badly I could easily say they belong to a PS2 generation game. Main missions and the two side boss fights have some crazy cinematic cut-scenes that frankly surprised me after the mediocrity I have seen.

.verdict

Gotham Knights works. It's not as bad as reviews are saying and the gameplay will probably get fixed overtime. Story unfortunately can't. It is out of focus and rushed. It never peaks despite the numerous cool and deep characters and major events. Gameplay is a mess. Animations are bad and don't flow harmonically but it still plays like Arkham and it's fun with the new abilities and element affinities. Exploring Gotham is fun and fast thanks to the hook, the Knighthoods skills and the Batcycle but there is not much to do. GK is clearly born under a difficult development. Being announced just 2 years ago I am sure they worked under a lot of pressure. Still, we are playing the game, not addressing the behind the scenes and I had more fun with Gotham Knights than many perfectly polished games.