Batman: Arkham Knight Review (PS4)
by Tom Devaney | April 1st 2016
We went from Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, names of games’s settings, to Arkham Knight, the name of one of the main villains in the game. Why didn’t they go with the title Batman: Arkham Gotham instead (Gotham is Batman: Arkham Knight‘s setting)?
I mean, who the hell is the Arkham Knight anyways? He’s just some new villain that’s come out of nowhere who seems like he knows all of Batman’s tricks and who, like every other villain, wants Batman to die. Ok, so he’s a decent threat to Batman because he knows of his weaknesses, and he knows more about Batman than every other villain. Still, there’s another main villain in the game, Scarecrow, so why focus so much on the Arkham Knight?
Because.
Because the Arkham Knight is a reminder to Batman that he has deeply harmed people, whether they were loved ones or bad guys. And that he will continue to hurt people all around him. That people who know him will be harmed just because they’re affiliated with him. And given Batman only cares about others’s well being, this is a tough reminder for him.
In fact, throughout the game a few things pop up constantly: guilt, fear, and non-lethalality. For batman, they’re almost the same thing. Throughout the series, when we get a chance to look at what Batman fears through Scarecrow’s fear inducing drugs, it always goes back to his parents’s death. But that’s not really a fear for Batman, that’s more of a deep sadness within himself.
What Batman fears is for people to get hurt, especially the people closest to him (e.g., Jim Gordon, Alfred, Barbara Gordon, Robin, and Nightwing). Spoiler: Before Arkham Knight, the only important people to have died were Jason Todd (Robin) and the Joker. Both eat at Batman intensely during Arkham Knight.
Spoiler again: That’s because Jason Todd was killed by the Joker, and this happened as a result of Jason Todd trying to kill the Joker, who wished Batman would’ve done the same. Spoiler 3x: So Batman blamed himself for the death of Jason Todd, and he blames himself for Joker’s death given he could’ve potentially saved the Joker.
This leaves the question, would Jason Todd still be alive if Batman had killed the Joker? Now obviously that’s not the way Batman rolls, but he still had the guilt of knowing he could’ve prevented Todd’s death.
Throughout Arkham Knight, we get to see what effects guilt has on Batman’s state-of-mind in addition to the decisions he makes as the caped crusader; we also get to see the troubled side of Batman. And this just makes for that much more of an exciting conclusion to the fantastic Arkham series.
So I psychoanalyzed the psychoanalyzer, which means it’s time for me to move onto some other juicy topics.
From Arkham Asylum to Arkham City to Gotham, Rocksteady has always pushed the size of the world so that the next game they made was much, much bigger. Yet… the worlds they’ve made have never felt too big or too small.
Arkham Asylum actually felt very big at the time (and it still probably feels that way). I mean I remember how awesome it felt that there was an actual outside, which really opened up the option to glide around, and you weren’t just cooped up inside of the building on the island.
Then, of course, Arkham City really expanded on the scope of Arkham Asylum. It gave you a city to traverse this time, and this meant it had to give you some tools to traverse it that would make travelling feel as exciting and fast as it felt at the Asylum. It did this through bomb-diving, which would allow you to dive in the air while picking up velocity, and through using your bat claw to grip edges of building and launch you into the air. These features that Rocksteady added made getting anywhere as the Batman easy, fun as hell, and fast.
So when Rocksteady decided to make the world of Gotham, which is about triple the size of Arkham City (Here’s a map showcasing the size of every Arkham map), they decided to open up more options for traveling that would keep the size of the city feeling the same along with making sure traversing the city was still just as easy, fun, and fast. They did this through the Batmobile.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure what to think about hearing of the addition of the Batmobile because gliding seamlessly through the skies of Arkham City really gave me the sense of being Batman. And I wasn’t sure if the Batmobile would give me the same feeling.
Phew, I should’ve knew that Rocksteady wouldn’t have added a tool to Batman’s disposal if it didn’t make you feel like a vigilante badass.
The Batmobile is a combination between a Lamborghini and a tank: fast as hell yet wherever it goes, it leaves behind a junkyard. This dynamic is noticeable every time you hop into the Batmobile. When you drift corners of Gotham,
Not only does driving the Batmobile feel great, it gives some diversity to what you can do in the world. There are many riddles based around the Batmobile, you will have these epic tank battles in the Batmobile, and there are many missions that revolve around using the Batmobile. And all of these things revolve around different aspects of the Batmobile. The Batmobile was actually a phenomenal addition to Batman: Arkham Knight, and it makes the game noticeably different than Arkham Asylum and Arkham City.
Now, getting back to the world that Rocksteady crafted: what really impresses me about the world is that it’s not too BIG. Something very common for games to do nowadays is to make worlds that make you feel like an ant. And there’s no problem with this idea conceptually, but there definitely is a problem because of game development.
The problem is that if game developers make a huge world, they’re going to have trouble making sure each inch of that wild is interesting in its own way. That each piece of the world isn’t just a copy paste. That there are cool missions that utilize every piece of the world. Rocksteady didn’t fall into this trap though.
Every inch of Gotham is utilized in the game: from having awesome side missions spread throughout the world and having riddles spread out throughout the world, you get to see every inch of Gotham, and it really surprised me the amount of detail Rocksteady put into the game.
Not only does the game have one of the best looking worlds ever, but every detail of the city was, um, detailed. For example, when I was solving some riddles, I would at times have to destroy walls to find the the riddler trophies hidden behind them. And what amazed me is that Rocksteady always made the room behind the wall nicely detailed even though you would only ever go to that room once throughout the whole game.
And obviously, the combat is as great as ever. You can’t start with a game like Asylum and then somehow get worse combat. You can only get better combat. Obviously, it’s not as good as it was the first time I ever got to crack open someone’s skull as the caped crusader, but it’s not for the lack of trying. Just for already having experiencing it before.
My Conclusion:
Rocksteady sends off the Batman series with a bang.
Though some haters will talk shit about the Batmobile, it’s one of the many reasons Knight is so fresh even though it’s the third entry in the franchise. This little element just shows what Arkham wanted to be: bigger and better. I’m not sure if it’s better (it might just be equal), but it certainly is bigger. Rats off to Rocksteady for delivering another amazing Batman game to top off the trilogy.
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