Batman: Arkham Knight Critique - Joker Story

The most compelling aspect of the story in “Batman: Arkham Knight” for me was Batman’s ongoing hallucinations of The Joker. I had heard a number of complaints throughout the years, starting shortly after “Arkham City” came out, about the fact that the “Arkham” series keeps using Joker as the main villain for its games. Batman has, arguably, the greatest rogue’s gallery of any superhero, so why keep falling back to Joker when you could give someone else the spotlight? I personally never minded the fact that Joker was the main villain of “Arkham Asylum”, “City” and “Origins”. I love that character, and it made sense to me that in situations where there are a whole bunch of villains, all with their own plans, that Joker would eventually out due them all and prove himself as the greatest danger – like he did in “Arkham City”. However, I could certainly see where those making the complaints were coming from. With that said, it wasn’t until “Arkham Knight” brought Joker back in the way that it did that I realized the “Arkham” series didn’t keep falling back on Joker because he is the best or most popular or because they couldn’t write a good story with someone else as the main antagonist, but rather because the “Arkham” series was meant as a single story chronicling the relationship between Batman & Joker.

Despite how pivotal Joker is to the story Rocksteady is telling and the attention to detail they have always shown in regards to the Batman property in their games, the way they set up Joker’s return involves a complete misunderstanding of what Joker is. The story says that Batman and four others are all turning into the Joker because they have been infected with his blood. Joker, somehow, got a bunch of his blood samples into a hospital’s blood bank before he died, despite the fact that he didn’t mention doing that in “Arkham City” and Batman didn’t need additional motivation to come up with a cure as Joker infects him as well. Joker’s blood was only harmful because of the Titan disease he got from using too much of Bane’s Titan serum at the end of “Arkham Asylum” and Batman developed a cure for that. Apparently, curing the Titan disease wasn’t enough for five of the infected who somehow got a new disease from Joker’s blood that turns you into the Joker. And here in lies the real problem: when did Joker become a Vampire? Why on Earth does Joker’s blood make you become Joker or at least give you a similar type of insanity? Plus, what kind of blind luck is it for Joker that he infects people with one disease and then it turns out his blood has an even worse second disease that no one knew about and medical science has never seen anything like? 

This plot element was a terrible way to try and bring in characters to give Joker’s legacy a physical presence and make it feel like he wasn’t ever going to be truly gone, which is something that should have been covered by Red Hood instead. The Joker hallucinations start after Batman is given what should have been a lethal dose of Scarecrow’s Fear Toxin. Based on this scene and one at the end it appears that Joker’s blood makes Batman completely immune to the usual damage caused by Scarecrow’s Toxin, and it now only serves to hasten the process of Joker’s blood turning Batman into Joker. That doesn’t make any sense and seems to imply that Joker has a natural immunity to Scarecrow’s toxin like Poison Ivy, which he doesn’t. It would have made more sense to lower the amount of Fear Toxin Batman was exposed to and have the hallucinations and behavioral changes be caused by temporary neurological damage as a side effect of his exposure. You could then say that he now believes and starts behaving as if he is becoming Joker because that is Batman’s greatest fear. Previous Batman stories have brought up the potential of Batman having a psychological break and becoming just like Joker. Some have even gone so far as to say that both Batman and Joker know it could happen and that it’s one of the reasons why Batman won’t kill and the main reason Joker is obsessed with him. This would not only allow for all of the Joker related events/hallucinations throughout the game to still happen while making sense, it would also make Scarecrow responsible for them. That way Scarecrow doesn’t feel as much like the awkward 3^rd wheel of the villains as Joker & Arkham Knight are the only ones interacting with Batman for most of the game. It even would have helped the game’s ending.

           The end of the Joker story in “Arkham Knight” was an amazing experience from a game design standpoint. Seeing Batman lose himself to the Joker inside his mind and playing as the Joker in his own Batmobile, then as a 3^rd-Person Shooter and finally a First-Person Shooter, as you try to destroy all the statues of Batman popping up around you was very engaging. It brings you into Batman’s mental struggle to regain control by making us the thing he is trying to take control back from – an unusual position for the player. Yet, from a story standpoint it is bizarre and jarring that the key to beating this unbeatable Joker disease is not any sort of cure, but a sudden, unprovoked, onset of sheer will power. Batman is cured because he wants to be, why didn’t that work earlier when the disease was less developed? Had it all been a result of temporary neurological damage from the Fear Toxin messing with his psychological state it would make sense that he would eventually be able to recover on his own. Batman’s brain making a physical recovery would have left the hallucinations as just a lingering psychological problem due to his own stress doubt and paranoia. Overcoming that through mental fortitude and determination makes sense, but beating a physical disease doesn’t.

          To say that Joker’s unique case of insanity is transmittable goes against a core pillar of what Batman has always been about. Batman has always touched upon ideas about the human psyche. Batman is one of the world’s greatest and most disciplined minds, hence the important title of World’s Greatest Detective. Rather than facing off against super-powered beings, he fights the criminally insane – for the most part. Sometimes characters don’t just represent certain personality traits or facets of our minds, but represent disorders like Two-Face does for split-personality disorder. To say that Joker’s mental illness/madness can be transmitted like, say, HIV is a fundamental misunderstanding and misrepresentation of mental illness/madness. I should point out that I am not bringing this up from some politically correct standpoint that thinks “Batman: Arkham Knight” needs to be more responsible and promote more understanding & compassion for those with mental illness. I am bringing this up as a Batman fan that takes issue with a group of writers telling a story that lacks an understanding of how the mind works when insanity, sanity and the line between the two are so fundamentally important to the Batman property and touched upon within this very story.

This fundamental lack of understanding put on display results in the entire Joker story making no sense. His blood should not have been able to have any effect on people, let alone make them crazy, let alone his particular breed of crazy, it shouldn’t have been sped up by the Fear Toxin and a biological infection should not have been able to be beaten psychologically by Batman just willing himself to not be diseased. It is incredibly disappointing, and quite frankly baffling, that in the final entry of a six year arc about Joker this is what Rocksteady and DC were comfortable going with.

Batman: Arkham Knight Critique - Red Hood Story

            I guess, the best place to start with the character known as the Arkham Knight’s story problems is with his name. What a bizarre and unnecessary choice it was to not just call him by his comic-book name – Red Hood. While Red Hood is a significant character in the Batman comics, he is not a widely known one. If they had referred to Arkham Knight as Red Hood in the game he would have been just as mysterious and as much of an unknown to the majority of players. For those like myself who did know the Red Hood’s identity prior to playing the game it is painfully obvious from your first interaction with the Arkham Knight that he is the same guy as Red Hood – Jason Todd. The only thing that kept a 1% doubt in my mind when playing was that Rocksteady had stated Arkham Knight was a completely original character.

Ever since the first trailer Arkham Knight had evoked thoughts of Red Hood, but I doubted it until release because I wanted to trust Rocksteady’s word. That doubt would have been put to rest prior to release if I paid attention to one of the game’s pre-order bonuses. In what I consider to be a major marketing and planning error they made a pre-order bonus a mission where you can play as Red Hood. Gee, I wonder why he is in the series all of a sudden when there is a character just like him called Arkham Knight in all the trailers?

Going back to what made the Arkham Knight’s identity so obvious in that first encounter, aside from the fact that he has the same physical build, moves, weapons and knowledge that Red Hood has. When you first encounter Arkham Knight he speaks with a faint voice modulator that implies his voice is being masked, but it’s not really changing the voice at all. You can totally tell that the voice actor is Troy Baker. In that moment I thought it was pretty obvious they had lied. This imparted to me that the modulator is for Batman and not me – as if it was for me I wouldn’t be able to recognize the voice and if it wasn’t for Batman it wouldn’t be there – meaning Batman knows Arkham Knight, meaning it’s Jason Todd A.K.A. Red Hood. If you didn’t catch on right away or even beforehand who the Arkham Knight was, then you might figure it out from the Jason Todd torture scenes. In them you can hear his voice, the voice of Troy Baker – arguably the most recognizable voice in video games alongside Nolan North. They had the right idea with a voice modulator; they should have actually made Troy’s voice unrecognizable when he is Arkham Knight.

In addition to the fact that the name and costume change up for Red Hood was unnecessary and poorly handled, they didn’t even make the mystery of the Arkham Knight’s identity interesting from a story telling perspective for those who didn’t know. The game never asks you to use your detective mode and/or wits to solve mysteries in an attempt to narrow down the possible suspects, and no red herrings or alternative avenues of investigation are used. All that happens is a couple of times Batman gives Alfred some parameters to narrow down Alfred’s search for who the Red Hood is, like check recently released criminals and cross reference with those that have military training. The results are never shown to you so that you might engage with the mystery that is supposed to be one of the biggest elements of the game’s story. The experience is completely passive, which – in case it wasn’t obvious – is not the way you should do things in an interactive experience. The only thing that could possibly throw you off the trail or make it less obvious is unintentional and that’s Two-Face. Two-Face is once again played by Troy Baker, so you could do his side quest and think that they are just reusing actors, making the fact that Arkham Knight & Jason Todd have the same voice seem like a mere coincidence. After all, Two-Face has that same voice and he can’t be the Arkham Knight because he doesn’t fit the bill at all and is dealt with in a side quest.

            Not only should Arkham Knight have been Red Hood simply because that’s who the character is and the attempt to hide that was horribly executed, it works better from a story standpoint as Red Hood. Batman fighting someone who looks like himself sort of falls into the popular trope of a hero fighting a dark version of himself, but that’s not very interesting or ever explored and the costume’s similarities to Batman posses problems. For Jason Todd, a former Robin, to grow up and design a costume similar to Batman’s makes sense. That is, if that former Robin is still a good guy. Do the villains of Gotham really want to work with a guy dressed like Batman? Typically, dressing up like a hero speaks to an idealization of and desire to be that hero or at least like that hero. If I were a villain, I wouldn’t want to work with a guy who wants to be like Batman. In the comic “Batman: Battle For The Cowl” Jason Todd dresses up like Batman, but the story doesn’t feature him trying to kill Batman. Instead, it features Jason trying to take up the mantle of Batman and be a better one than Bruce ever was following Bruce’s death. When you take all of that into account it doesn’t make much sense that in a story where Jason only wants to destroy Batman at any cost he would choose to dress like him.

Now, as for the Red Hood costume the reasoning is the same as in the comic. The Joker dawned the costume of the Red Hood prior to the accident that turned him from a normal man into The Joker. Batman is responsible for that accident. Jason’s return as the Red Hood acts as a reminder of Batman’s greatest failure – the one that created the Joker – and it is being worn by his second greatest failure – Jason Todd –, a sidekick whom he failed to save. Making Jason Red Hood deals with the villain trust problem as they would have no reason to take issue with Red Hood’s costume, since no one outside of the Bat Family & Joker know that he was originally Red Hood. Even if they did, dressing up like a villain should be acceptable to villains. What’s more important, however, is the costume’s impact on the story and themes of the game. In a tale that takes place after Joker’s death, in which Batman is hallucinating Joker’s ghost, the fact that someone would show up with a persona that is an homage to The Joker further extends the idea of Joker not being fully gone and still haunting Batman. It also further pushes the connection between Batman, Jason and Joker, which is of particular importance as this series that is all about Batman and Joker. Connecting them more closely makes Jason more relevant and brings him into the crux of the series, where as he is currently only tangentially tied to it. Not to mention, Joker’s origins as Red Hood were already established and given a focus in “Batman: Arkham Origins”; bringing Jason in as Red Hood would help bring things full circle. You also can’t dismiss the story of “Arkham Origins” just because it wasn’t Rocksteady, since it establishes the beginning of Batman’s relationships with Joker, James Gordon and Barbara Gordon all of which are important parts of story in “Batman: Arkham Knight”. Why not have it set up Jason Todd as well?

Then we have Jason Todd’s reveal. Troy Baker did a good job of conveying Jason’s pain, but the script didn’t bother to flesh out this important interaction between Batman and his former protégée, now turned killer. A big issue I had was that he never explains his motives or attempts to justify his actions. We are supposed to accept that because the Joker tortured him and messed with his head his actions make sense, but they don’t. He wasn’t brain washed or indoctrinated to the point of becoming loyal to Joker or wanting to follow in his footsteps. Jason clearly became disillusioned with, and grew to hate, Batman for not saving him from Joker. It is possible he never went after the Joker himself out of fear, but to go after Batman now and in the way he did doesn’t make sense. And I’m not referring to the use of unmanned tanks, which was like pulling out a regular rock on Superman while claiming to have found his weakness. In the comics, Jason Todd hates criminals. He sees Batman’s no kill rule as a weakness, an unwillingness to do what is necessary to protect people and stop criminals. If Batman had simply killed Joker during one of the many times in which Batman defeated him, Jason would have been spared. There is a great interaction between Jason and Batman in the movie “Batman: Under the Red Hood” where Jason says he thought that if there ever was a crime that would cause Batman to kill Joker, surely it would have been murdering Robin and you can see it pains Jason that Batman didn’t avenge him. You don’t get anything like that in “Arkham Knight”. Instead you get a hero who was a victim of a villain who decides he has no problem teaming up with villains and killing countless innocents, all to hurt Batman. He doesn’t even say that he intends to turn against and kill Scarecrow and the others when it is over or that he has been trying to minimize the damage they have been causing. For instance, they could have said he convinced Scarecrow to give the warning that caused the evacuation in the hope for less casualties.

On top of all of that, he avoids the biggest elephant in the room; the one thing that makes “Batman: Arkham Knight” different from any other Red Hood introductions: The Joker is dead. Not only is Joker dead, but he died fighting Batman. No one knows the full story, but as you can overhear from thugs around Gotham, it is presumed that Batman killed Joker. Why doesn’t Arkham Knight bring that up? Why doesn’t he ask Batman what made him finally stop Joker for good, since his own presumed death clearly wasn’t motive enough? Or, had Arkham Knight been depicted more in line with traditional Red Hood stories, he could have been a murderous vigilante and used Batman killing Joker as a way to say that Batman can’t judge him because they are the same. Jason could be happy that Batman finally gets what needs to be done, maybe now they can be a team again and truly clean up Gotham and that is why he returned. I think having Batman’s story end on a tale that brought up whether his methods work or just perpetuate a cycle by showing Jason’s alternative methods and philosophy behind them would have been good. With the Joker infection making Batman more violent and potentially homicidal, it would have been interesting to have an old friend nudging him in that direction and providing him with incentive as resisting the Joker infection would mean fighting his friend and going along with it would mean working with him again. It also would have been interesting in any version of the story to have Jason learn that Batman is turning into Joker and see how he deals with that. For instance, if Jason was an anti-hero rather than a villain he could have become an antagonist with a clear and understandable motivation; as he only decides to try to kill Batman to stop him from becoming the Joker. Jason’s story was a great one to try and bring in to the conclusion of this series, but it was utterly wasted. 

The earliest point in this series’ storyline, “Arkham Origins”, is the beginning of Batman as not just a vigilante, but as Gotham’s hero.  It’s the first time he is captured on camera and shown to the world as well as the point where he earns the trust of Jim Gordon and to an extent the GCPD. This is the last story we experience before “Batman: Arkham Knight”, which is about the end of Batman. The Joker, Batman’s greatest villain, was created because of a mistake Batman made prior to Arkham Origins – prior to being a hero. Jason Todd was captured by Joker and has now turned into the villain known as Arkham Knight because of a failure on Batman’s part while he was a hero. Because Joker is responsible for Jason’s downfall, this second failure can be seen as a reverberation from Batman’s first one. For Batman to face Jason and try to not just beat him up, but fix him is a test for how far he has come. At the end of his journey as a hero, is he able to save Jason when he couldn’t before? Is he able to undue the darkness in Jason that he is responsible for, like he wasn’t ever able to do with Joker? As a hero, can he stop the rippling consequences that are still going from that mistake he made before he was one? Batman has always been driven by his inability to go back and make things right – his inability to save his parents. That is why he dedicates himself to trying to prevent others from facing the fate that he did. At the end of Batman’s journey can he finally not just be a bandage that stops the blood from spilling for a time before falling off – as those he puts away get back on the street –, but a cure that heals the wound – changes someone from bad to good? Can he be a force for rehabilitation rather than punishment, something Arkham Asylum could never succeed at? These are the sort of questions and ideas “Batman: Arkham Knight” should have gone for with Jason Todd’s return. Instead they settled for throwing him in because he hasn’t been used yet and he knows Batman’s identity. You would think the latter of the two is important because Batman’s identity is revealed in this game, but Arkham Knight doesn’t end up having anything to do with that. Like I said, Rocksteady wasted the opportunity for a great story with Jason Todd.

Review: Batman Arkham Knight

The Arkham games have been one of my favorite series to crop up over the last decade. Arkham Asylum marked the first time I thought a 3D superhero game was great and as a massive fan of both superheroes and Batman in particular it was an awesome and unexpected treat. Things are a little different now, expectations have been high for each Arkham game since Asylum and developer Rocksteady has made a big deal about ending this great series with a bang. And while there certainly were some bangs, I couldn’t help but hear a lot of whimpers too.

            When Arkham Asylum came out six years ago it was a special game. The main reason for this was that Rocksteady had managed to design systems around all of Batman’s greatest aspects – his fighting, sneaking and detective skills – and blend them together in a way that made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. That whole was Batman, and because of it we as fans got to feel like one of the greatest and most beloved fictional characters of all time. In Arkham Knight Rocksteady tried to incorporate one last aspect of being Batman into the experience. That aspect was the Batmobile. Regrettably, that aspect is Arkham Knight’s greatest weakness. If Rocksteady had simply treated the Batmobile as just another gadget – factoring it into a few new puzzles – which you could also use to get around the city faster then things would have been fine. Instead they make you spend about half the game inside the Batmobile, usually engaging in tank battles that have nothing to do with what it means to be Batman. Even when you aren’t in tank battles you are doing things like chasing armored vehicles and firing homing missiles at them or using it to breakdown walls, something we’ve already done and sometimes still do with the explosive gel gadget. Pretty much the only times you are using the Batmobile to solve puzzles in new and interesting ways are in some of the Riddler challenges, but most of those are just race tracks. The game is called Batman, not Batmobile, and whenever you are in the Batmobile you don’t feel like Batman. Instead you feel like a weird rocket propelled tank.

            When you actually are playing as Batman there's a few interesting new additions to gameplay, basically one for each gameplay pillar: combat, stealth and puzzle solving. First and foremost is the Fear Takedown system, which allows you to take out a group of unsuspecting enemies (up to five with upgrades) with great speed and ease. It allows for stealth sections to include more enemies and offers up a great way to enter into big fights, if you can approach unseen. The way the camera speeds up, whips around and then slows just to speed up again after you select your next target was really uncomfortable to look at the first handful of times. Eventually, I did get used to it. Another addition is the ability to pick up weapons like a bat or steel pipe that enemies drop and use it against them. It works just like the Shock Gloves from Arkham Origins, meaning it lets you damage anyone – whether they have armor or stun batons or riot shields – just like if they were the basic enemy type. The weapons break quickly though, so it isn’t nearly as overpowered as the Shock Gloves were. It can come in handy, but I found myself almost never making use of this feature as it isn’t needed to win the fights. Besides, when was the last time you saw Batman use a Baseball bat against a criminal? He’s not Casey Jones. For the investigative sections of gameplay, Detective Mode offers nothing new. However, there is an interesting new type of puzzle in the game. It involves you searching through footage from a group of cameras in order to track and locate a piece of information. Unfortunately, you only get to do this type of puzzle twice. There is one last gameplay addition, and it is the one that was the most surprising and intriguing: tag team combat.

            The Arkham campaigns have always been single player only and Arkham Knight is no different. So, to have two heroes like Batman & Nightwing fight a group of enemies together you control one while the AI controls the other until you press the Left Bumper and instantly swap control with the AI. There is also a meter that you can build up in order to perform a dual takedown that will instantly neutralize anyone you are fighting, and switch your control over to the other character. Despite the simplicity of the tag controls you never fight with more than one ally, even though there are a total of three in the game. While it is undoubtedly cool to fight with Nightwing or Catwoman or Robin alongside Batman, the characters don’t feel that different. Their animations are different, but the combat is the same except for the fact that none of them have useful gadgets. It’s not surprising though, why make a bunch of unique quick-fire gadgets for such brief and infrequent team-up fights? Heck, there is only one section in the main quest line where it occurs. Aside from Catwoman climbing on walls for brief parts of Riddler challenges you never explore what makes these other heroes unique. It would have been nice if you could choose to do side quests as them simply for the heck of it, but since you can’t they end up being a flashy inclusion for a few fights and nothing more.

            You can’t even use Robin, Catwoman & Nightwing in any of the game’s AR challenges. The AR challenges are Arkham Knights lack luster replacement for Challenge Maps. The biggest problem with the AR challenges is that there are so few of them, especially in terms of ones that feature Batman’s combat and stealth. Out of the twenty-three challenges, fifteen of them feature the Batmobile. The other eight are split up evenly between combat and stealth missions. Of those four combat missions: two feature Batman, one features Azrael, and one is a tag battle with Batman & Nightwing. There is no good reason why you can’t choose to get a little more out of these four short combat challenges by playing as your choice of: Batman, Catwoman, Nightwing, Robin or Azrael. Especially when Azrael is literally just a reskinned Batman, right down to every animation and gadget. In the story they explain it by saying Azrael has been studying Batman to become his replacement.

            The AR challenges aren’t the only part of the game that feel like an after thought. The game only has a few boss fights and none of them are all that good. Although, to be honest, I never did the Riddler boss fight because it was locked away behind 243 tedious and annoying Riddler trophies. Quite frankly, I don’t have high hopes for that boss fight based on the others in the game. Even if it was the best boss fight in the entire series, I would rather it didn’t exist than have to spend all those hours getting those trophies to play it. Ironically, what’s even worse than the lack of boss fights is the large quantity of repetitive and recycled side quests. Almost every side quest is comprised of just asking you to do the same thing again and again, often to a ridiculous extent. For instance, the Firefly side missions ask you to follow Firefly around in the Batmobile until a meter builds up and Batman automatically jumps out and grabs him. Each time it starts and ends with identical cutscenes; except for the last one, which features Batman arresting Firefly. Then there are side quests like taking control of twenty-one guard towers or rescuing sixteen firefighters – each of which is surrounded by a group of thugs for you to beat up. As soon as you have completed the first part of any sidequest you have basically done all it has to offer, with the ten Riddler Trials being the only real exception. The worst part was after completing 64 specific villain-less side tasks a boss battle is unlocked that is just a copy of a boss fight from the main quest with a new villain subbing in. The side missions feel like a lazy attempt to pad time.

            Arkham Knight’s greatest strength is its presentation. The graphics in Arkham Knight are stunning; the nearly constant rain falling and sliding down Batman’s costume – most notably his mask and cape – coupled with the illumination provided by things like bright neon signs make for some great visual touches. However, there are points where particles other than rain are falling and some of them have the jarring tendency to move right through characters. The game’s presentation values don’t stop there though. The way the game plays with how it stages and presents moments in the story by doing things like changing the environment as you pan your camera is great. It also works wonders for all of Batman’s hallucinating in the game. The open world nature of Arkham Knight can break the flow of the narrative as you go off and do less pressing tasks when story wise you should be continuing with the main quest. It’s not as bad as it was in Arkham City though, and things like billboards changing randomly as you go around the city as well as other hallucinations keep the main narrative present in your mind.

In fact the way they present the story visually is so masterful that it manages to largely hide how ridiculously flawed the story of the game is and how poorly some of the major characters where represented. To prevent spoiling anything I won’t go into too much detail, but the story of the Arkham Knight for instance was really predictable. They never presented any red herrings or misdirects for who the Arkham Knight might be, despite it being a big mystery to the world’s greatest detective for almost the entire game. There is also another massive story thread that for me was the highlight of the game, but is founded on a complete misunderstanding of an integral character. I found myself having to try and over look how stupid the set up was and the fact that there was a much better way to do it, simply because they did get to some cool stuff with it – all of which still could have been done if they had set it up properly. The story was somewhat uneven in terms of delivering emotionally, but the performances were a huge step up from the phoned in disaster that was Arkham City. Arkham Knight’s story did seem like it was delivering a good sense of closure for the series; right up until it spoiled that by saying I can’t unlock the ending until I do more side missions and then that I can’t unlock the “true ending” until I do all side missions, including finding all the Riddler trophies. I watched the “true ending” online and wasn’t at all impressed.

            Arkham Knight had the potential to be the best Batman game yet and ended up being the worst major entry in the Arkham series. This occurred because the game fell short in everyway outside of its presentation. The story has some great moments – due far more to the way the game presents the scenes than to the story itself –, but overall was horribly mishandled. The boss fights are lacking in quantity and quality, the side missions are hugely repetitive, there are too few AR challenges, fighting as a team is an under utilized feature and lastly, you are left wanting more time as Batman – as well as other heroes – since you spend so much of the game as the Batmobile. Arkham Knight is still a good game, but perhaps if Rocksteady hadn’t focused so much on making their next generation vision of Gotham look so amazing they could have filled that gorgeous city with fun things to do. Also maybe they could have kept their lead writer from Asylum & City or hired the lead from Origins so the story made sense. At the end of the day it’s what’s under the mask that matters most, even on new hardware.

Score: 3/5