The Hero Your Playstation Deserves
Rocksteady’s Batman series comes to a satisfying conclusion with Arkham Knight.
I have spent the past week saving Gotham City in Rocksteady’s newest (and apparently final) Batman game, Batman: Arkham Knight. To save you any further reading if you’re on the fence: yes, buy the hell out of this game. It does so many things right that its few missteps are easily forgotten. Unless you hate comics or fun, you’ll love this game.
Batman has been an important part of my life since the early 90s, when the best cartoon in the history of cartoons was aired, Batman: The Animated Series (TAS). That show defined the character of Batman in my mind. It was responsible for the creation of many of elements of Batman canon that persist to this day, including characters like Harley Quinn, Renee Montoya, and Lock-Up. TAS was a masterpiece in telling relatively complex stories within the constraints of a half-hour cartoon.
Arkham Knight plays like, among other things, a tribute to TAS. Rocksteady managed to get the show’s original voice actors, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, to voice Batman and Joker in this and their other Arkham games, adding tremendous authenticity. There are also a million wonderful little TAS references thrown into the game, such as posters for the “Ghost in Gray”. One can tell that Rocksteady knows their audience and clearly appreciates Batman lore.
The gameplay is excellent. My favorite parts of this game, like its predecessors, are those in which you use Batman’s intellect and gadgets to investigate and/or reconstruct crimes. You truly feel like the “world’s greatest detective” in those moments, which are provided liberally here. I’m also an enormous fan of the “predator” scenes in which the player is tasked with stealthily dispatching numerous armed guards. Sneaking below a guard in a vent, grabbing him, and silently choking him unconscious without alerting other hostiles is another “be the Batman” moment.
The story was excellent right up until the ending, which didn’t make much sense to me (or to others, apparently). Rocksteady did a great job taking Batman’s various over-the-top enemies and turning them from ludicrous comic book parodies into genuinely disturbing villians. Their Gotham is dingy, depressing, and close to how you would probably imagine it, and Batman’s and his allies’ decisions fit right where I would expect.
Honestly, my least favorite part is the combat. I’m terrible at remembering lengthy button combos, which significantly limits my combat options. I appreciate that Rocksteady added in the “Disruptor” (shown in The Dark Knight Rises (2012)), which let me remotely disable guards’ weapons in advance of combat. Judicious use of the Disruptor permitted me to even the odds a bit, especially when I was jumping into a solo fight against more than a dozen hostiles. The problem is that when you hit a wall with the combat, there’s no mechanism in place to help you advance. As a result, I couldn’t totally finish the game and see the “true” ending.
All in all, however, this is a terrific game. The Arkham series has been a real accomplishment in adapting comic heroes to video games, and its constituents are easily the best comic book games ever. They have left me fantasizing about Rocksteady moving onto another DC property of which I’m a fan. I’m also hoping that other game designers are inspired by Arkham Knight, because we truly need more games like this one.
