Gotham Knights Buries A Great Batfamily Under A Combat Slog
Batman is dead and it takes four people to make it work. This is the heart of Gotham Knights , the new third-person action game from WB Games Montreal. In a cinematic opening that feels like an eternity, longtime villain Ra's Al Ghul uses magic, swordsmanship and generally annoying behavior to make Batman a hero, but it's a sacrificial death. To maintain dominance over Gotham, Batman's four minions - Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and Robin - continue where they left off to fight and explore Gotham's underworld.
Notably, Gotham Knights is not a sequel to Arkham Knight 2015. While there are many common characters between the games, it's a different story set in a somewhat parallel universe. I have to say it here, if only because it can be confusing. The game ends with Batman dead and Gotham City needs a new generation of saviors - not a dead Batman, and the city doesn't need that savior.
However, the game shares a lot of game design with the franchise. This is an action game based on one-on-one battles. There are heavy and light attacks that level up as you keep throwing them rhythmically and you fill up the gauge, allowing you to use special impulse attacks that can instantly trigger an enemy or group of fans. When you play Arkham and collect Gotham Knights . You won't feel isolated; If you've never played any of them, you'll probably get the hang of them quickly.
What sets Gotham Knights apart from previous forays into Bativerse is the group's setting. Instead of playing as a single parent, you can choose from four heirs to Batman's legacy. There is Nightwing, a former Robin and a circus actor named Dick Grayson who was raised by Batman to be a vigilante after his parents' deaths; Batgirl, also known as Barbara Gordon, is a technologist who practices Batman's flamboyant style along with her late father's sense of justice; Tim Drake, Robin in the last game, is a smart, talkative teenager who goes down the path of a rebellious detective; Rounding out the team is Red Riding Hood, Jason Todd, also a former Robin, who is kidnapped by the Joker, killed, eventually revived, becomes a vigilante, and eventually "wakes up" and is thrown aside. Batman stuff.
If that sounds like a lot of information, it is, but Gotham Knights doesn't spend a lot of energy explaining this backstory to you. Like most modern DC comics, Gotham Knights is content to dip you into this pure swamp of canon phrases and simply assumes you'll find out by looking up the wiki or going to the wiki, as well as the information and the "Read in game" button. list of these key characters. The game has an overall comedian feel - you'll know it or quit trying -.
There are some really cool Gothamite cannon mobs in Gotham Knights , and there are some really hard cannon levels for them. Is this a character reinvention? Are they secretly referencing Arkham ? How about a movie or comedy? First, the character mentions Harley Quinn doing "government work", which clearly reads like a reference to the Suicide Squad. What should I know about her? How important? The tentacles of the DC Universe are quite confusing here, and nothing is more controversial than the obvious "pocket gun" from the Arkham franchise.
Ultimately, these clues and connections have very little effect on the Gotham Knights experience, which is focused on a few key activities: patrolling the city, fighting crime, learning about these four heroes and how they live after Batman's death, and you'll take on more large-scale linear missions while chasing big villains like Harley Quinn, Clayface and the mysterious Owl Court.
All of these activities go hand in hand with each other. For example, sir. Freeze's "case" (or mission line) begins with a linear mission centered around several heists at STAR Labs. As soon as Red Hood, the character you played in the mission, enters the lab, he discovers that the theft was carried out by the organizers, a group of data thieves and technological criminals. He cleared several rooms of it, and then he realized that the robbery had to do with some kind of refrigeration supplies or something, and damn it, she didn't know Mr. Freezing was doing it.
Then, of course, Freeze escapes, and the only way to continue the open case is to explore the open world map, find the organizers who committed the crime, and interrogate them to find out Freeze's next whereabouts. This reveals new missions and sometimes major robberies or kidnappings that my hero must complete while hunting down the big cold guy. It's the ebb and flow of the game that I personally find more intriguing than similar structures seen in games like 2018's Marvel Spider-Man . It's like the real Batman stuff - like you're taking to the streets and back making convincing claims about a supervillain trying to use ice mechanics to control the weather.
What interests me less is what most people probably care about: fights over time, dominating at least 75% of the game time.
It features the genre's standard mix of heroes defeating villains, and there are some villains that need to be defeated somehow, requiring the heroes to fight with various rock-paper-scissors skills. Random mobs are easily infected; The claws, which are special pseudo-zombies, must go through a ranged attack that will eliminate them before you can defeat them with your strikes. The combat itself is based on all these enemies and their opponents holding them, merging with special swing abilities that have their own charging sticks. Momentum attacks are aimed at doing something as quickly as possible. By the end of the game, I no longer use Batgirl's tactical strikes. Instead, I just load up the feed and spam as much as possible because it's effective (albeit tedious) in taking down enemies and allowing me to move on to the next story.
In addition, a lot of details of the fight are expected, but it is not exciting. There are levels that give you skill points, and these can be used to gain abilities that enhance certain attacks or maneuvers. Some of them are very important, such as B. getting seriously injured, and others are very important, such as Batgirl's ability to remotely disable certain electronic devices. There are collectible outfits and weapons, each with their own increasing stats, as well as mod chips that can be equipped on these items, increasing their number.
If I'm playing a medium difficulty game, I have to take care of this a bit other than increasing this number as you play. Similarly, there is a basic status mechanic that allows you to create status effects that deal additional damage, much like in The Division games, but there doesn't seem to be any combat or breakdown throughout the experience. They may become more important on the hardest difficulty, or become relevant in the announced Heroic Assault mode, which will be released later this year.
It's worth noting that Gotham Knights appears to be playable via online co-op, although this review's busy schedule prevented me from trying it. Some boss fights feel well-prepared for this kind of co-op play, and most of them follow a "do this, do that more seriously, do both at the same time" pattern in intense time and space. Single player control. In the end, I found most of the fights interesting, if a bit boring due to their length. I figure a helpful partner will make them feel a little closer.
I spent most of my time playing Gotham Knights , nodding my head and thinking, "Okay, yeah, cool." It's kind of a game. There are some great moments, such as the role of the evil health guru Harley Quinn, which I think was performed and put together very well. However, much of the gameplay consists of point-to-point exploration of the world and engaging in combat, sometimes punctuated by a well-written comic story about four people trying to fix the world in memory of their death through expansion. I love memorable fights to get to the next plot point in Red Hood or Batgirl and I think anyone who's craving some basic bat family action will do the same.
But Gotham Knights lacked some of the interpretive moves both Rocksteady Arkham made The WB Montreal game and the Arkham Origins games themselves are very interesting and unique. This is another confrontation on the same rainy streets.
Gotham Knights will release on October 21st for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game has been verified on PS5 using a pre-load code provided by Warner Bros. Interactive entertainment is provided. Vox Media has partnerships. This does not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. More information on Polygon's Ethics Policy can be found here .
