Gotham Knights is an Unexpectedly enjoyable DC game and a Worthy Successor to the Arkham Games
And Suicide Squad can't even compare.
Earlier this year I decided to replay the Batman Arkham games. Obviously, they hold up amazingly well and they gave me some thoughts about what I think should have came after them. And recently of course, Rocksteady returned to the Arkham verse with the absolutely god awful Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League which took what the Arkhamverse was and, arguably, shat on it.
Now, to be up front, I did not play it. I am not typically a "Live service" enjoyer. The only one I've been into has been Destiny 2 and that was only really because I had been into Destiny since February 2015. So when the next Rocksteady game turned out to be a live service game, I knew I would not care about it, but here's the thing, as I've talked about before, I fucking love a good story and I can look past a lot for that. But even with me being able to look past a lot, Suicide Squad just did not give me good story vibes. And obviously I was right, the game was universally trashed and very obviously the story was ripped apart to make the live service game work and spread the second half of the story across 4 seasons (if only the story had been complete, then it might have been better). They're in the 3rd season now and the story is finally making some progress but I only know that from other people I've seen talk about it.
2 years before Suicide Squad, another game came out; Gotham Knights. It very obviously gave off live service vibes as well but after playing it I can say that that is not true. I truly believe the game got the short end of the stick when it came to DC games. It was very clear that WB was betting big on Suicide Squad, what with the game being worked on for 8 years and having such a high production value and budget, but Gotham Knights obviously had a much smaller budget and was not marketed very well.
The first thing I did when booting it up was disable the multi-player. This wasn't because I have no one to play with, although I don't, it was because I wanted something that felt like a good follow up to the Arkham games. Even though the game technically takes place in a different timeline. So let's get after it.
The Bad
Okay, let's start with the bad. Very early on the game teaches you how to craft items. It had you collecting crafting ingredients from chests across Gotham as well as from downed enemies and then you take those ingredients to craft new suits, melee weapons, and ranged weapons. This isn't necessarily that bad. To be honest, I didn’t have a whole lot of issues here. Was it annoying? Yeah. Was it as annoying as Live Service games can be? Not even close. The game was obviously intended for you to wander the city and stop crimes similar to Arkham City, Origins, and Knight except that now you can do it with 1 of 4 characters (Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin, and Redhood) and your friends. It's an interesting idea, but the friends part isn't necessarily required. It gave me very Arkham Knight vibes. So with that, the crafting being such a core concept made sense since you want to play a bunch with your friends. At the end of the day, I am not usually a Crafting fan so this firmly ended up in the bad column.
The next bad part is just...the base movement in the game is kinda rough. In the Arkham games you are able to glide around between buildings and such. But here? No glide for you initially. It just doesn't feel as good. Its not super bad, you can still move pretty quickly, you can grapple pretty quick and jump high when you want to. Thankfully though, once you reach Knighthood (something you get once you beat some challenges and do a tutorial) you are able to glide again, at least as Batgirl. But the glide takes a bit too long to activate, but hey, at least you can glide.
Then you also have the ability to use the Batcycle. Which unfortunately felt underbaked and clunky. When I replayed Arkham Knight earlier this year, I had expected the Batmobile to be clunky like I remembered it but no, it was actually an incredibly well done mechanic and it felt really good to drive around. But the Batcycle? Yeah, that is not good. It's too heavy. Way too heavy. I enjoyed parts of it,. The drifting is great, but in the first little bit of you using it, you have to do a wheelie to be able to "climb" over an obstacle. I get the idea and like that they were trying to make driving a bit more interesting, but I kept being slightly off and just running into a wall and having to reverse and try again. It just sucked.
Plus, unlike batman Arkham Knight where you can drive the Batmobile through any obstacle and not have to worry about getting stuck on a lamp post, the Batcycle will get stuck on everything and it's. annoying. I wish the destruction system from Arkham Knight would have been brought over because it would have made the Batcycle feel SO much better.
And coming off the movement, the gameplay itself is pretty finicky. For example, I would often run into the corner of walls and get stuck on them. It was infuriating and reminded me of an Assassin's Creed game. Thankfully, it doesn't take long to get out of it but I just...I don’t like being able to get stuck on a corner and not easily able to just go around it and instead just sitting there with the character just kinda, not doing anything. This was probably my biggest frustration because I think even just walking around should feel good and I didn’t really have those problems when I replayed the old Arkham games so it was saddening that I experienced it here.
Something similar that would happen all the fucking time is that I had serious issues jumping off of perches or fences or similar objects. I found myself frequently just sitting perched and trying to get off the object I was on, but my character just sitting there, not moving at all. It was frustrating and by the end I was saying "Hello? Please just move. Please.". The Arkham games did not have this problem.
Next, while the combat can be really satisfying, it can also get hung up. So if you press the buttons too fast it doesn't end up doing anything. This also didn't happen with the Arkham games, but to be honest it just takes getting used to. It's not that difficult to get used to but can occasionally come up when you're fighting a lot of enemies and need to move quick. It is also inconsistent so sometimes I'll be able to press buttons as fast as I want, and other times Batgirl would just get hung up. Add in getting hung up on corners and the fact that many fights in the open world happen with plenty of corners around you and there will be times when you get stuck with pressing your buttons too fast and then also get stuck on a corner so you're basically double stuck. This is not good.
I think the final bad thing that I think can hold the game back is how there are less opportunities for stealth. Don’t get me wrong, you can still be stealthy. But gone are the days of sitting on a gargoyle and grabbing the enemy below you in a silent takedown then pulling them up to the gargoyle and dropping them with a wire connecting them to said gargoyle, now you actually have to jump down to take them down. Which really opens you up for being spotted. Many times I've done a silent takedown and what in the Arkham games would have only taken a couple seconds and would have been done without being spotted now it not only takes me jumping down, but feels like it takes longer to knock them out. I wish they had still allowed you to grab enemies from above because the game is missing some good stealth segments. There also aren't floor vents for you to jump out of, or gadgets for you to place for traps, or many perches to observe the room or area. Some rooms where you are supposed to be stealthy don't even have perches at all. I think they should have made stealth more of a priority by adding more perches, allowing you to silent takedown from above, slightly increased the speed you knock people out, and then added more opportunities for silent takedowns with spots like floor vents. If they did all those things, which I don't think would have taken that much more effort just because I believe they're using the same engine that Arkham Origins, a game that they made, already used. If they were to make a sequel, I'd definitely want these things to be addressed (either introducing the exact mechanic or simply introducing their own version of the mechanics) because although the game does fundamentally feel like an Arkham game, it could feel even MORE like an Arkham game.
The Good
This fucking games story is incredible. Maybe it's that I've been on a DC kick recently, but being able to play in a world with Batman having died and the Bat family having to deal with the consequences was a great jumping off point and I was immediately drawn in. The game has the same type of mission structure as the Arkham games, you go into some building, have moments of combat, moments of stealth takedowns, moments of detective work, moments of being able to find side stuff that has interesting information and voice lines, and then moments of character development and villains doing their thing.
For instance, the second villain interaction happens when you have to infiltrate Blackgate Prison in order to get information (a book) from Harley Quinn that she collected for Batman before he died. This mission was great. Like, really good. The mission is capped off by you having to chase after a balloon that is holding Harley’s book and you chase it to the main yard for the prison. Then the game starts playing some kickass pop music and you get to takedown all the enemies rioting and fighting the prison guards while the tune rocks out. It's just this great moment of personality that you would not have gotten in the Arkham games and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Then you get introduced to the Court of Owls who are one of the two main villains of the game and their introduction is fucking fantastic. The Court is not often used in games so to be able to see it represented in such an well done way was really cool. I haven't read the comics that have the Court of Owls in them but this game makes me want to. There's this amazing moment where you have to go into Chelsea Tunnel and find out why it was shut down (Conspiracy!) and you end up in this giant cave system that the Court has been mining for centuries. You get introduced to the Feral Talons who are an interesting enemy type that have interesting implications behind their zombified nature. Then you discover that they've been mining a core ingredient to the Lazarus Pit and then while escaping, they blow up the whole operation to try and take you out. While escaping you get chased by a whole group of the Talons and it gave me real Uncharted: Drakes Fortune vibes where the vampires in that game chase after Drake as he opens and shuts one of those doors that open with wheels, which is what your character does here in Gotham Knights. Again, I picked Batgirl and I'm incredibly glad I did because I honestly think she's the one character that, because of her being Oracle, I'm most interested in her thoughts on the Court of Owls. This story is just really good and I would recommend the game purely on that if you want to play a DC game with a good story.
Another good thing, which feels contradictory to my first bad thing, I really liked the ability to make new suits. The one thing that really sucked in the Arkham games was that the only real customization of Batman you can do is only done through DLC. So if you didn't pay for it, like I didn't, then you just don't get some really fun customizations. But here, you get to craft new suits as you level up and collect new ingredients and each suit has a different look. The ingredients have their own rarity system which, while sucks, at least allows for increasingly interesting new suits in my experience. And not only that, there is a system to customize individual parts of your suit and a transmog system, so if you don’t like how you look with a specific suit, you can change it no problem! I think if we ever got a Gotham Knights 2, I'd want to see more customization and make it more interesting besides just different stats.
Games that just have different stats for their gear can be interesting but what is even more interesting is gear that changes how you play. For instance, in Assassins Creed Mirage your gear gives you significant effects that make playing more interesting and aren’t held back by stupid stats systems. I want more of this in games and less of gear just having a variety of stats that increase over time (looking right at you God of War 2018 and Ragnarok), but that’s a tangent that isn't always a bad thing because it still provides interesting customization for suits.
Another good thing is the mission structure. I've already talked about two of the early missions in the game and I think the structure of those missions are so fundamentally Arkham that it makes me sad that Suicide Squad was the higher budget game since I wish the devs of this game were given more money to really turn up their missions to 11, but multiple times I was reminded of Arkham missions and how unique and interesting they were. The game truly is a good follow up for the Arkham games and really evokes the feeling of those games.
Then there are the side missions! They're complete stories that have their own interesting stories that aren't connected to the main plot and I genuinely enjoyed them! Seeing Harley become a self help guru was a particular highlight as I’m personally of the opinion that self help guru shit is all a scam. I just wish there were more side villains to deal with, only having Clayface, Harley, and Freeze just left me wanting more.
The ending
Okay, this is a good thing but I wanted it to bring its own section purely for spoiler purposes, so if you intend to play the game and don’t want spoilers, skip this section.
The game ends with you finding out Talia has created multiple Manbat creatures with the Lazarus Pit and after tracking her down into the depths of a cave system under Gotham and through the remnants of the Batcave all the way to a Lazarus pit under Gotham, you find out she has raised Bruce from the dead and brainwashed him and you have to fight him. During the fight you manage to convince him back to sanity and then he gets stabbed by Talia. Who you then have to fight. Then your fight with her gets interrupted by the Court and you run away and Talia escapes. Then Bruce sacrifices himself to take out the Lazarus pit so the Court doesn't get its hands on it (cause Bruce can't fully come back, that defeats the whole point of the game).
All in all, I liked the ending. I get that it was setting up a sequel or even DLC that was never made and I think the team that made this should absolutely get the opportunity to make the sequel. Especially since this time Bruce can't come back at the end to save the day once more.
In Conclusion
I liked Gotham Knights. Far more than I was expecting to, and far more than other reviews made me think I would. The game, as it stands, is a fantastic experiences being able to experience a Batman game in a new iteration of the universe and being able to play as the Bat family really made the game for me. Batgirl was a great character to play as and I don’t think I would have enjoyed the game as much if I had played as someone else. The game deserved far more attention than it got and I hope more people play it eventually cause it really is a fantastic game. Don’t worry about not having people to play with either, it will just feel like an Arkham game with a bit of a different personality.
I think everyone should play Gotham Knights if they played Suicide Squad and were disappointed by it. This is a game that will give you a fun DC story, will give you enjoyment for at least 15 hours, and won't try to force you into a Live Service ecosystem. It's a self contained game that deserves to be played. Especially when it goes on sale for 12 bucks.
Anyway, back I go to Veilguard.
Meow,
Cat