It plays a massive part in enveloping you in the batsuit and making you feel like the world you’re swooping around in is immersive. They’ve proven in the previous installments that they are huge, huge fans of Batman and treat his world with care, respect and an astonishing level of detail that other licensed games usually fail to capture. You just knew Rocksteady would nail the aesthetic of Gotham and our titular hero. Dark, shocking, brutal and, most importantly, incredibly true to the character of Batman and the medley of miscreants and heroes that inhabit Gotham. The events that occur for the nearly the entire duration of Arkham Knight (save for a highly underwhelming hour nearer the end) makes for one of the most beautifully crafted and compelling stories in modern gaming. It may follow similar beats to Asylum and City, but there’s almost always a reason for that because all that has come before bleeds into Knight’s tale on a consistent basis, often before you’ve even realised it. All the while, many other story threads continue to weave through the main one, creating a rich tapestry only Rocksteady could possibly achieve with the subject matter. It’s more about the effect his militia has on Gotham that matters anyway, with remote-controlled tanks and heavily armed ground troops making the ensuing story into a war between the Arkham Knight’s forces and Batman’s ragtag band of sidekicks, costumed vigilantes, anti-heroes and a beleaguered police force.
Still, he is just one foil in an impressive catalogue of rogues so the focus never stays long enough on him for heavy scrutiny. It certainly felt to me that he would have been more menacing (and perhaps more mysterious) as a man of few words. What doesn’t work however is how much he talks. The Arkham Knight is a new character and a decent concept for a villain (basically a militarized Batman). The Arkham Knight is cloaked in mystery beyond the fact he appears to not only have a grudge hard-on for Batman, but also knows an awful lot about the Caped Crusader’s modus operandi. Scarecrow is up to his old toxin-based tricks again you see, but it soon becomes apparent this is a far grander scheme than he’s attempted before, and he has an intimidating level of backup in the form of the Arkham Knight and his militia. Both ways work, but now the third game in developer Rocksteady’s personal Dark Knight trilogy is here, and Arkham Knight hopes to be the ultimate Batman experience and make that original love letter into a pyrotechnic-fuelled power ballad - but still about a man in a tech-laden bat costume.ĭuring a frankly brilliant opening half hour, Batman begins Halloween night searching for Scarecrow in an evacuated Gotham City. Asylum’s single locale kept you laser-focused on the task in hand while City gave you far more freedom and space to do things as and when you pleased.
City continues to divide opinion with fans as to which is the better way to experience being Batman.