Gotham Knights: Deluxe Edition (PS5)

Product Information

Gotham Knights is a good game, and we had a lot of fun playing it. It isn’t, however, a great game, and its shortcomings are disappointing. Its engaging story is marred by issues that other games have solved for years. But despite a myriad of problems, ultimately it did more right than wrong. So, buy it if you’re a fan of the Bat Family. Otherwise, wait for it on sale. Every 30 seconds in the Belfry, we overhear chats between the characters, and their dialogue ranges from the practical to the punny. We could listen to it for hours.

So, it’s disappointing, then, that you can’t swap characters while out on patrol — an omission that hinders the versatility of combat. We recommend spending as much time as you can spare on training. You will need it, particularly in the beginning. But the story’s biggest issue is that it tries way too hard to squeeze an entire rogue’s gallery of potential suspects into its murder-mystery premise, and feels completely disorganized as a result. You spend most of the surprisingly short campaign’s eight story missions jumping from one villainous cabal to another, before arriving at a conclusion I was able to predict practically before the end of the opening credits. It’s devastating to see such an underwhelming plot unfold after the Arkham series included some of my favorite Batman stories of all time, which often left me speechless with their stirring twists and turns. Gotham Knights, by contrast, includes a masked character whose identity is immediately apparent upon first sight and whose inevitable unmasking is laughably anticlimactic. It’s followed up with an ending that’s foreshadowed so frequently and unsubtly that I involuntarily cringed when they actually went through with it.The world then shifts to daytime whenever we chillax in the Belfry. Finally, a Batman game that has daylight — even if we only see it through the Belfry’s windows. Play as a New Guard of DC Super Heroes – Step into the roles of Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin and shape Gotham’s newest protector to create your own version of the Dark Knight.

Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands) may take longer to reach you. Better yet, it allowed us to get extra dialogue. On a mission with our co-op partner, Robin tumbled down a hole and said something like, “I’m glad no one was here to see that.” But because Red Hood was standing right there, he responded, “I didn’t see anything.” Each character comes with their own skill set and the signature combat of the Arkham games is also here, though the quality of combat animations has seen a noticeable drop in quality. It gets close to replicating the same smooth snappiness, yet something always feels wrong as if the combat moves are unfinished in design. Moreover, it gets repetitive to fight enemies, which is the game's biggest downfall. The Callisto Protocol, a horror-focused recent release, had similar issues regarding this. Another downside of the game is it feels like it was once a game-as-a-service title with a loot-focused design with mobile-like hideous UI. It just gets so exhausting to change equipment and it often breaks your immersion. Frame Rate Controversy Combat fatigue (see our What we didn’t like section below) can be mitigated by switching different characters, each with their own combat style. You can also encounter these missions differently, depending on the way you’ve upgraded your abilities. For example, you might want to switch over to Babs if you’re planning to do some light espionage and your current Batgirl can’t be seen by cameras. When your chosen character has enough experience to level up, happily, the other characters level too. Open-world traversal, where the launch release suffered most, is also very stable. Long stretches run at a perfect 30fps, even when speeding through Gotham City on the Batcycle. I can't say it's completely perfect - one-off dropped frames can pop up, though not more often than every few minutes or so. For all practical purposes, open world gameplay just hugs that 30fps update. The opening bike chase, which is possibly the most consistently demanding scene in the entire game, provides a helpful illustration. The updated PS5 code is almost a flat line here, with just a handful of dropped frames through the entire sequence, while the launch version goes on a bit of a frame-time rollercoaster ride. There are extended dips, sharp stutters, and plenty of 16 millisecond frames sprinkled in for good measure on that original code. The new version brings a night-and-day improvement, and is ultimately a much more enjoyable experience.Most of the game involves doling out justice with our fists, and leveling our heroes isn’t just a way to become more powerful: It’s part of our emotional arc, to become a hero who can fill Batman’s bat-boots. Additionally, each character in Gotham Knights has an individual journey of self-discovery they take to learn about how they deal with death and life. These scenes bring out the best that the world of gaming and comic books has to offer. Even though there are 12 types of premeditated crimes, the actual combat can be boiled down into one word: meh. There are only minor differences between the gangs and hoodlums that need taking down (and the dialogue from gangs and passersby can be repetitive or even ridiculous). Extra challenges, such as defeating two foes at once — a game mechanic swiped whole from Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man — make the game less repetitious but might not suit the play style of the character you’re currently with.