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- Feb 10, 2013
Arkham Knight
- Thread starter TheMightyMonarch
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2013
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2013
The Harley Quinn story pack was like 20min tops. Here's the synopsis
Harley breaks into police station. Beats up some cops. Blows up some cops. Ivy is in the basement! Oh noes here comes Nightwing....and more cops! You beat Nightwing. Ivy drags his body away to the ceiling and everyone laughs. The End.
Harley breaks into police station. Beats up some cops. Blows up some cops. Ivy is in the basement! Oh noes here comes Nightwing....and more cops! You beat Nightwing. Ivy drags his body away to the ceiling and everyone laughs. The End.
- Joined
- May 21, 2015
So I've played another hour or so of the game and the Batmobile is growing on me a little bit. I still think it's forced into places where it doesn't necessarily make sense to put it in and an uncomfortable about of the puzzles rely on using it but it's growing on me.
ETA: Once the game opens up a bit, you're not as tied to the vehicle as you are at the beginning, though it is a key component of the gameplay and you end up back in it for various reasons throughout play. I'm okay with it, I suppose. The vehicle combat doesn't really change much from when it's introduced, and it gets pretty tedious,admittedly.
Unhappy to see the return of the hacking tool though. Christ, I hated that thing in all of the Arkham games.
ETA: Once the game opens up a bit, you're not as tied to the vehicle as you are at the beginning, though it is a key component of the gameplay and you end up back in it for various reasons throughout play. I'm okay with it, I suppose. The vehicle combat doesn't really change much from when it's introduced, and it gets pretty tedious,admittedly.
Unhappy to see the return of the hacking tool though. Christ, I hated that thing in all of the Arkham games.
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- Sep 27, 2014
http://www.pcgamer.com/warner-bros-is-suspending-sales-of-batman-arkham-knight-for-pc/ HAHA OH WOW THEY RECALLED THE FUCKING GAME ON PC
this is worse than an ubisoft release
this is worse than an ubisoft release
- Joined
- May 21, 2015
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2014
Terrible PC releases have happened before (AC Unity is probably the most recent example).
I can't think of another instance where a AAA game has ever stopped sales just a few days after release, but I would guess that they've learned their lesson from those disasters and are in damage control mode now.
PC optimization isn't that hard to do. I'm glad to see that third-rate ports are getting called out now.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
This is where I would insert a sarcastic "PC Master Race" remark, but I then remember this is the year 2015 and the chances of playing a AAA game day one - console or PC - without having to first download and install a day one patch/update/whatever is about as rare as finding a Sasquatch in a Quiznos.
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- Dec 7, 2013
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- Aug 21, 2013
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- Dec 27, 2014
http://www.pcgamer.com/warner-bros-is-suspending-sales-of-batman-arkham-knight-for-pc/ HAHA OH WOW THEY RECALLED THE FUCKING GAME ON PC
Remember when PC ports used to be good?
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2014
Played a little bit; the game is mostly pretty dope so far. Visuals are fantastic, great attention to details. The voice actors from AA/AC are mostly back. I kinda like the Batmobile, but it's really forced on you at the beginning. The Riddler race tracks make no sense at all, and I miss the Riddler deathtraps from AC. Hopefully when I'm past the tutorial opening section, they'll take t down a notch with all the Batmobiling.
The Batmobile design is very slick. Kinda of a more nimble version of the clunky Batmobile from the Nolan movies.
The Batmobile design is very slick. Kinda of a more nimble version of the clunky Batmobile from the Nolan movies.
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- Joined
- May 21, 2015
They don't, really. You get forced back into it for "reasons". You don't have to stick with it outside of those reasons though, as gliding becomes insanely fast with upgrades. Not all of the Riddler "challenges" are races though, thankfully. Some are older death machine style ones, some are puzzles involving making use of the car.
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2013
The batmobile design reminds me much more of the Tim Burton's Batmobile than the Nolan one. It's almost more like they merged the two together.
- Joined
- May 21, 2015
I've finished the story mode. There's some post-denoument extra stuff that I haven't done yet, but I'm going to save that for the new game plus.
Main thing: I hate the car. Well, maybe not hate. But I definitely am of two minds about it. One of the problems I had with Arkham Origins is that it didn't do anything new. It reshuffled some things around, gave you different takes on a couple of gadgets, but it was basically Arkham City with a fresh, buggy coat of paint. So in that sense, I liked that the Batmobile was something new. It added something to a formula of "predator, combat, predator, combat" that was starting to wear a little thin.
And it fit the story too. Arkham's story (and Batman's in a way) has always been one about escalation. Escalation in world-size (One island to part of a city to a whole city) to escalation of threat. The plot of Arkham Knight involves a literal invasion of Gotham City and so Gotham's defender needs a tank to fight an army.
Gameplay wise, there were places where it worked. There were a couple of bits where the Batmobile functioned as just another gadget that you used to solve puzzles. And that worked. That was great. I had a fantastic amount of time doing one of the Riddler puzzles, for example, that required me to switch between Batman and the Batmobile (through your ability to control it remotely) to make progress to the end point.
But there were an awful lot of puzzles that required the Batmobile for the sake of having the Batmobile, where the puzzle isn't about making forward progress but rather...going ahead so you can clear the path for the Batmobile so you can bring it to whatever token thing you need it for at the end.
Where the car just flat-out does not work is the combat and the chase scenes. Combat, mostly, involves you facing off against unmanned drones (I swear to GodBear, they remind you of this fact about nineteen thousand times throughout the game). Lines show you where the drone is going to fire and you use the tank's ability to dodge (yes.) to slide out of the way. That's it. They spice it up by having some drones fly and some drones shoot two shots that are close enough that getting hit by one gets you hit by both and some that shoot three shots wide enough for you to hide behind them and some shoot mortars and some shoot missiles that you have to shoot out of the sky...but the basic is the same: avoid the blue projectile lines. Destroying tanks builds up energy for a couple of special weapons, but only one of them has any real value. Getting hit drains the energy.
Combat is intended to be a bit of a mirror of the hand-to-hand combat wherein stringing together combos grants you access to more powerful abilities and where getting hit strips you of that, but while hand-to-hand combat keeps things fresh with varying enemy types that require different approaches to tackle, gadgets, environmental takedowns, and beautifully animated (and sometimes eye-wateringly painful to watch) animations to spice things up...from your first tank battle to the last, you're dodging, shooting, dodging, shooting over and over again. To make them harder, the later combat scenes feature 30+ tanks, but it's still the same style of gameplay. It becomes infinitely tedious.
You also occasionally have to take part in what are basically chase scenes from any other sandbox game. Car going fast, you have to chase it. Equally tedious because, aside from the fact that the car handles like a brick outside out "tank mode", you have to use some special lock-on weapon to destroy the target(s). The lock takes a considerable amount of time to come into effect and you have to be, more or less, right behind the target for it to work. The lock thing also comes into play during the Batmobile stealth encounters (yes.) wherein you have to play cat-and-mouse with these super tanks in order to get behind them and shoot a missile.
Without a doubt, the Batmobile is probably the worst part about the game. It works as a puzzle, when it's one of your many, many gadgets. It doesn't work as a method for combat. It feels like an idea that wasn't allowed to fully develop.
As far as the rest of the game goes: combat and predator bits are as golden as ever, if fewer and far between thanks to the Boringmobile. At certain points in the game, you team up with members of the Bat Family and the combat is fun in that you can switch between the characters and do brutal tag-team takedowns. Goons have a few new tricks, but it's mostly the same assortment of knives and stun sticks and shields. There's a medic unit that can revive knocked-out guys as well as buff other minions. The brutes from Origins return with a few twists. The ninjas too. No martial artists, thankfully. Environmental takedowns are pretty cool but hard to do as they require precise positioning on the part of you and the goon. You can also pick up weapons from the ground, but the keybind for it and the environmental takedown is the same and just about the only time I found myself with a weapon was when I was trying to shove somebody into an electrical panel.
The Predator bits were some of the hardest I've experienced in the series. Most of the game takes place out-of-doors, requiring some better strategizing now that there isn't a ring of gargoyles staring down at every enemy. A couple of the new toys added were a little too powerful for my tastes (Hack a drone, use it, then do a Fear Takedown renders most of the room on the floor without having to use the countless gadgets, doohickeys, and contextual takedowns that each room offers. I imagine though that it'll be harder come NG+).
The only thing from the previous games that I was sad to see return was the damn hacking tool where you have to match up the words. Thankfully they didn't go absolutely overboard with hackable panels like they did in the previous games.
Finally, the story: really, really good scenes and twists, a couple of really good concepts, and a whole fuck lot of padding. There's a major story thread that while the reveal has a nice nod to people versed in Batman history, the twist itself is fairly predictable and lacks any closure. That's all I'll say about the main story so as to not spoil anything. The side quests are a little disappointing as they rely heavily on the Batmobile and even if it didn't control like a ton of bricks and feel boring, gliding around the city is just way too much fun to want to stay on the ground, especially with some of the upgrades that essentially give you flight.
Long and spergy, I apologize. Arkham is one of my favorite game series and I have nearly 200 hours across all four games. I wanted to do it justice.
And it fit the story too. Arkham's story (and Batman's in a way) has always been one about escalation. Escalation in world-size (One island to part of a city to a whole city) to escalation of threat. The plot of Arkham Knight involves a literal invasion of Gotham City and so Gotham's defender needs a tank to fight an army.
Gameplay wise, there were places where it worked. There were a couple of bits where the Batmobile functioned as just another gadget that you used to solve puzzles. And that worked. That was great. I had a fantastic amount of time doing one of the Riddler puzzles, for example, that required me to switch between Batman and the Batmobile (through your ability to control it remotely) to make progress to the end point.
But there were an awful lot of puzzles that required the Batmobile for the sake of having the Batmobile, where the puzzle isn't about making forward progress but rather...going ahead so you can clear the path for the Batmobile so you can bring it to whatever token thing you need it for at the end.
One of the earliest egregious example of the above is when you need to power a satellite whose generator is on the roof. You use a set of ramps to get yourself up onto the roof which is conveniently car-sized and has these convenient railings that won't break when hit by the car, drive around a little roof maze and get to the jack. This is five minutes after the Batwing, a vehicle capable of flight and of hovering, dropped off the "Power Winch" for the Batmobile. I know the point of the bit is to introduce you to the car and to the Winch (which proves vital in most puzzles involving the car), but it just screams of use of the shoe-horn. And it's not the only situation like this (just the least spoilery).
Where the car just flat-out does not work is the combat and the chase scenes. Combat, mostly, involves you facing off against unmanned drones (I swear to GodBear, they remind you of this fact about nineteen thousand times throughout the game). Lines show you where the drone is going to fire and you use the tank's ability to dodge (yes.) to slide out of the way. That's it. They spice it up by having some drones fly and some drones shoot two shots that are close enough that getting hit by one gets you hit by both and some that shoot three shots wide enough for you to hide behind them and some shoot mortars and some shoot missiles that you have to shoot out of the sky...but the basic is the same: avoid the blue projectile lines. Destroying tanks builds up energy for a couple of special weapons, but only one of them has any real value. Getting hit drains the energy.
Combat is intended to be a bit of a mirror of the hand-to-hand combat wherein stringing together combos grants you access to more powerful abilities and where getting hit strips you of that, but while hand-to-hand combat keeps things fresh with varying enemy types that require different approaches to tackle, gadgets, environmental takedowns, and beautifully animated (and sometimes eye-wateringly painful to watch) animations to spice things up...from your first tank battle to the last, you're dodging, shooting, dodging, shooting over and over again. To make them harder, the later combat scenes feature 30+ tanks, but it's still the same style of gameplay. It becomes infinitely tedious.
I found myself getting really frustrated with the last few Batmobile combat scenes, largely because of the numbers and the fact that the scaling on them is a little out of whack. The early engagements are really easy: handful of simple tanks. They're also fairly few and far between. By the last third of the game, you're shuttled from tank engagement to tank engagement and the difficulty is in the numbers. I probably would have had an easier time with these had I spent more of my upgrade points on the Batmobile upgrades like armor, faster weapon reloading, etc. The early engagements were so easy that I did not see a point in spending upgrade points on a part of the game that A: I didn't enjoy, and B: seemed easy enough without. Lesson learned: spend upgrades on the Batmobile, even if you don't need them until late game.
You also occasionally have to take part in what are basically chase scenes from any other sandbox game. Car going fast, you have to chase it. Equally tedious because, aside from the fact that the car handles like a brick outside out "tank mode", you have to use some special lock-on weapon to destroy the target(s). The lock takes a considerable amount of time to come into effect and you have to be, more or less, right behind the target for it to work. The lock thing also comes into play during the Batmobile stealth encounters (yes.) wherein you have to play cat-and-mouse with these super tanks in order to get behind them and shoot a missile.
Without a doubt, the Batmobile is probably the worst part about the game. It works as a puzzle, when it's one of your many, many gadgets. It doesn't work as a method for combat. It feels like an idea that wasn't allowed to fully develop.
There's a scene late in the game where the Batmobile is rendered inoperable for a bit. There's another scene where the Batmobile is destroyed. These two bits shouldn't leave the gamer, exasperated as he is with an overdose of Batmobile, cheering. That's when you know you've overdone it.
As far as the rest of the game goes: combat and predator bits are as golden as ever, if fewer and far between thanks to the Boringmobile. At certain points in the game, you team up with members of the Bat Family and the combat is fun in that you can switch between the characters and do brutal tag-team takedowns. Goons have a few new tricks, but it's mostly the same assortment of knives and stun sticks and shields. There's a medic unit that can revive knocked-out guys as well as buff other minions. The brutes from Origins return with a few twists. The ninjas too. No martial artists, thankfully. Environmental takedowns are pretty cool but hard to do as they require precise positioning on the part of you and the goon. You can also pick up weapons from the ground, but the keybind for it and the environmental takedown is the same and just about the only time I found myself with a weapon was when I was trying to shove somebody into an electrical panel.
The Predator bits were some of the hardest I've experienced in the series. Most of the game takes place out-of-doors, requiring some better strategizing now that there isn't a ring of gargoyles staring down at every enemy. A couple of the new toys added were a little too powerful for my tastes (Hack a drone, use it, then do a Fear Takedown renders most of the room on the floor without having to use the countless gadgets, doohickeys, and contextual takedowns that each room offers. I imagine though that it'll be harder come NG+).
The only thing from the previous games that I was sad to see return was the damn hacking tool where you have to match up the words. Thankfully they didn't go absolutely overboard with hackable panels like they did in the previous games.
Finally, the story: really, really good scenes and twists, a couple of really good concepts, and a whole fuck lot of padding. There's a major story thread that while the reveal has a nice nod to people versed in Batman history, the twist itself is fairly predictable and lacks any closure. That's all I'll say about the main story so as to not spoil anything. The side quests are a little disappointing as they rely heavily on the Batmobile and even if it didn't control like a ton of bricks and feel boring, gliding around the city is just way too much fun to want to stay on the ground, especially with some of the upgrades that essentially give you flight.
Long and spergy, I apologize. Arkham is one of my favorite game series and I have nearly 200 hours across all four games. I wanted to do it justice.
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- Joined
- May 25, 2013
Played a bit of Arkham Knight last night and I think I need to echo what people are saying about the Batmobile... in which I wouldn't say it's the most terrible vehicle experience I have ever had in a vidya, but I will say I'm pretty much not liking it. The part I played - which is early in the story so I won't bother spoilering it, has Batman driving the Batmobile onto a series of roofs to power a generator because reasons. All the while, in between repeatedly falling off the sides of the building or having my jumps angling off the wrong way, or literally ripping up the sides of buildings so I can drive my tank of a car on top of them, I keep thinking to myself there has to be an easier way. For example, when you first visit the GCPD, you can walk around the evidence locker which has memorabilia from previous games, including the Electrocutioner's gauntlets from Origins. I would think that could power up a generator. Or hell, why not the Batwing since all it seems to be doing is doing flybys. Then Batman doesn't have to cause thousands of dollars of structural damage.
There have been a few other odd plot-related elements that do feel bizarre to me as well...
So yeah, Batman really is kind of a dick.
There have been a few other odd plot-related elements that do feel bizarre to me as well...
1) When you get your new Batsuit, it lands right outside a shed when three armed goons. But Batman apparently has no apprehensions with stripping down to put on a new suit literally just yards away from them. Keep in mind the suit was delivered via Batwing dropping a massive Bat-capsule and embedding it into the roof. Those guards really aren't going to check on that? Huh, kay.
2) Right after you get the suit, you get a myriad of AR missions presented to you. Like, literally you turn around and there are four of them just feet away. Keep in mnd the apparently deaf guards have a hostage inside. But as Batman, you can decide to try the AR missions first before saving the guy. So I spend about 20-30 minutes playing pretend and flying around the city all the while the hostage is shitting himself.
3) When you FINALLY save the guard, you then contact Oracle. Now in this game, instead of Batman talking to people via a microphone in his cowl like the previous games, he's got a full on Skype hologram-whatzit built into his gauntlet so he can have video conferences whenever he likes. Only problem - people in the mythos don't know Barbara Gordon is Oracle or Lucuis Fox- another person you talk to- is helping Batman. But Batman apparently has no problems with throwing a 8x10 holographic projection of Barbara while standing just feet away from the guard he just saved. Well, guess Batman is going to have to just kill that guard now to keep Oracle's secret identity.
2) Right after you get the suit, you get a myriad of AR missions presented to you. Like, literally you turn around and there are four of them just feet away. Keep in mnd the apparently deaf guards have a hostage inside. But as Batman, you can decide to try the AR missions first before saving the guy. So I spend about 20-30 minutes playing pretend and flying around the city all the while the hostage is shitting himself.
3) When you FINALLY save the guard, you then contact Oracle. Now in this game, instead of Batman talking to people via a microphone in his cowl like the previous games, he's got a full on Skype hologram-whatzit built into his gauntlet so he can have video conferences whenever he likes. Only problem - people in the mythos don't know Barbara Gordon is Oracle or Lucuis Fox- another person you talk to- is helping Batman. But Batman apparently has no problems with throwing a 8x10 holographic projection of Barbara while standing just feet away from the guard he just saved. Well, guess Batman is going to have to just kill that guard now to keep Oracle's secret identity.
So yeah, Batman really is kind of a dick.
- Joined
- May 21, 2015
I thought that was weird too, but if you look at his eyes during one of those conversations, they're all grey (like how they go orange while in Detective Mode). I think it's supposed to imply that it's another cowl gadget that lets him and only him see the hologram.
As far as the hostage thing, when he lures the first two out, one of the ones who stays behind says that they're all remaining inside so that he can't get them. Flimsy excuse for him to strip and go on training missions, but it's there. I agree that it's weird.
- Joined
- May 21, 2015
Not sure what you mean. Which romance? (You can spoiler tag something by going
[ spoiler]
Spoiler goes here
[ /spoiler]
Just get rid of the spaces between the brackets and the word spoiler.)