You know a game is going to be good when the voice of Mike Ehrmantraut opens it up. The ominous beginnings that threaten the life of Batman, a threat which unless you collect 250+ Riddler trophies (and come on, who can be arsed with that? not me!) you'll never see (apart from anywhere on the Internet). This leads on to what proves to be a great story, led on brilliantly by the Joker, who died in City, but is now in Batman's mind, leading him astray and putting a light hearted view on a game that at times becomes somewhat too serious given the subject matter.
Anyway, to the game and it must be said that yet again the hand to hand combat and predator fights are as good as they always were. They haven't really been improved much though, you could argue why change something that works so well but at they same time, come on. Especially given what they do seem to have spent so much time on and how tedious it is and I'm talking of course about the much maligned Batmobile.
Oh dear, what happened with the Batmobile? The amount of tank missions in the game is ridiculous, they're forced in to the game frequently. I can understand them wanting you to play their new addition to the game frequently, but it is the worst part of this game, or any of the Arkham games by a long way. Basically the Batmobile turns in to a tank and you have to hold off a bunch of other tanks as you defend whatever thing it may be, a bomb you're defusing, a chemical plant worker, Poison Ivy, yourself or dozens of other excuses for this. It just seems like a gameplay mechanic that would have felt at home on the PS1. I don't want to go on and on about it, and I will say that it's fun to leap off a building and call in the Batmobile and land in it, and it is a much faster way to get around if you, like me, begin to get bored gliding around and wish there was a fast travel system. The Riddler races are pretty good though, as are the APC chases, though if I never have to do vehicle platforming again in my life I'd be delighted.
Moving back to the story then and the big question throughout the majority of the game if who is the Arkham Knight? I won't give it away here but suffice to say that they make it very obvious, if I can figure it out then it must be simple (joke, I'm actually highly intelligent...). I have to question the set up to the game somewhat as well, sure, Scarecrow (Joker's replacement as main bad guy in this game) scares everyone off with his poison gas leaving just Batman and the emergency services, so the criminal element can take over Gotham, but why not attack a city that isn't guarded by a Superhero? I'm clearly not a comic reader and am probably looking too much in to it, but why would dozens of super villains lead this attack on one city that's guarded by 'The Bat' If they all split up and took a city each chances are some of them would be successful.
I will say though that on top of the good story there are a nice mix of side missions. They mix up all the different types of gameplay well and there's always something different to do. Unfortunately with the bomb diffusing there is yet more tank combat but this is really the only time you have to do it outside of the story. The only real issue is that you have to complete all of the side missions to get the 'proper' ending (as I reffered to back at the start) including all of the Riddler trophies and frankly, after just spending so much time playing The Witcher 3 I can't be bothered now to spend dozens of hours in another game doing side missions. I already know that's coming up in Metal Gear and Fallout later this year and I already want tighter games that are more focused, I understand People want more content, but I'm beginning to want less. Anyway, that was quite a tangent, all I was trying to say is, good variety in side missions.
I'd just like to point out a few other bits, like how the game froze about a dozen times for me (playing on Xbone) but fortunately the game autosaves frequently so it wasn't too much of a worry. The game apparently doesn't work on PC either. Plus as just another silly comic thing, I find it hilarious when things just have 'bat' put in front of them to refer to them belonging to Batman, like 'Bat-Computer' (made me laugh anyway).
All in all though it's another good entry in the Arkham series, but I would say it's the weakest of the 3 purely thanks to the Batmobile. The rest of the game remains as good as it's ever been (though it's starting to touch on being stale) and the story is fantastic.
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