Batman: Arkham Knight

Arkham Knight is a game that stays 100% true to what makes Batman such a timeless character. The final game in the Arkham Trilogy is a great send-off to one of the generation's best gaming trilogies, and easily the best superhero video games series in history.

Batman has become such a staple in our pop-cultural diets that it's easy to make the character seem worn out from all the iterations we've seen of him through the years, but the Arkham series is one of the examples of revising the character and still keeping him fresh to modern audiences.

The plot takes place after Arkham City, and Batman is now the target of a plot by all of Gotham's greatest thugs: to finally kill The Dark Knight. Will they succeed? And will Scarecrow break Batman before the night is over? Rocksteady Studios concludes the Arkham Trilogy in a more open-ended and technically gorgeous entry for Batman video games than we've seen before; and the games themselves are comparable to Batman: The Animated Series and The Dark Knight Trilogy. The Batman: Arkham franchise is an achievement itself, and will surely be recognized as a classic example as to why the character works in so many different mediums.

It's an unpopular opinion, I know, but Batman: Arkham Knight is the best game in the entire Batman Arkham series. The costume looks awesome (and in case you don't like it, there are plenty to choose from), there's the Batmobile, the story is the most unpredictable one if you go in without any spoilers, the graphics are amazing and there are a ton of quests to do so that you don't get bored with the game any time soon. The main missions take nearly 20 hours to complete. If that doesn't tell you about the game's mammoth size, probably the fact that it's only 1 of the 12 quests that you can do will.

The story begins from about 8 months since the death of Joker. And this within itself gives the developers enough of a reason to fill the game with Joker's ideas. We often see Joker's hallucinations taunting Batman and standing in places where we have to go when we have to perform a task. Joker also has a part up ahead in the game where we get to play as him, and it's really scary in the beginning. Occasionally Joker encourages us because he didn't want anyone to kill Batman and take away his dream, but at the same time he also wants us to die so that Joker can take over Batman's body. This gives a very detailed layer to Joker, and makes him one of the best written characters in spite of being dead.

Now let's talk about the Batmobile. I am well aware of the people who say that they find the Batmobile missions annoying, and I don't mean to challenge anyone's opinion. But personally the Batmobile is one of the things that made me like this game the most in the series. Batmobile allows us to get anywhere faster and it has a pretty good control, unlike many open world games like GTA IV or Watch_Dogs 2 where the car drives like a sailboat. On setting it in Battle Mode we can control it even easily and once upgraded, it's literally an indestructable piece of tank. After having completed the game I often drive around in the Dark Knight's Tumbler while wearing the Christian Bale Batman outfit, or the Batman v Superman Batmobile while wearing Ben Affleck's outfit. It's really fun to do all that. I'm okay with you if you don't like it, but I like it a lot.

And finally let's talk about the game in general. The voice acting is great once again. Though my PC would lag sometimes when the cutscenes would play, and I don't blame it because it is happening even though the video memory of the game is well below my graphic card's. So for now I have only played the main mission and uninstalled the game, so that I continue it from my cloud save once I get a gaming PC. Then I also really like Batman's suit over here. At first I thought I'd try out the other suits as well, but I always came back to the game one. Personally I'd have prefered if the suit had white eyes too, but that's probably just a choice, and I'm disappointed over here because literally every suit shows our eyes.

Overall Batman: Arkham Knight is one of the most beautiful games I have played this year. I have played it for 19 hours by now and hopefully, like I said, I will play it when I get a better PC. People often talk about the Arkham series being the one where we get to be Batman. In my opinion this game is the one that shows it the most.

Pros: 1. Amazing graphics, music score & sound effects.

2. Outstanding voice acting performances by Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, John Noble, Jonathan Banks, Ashley Greene, Tara Strong, Wally Wingert, Troy Baker, Nolan North, Tasia Valenza, Grey Delisle etc as Batman, Joker, Scarecrow, Commissioner Gordon, Oracle, Harley Quinn, Riddler, Arkham Knight, Two Face, Penguin, Poison Ivy, Catwoman etc.

3. Great plot about Scarecrow reuniting all the supervillains to destroy Batman.

4. Joker appears as a hallucination.

5. Love the Batsuit in this game.

6. You get to drive the Batmobile, as well as battling tanks.

7. Love the Fear Takedown move.

8. You get to switch back & forth in between the Main Story objectives to the Side Missions.

9. Love the improvement of both the combat & stealth encounters.

10. It's a bigger open world than it's predecessors.

Cons: 1. Half of the writing's not the same without Paul Dini.

2. I didn't like the Deathstroke tank battle.

Asylum is still the most cohesive and comic accurate one and Origins has the best writing (i like City the least and the spin-off Blackgate is a dud) but this is the roundest package yet. The gameplay is the usual polished to hell and back deal with a surprising amount of diversity and the new Batmobile is a bit overused but it works unbelievably well for most of the game. The very engaging narrative uses a few fake outs too many, the continuity is now a mess and the Knight's identity (i predicted it in the thread about 2014's bugs) is exceptionally obvious and even a bit unresolved. That said i skipped a lot of sleep to finish all the story content that isn't a collect-a-thon. The audiovisual presentation is industry leading, John Noble's Scarecrow is the best version of the character to this day and another returning villain is in top form too. I even got to play as Azrael and see a comic accurate Professor Pyg (the M rating doesn't lie) so well done Rocksteady. A- and a Game of the Year contender.

I keep restarting this game. It's the best game I've ever played. If you wanna feel like a badass in a cowl, break some bones and do ninja stuff. This is it. Even if you just like video games this is the game. Games don't get any better than this.