It may not get a lot right, but WB Games Montréal succeeds at capturing the fantasy of exploring a crime-ridden city as a caped crusader, and I spent hours just grapple-hooking around and exploring the area. All of these things do little more than drag out a story that’s rarely worth the squeeze, and make the pacing even more of a drag than it already is.Įven if you are just running around Gotham aimlessly or tackling minor crimes, though, exploring the city can at least be a highlight. (That one has you visiting every part of the map to stand around and scan drones for no discernable reason.) In between all those chores, you’ll also have to contend with the RPG elements that force you to grind and min-max equipment before the next story mission can be tackled. Freeze to gather clues about the next story development, and side quests to unlock table stakes features like fast travel. It doesn’t help that the oddly brief campaign is padded out with busywork, like repeated sections where you have to wander around Gotham interrogating a string of different criminal factions headed by everyone from Harley Quinn to Mr. 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. 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 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. 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. They just never pose any kind of threat, instead serving as punching bags for you to take out your aggression on the caviar-guzzling, bow tie-wearing, Eyes Wide Shut upper class.īut 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. I kept wishing that their far-reaching influence and resources would be wielded in a way that would give me a reason to fear them, but they couldn’t be bothered to do more than send some well-dressed goons after you and shake their fists as you infiltrated their ranks. I quite like The Court as an enemy within the pantheon of Batman rivals, but for a secret society that’s supposed to have pulled the strings of Gotham’s leaders for hundreds of years, it’s pretty amusing that they never really exert that power even as a group of young adults easily foil their plans with a pocketful of gadgets and a couple karate moves. In the wake of the Dark Knight’s demise, Bruce Wayne’s ragtag gang of current and former sidekicks step into the fray to fill his formidable shoes, and serves as a strong premise to what ultimately turns out to be a lackluster story full of foreseeable twists and unsurprising turns.Īs various criminal elements rush in to fill the power vacuum left by Batman, the ancient order known as The Court of Owls supposedly becomes the biggest threat facing Gotham, even if they don’t live up to that threat in practice. That mystery revolves around the death of none other than the Batman himself, which serves as a solid kicking-off point for a new generation of crime fighters to take the spotlight. One key difference is that here you get to play as your choice of the four mostly lovable heroes (Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and Robin) as you zip around an open-world Gotham, delivering justice to all manner of superstitious cowards and unraveling a troubling mystery in the iconic city’s murky streets.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |