• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Gotham Knights | Review Thread

SCB3

Member
This game is screaming "Wait for Gamepass or PS Plus" for me, it looks fun but its reminding me so much of Avengers, and in spite of me liking that game, I did get buyers remorse pretty quick with that
 

TrebleShot

Member
There will be people who are won over initially by the shiny graphics but it’s just like avengers at the start, there were those who insisited there’s a fun game there. But in reality we all know come around the 8th hour you’ve seen it all and it ain’t pretty.
 

QuiGonsSins

Neo Member
Gamers Heroes - Blaine Smith - 95 / 100
"Gotham Knights is up there with Elden Ring as a Game of the Year contender. Its fast, responsive, and action-packed combat is surpassed only by a narrative that had me glued from the very first cutscene. A must-play for fans of open-world titles, and an easy pickup for anyone invested with the Gotham Knights or DC Universe."

Elden Ring on one Level with a downgraded version of Arkham Knight !?
This thread just exposes legit magazines from biased fanboys.

Digital foundry broke it down pretty well on Arkham Knight vs Arkham Knights.

I was originally a day one guy but first the 30 FPS disaster on my 500€ console and then the reviews. Guess i wait for Warhammer Darktide now.
 

RavageX

Member
It really does look like they were trying the "games as a service" deal. I wish all devs would knock that shit off. MAKE A COMPLETE GAME. Release the other stuff as an expansion and make it FULL. Not some half-assed horse armor. TBH that was the start of all this shit.
,
 

BLAUcopter

Gold Member
I'm about an hour in so really early. It's OK, there's jank and the 30 fps hurts but I'll spend some time on it.

Looking forward to unlocking some of the sweet outfits and caving some heads in.

Here's hoping for a performance mode. I'd happily play this at 1440 or 1080 if it means a smoother experience.
 

Larxia

Member
Man I was hoping this one would be good :/
It doesn't seem that terrible, I think people are probably greatly exagerating things (people here hated the game since the first reveal), but there's some serious obvious issues. It seems like something decent for a lower price, especially in coop, but not a full price purchase. The performance issues really seem problematic though.
 
im like 4 hrs deep. Not as bad as i was expecting. Ppl are def not playing this for the graphics. It looks like a PS4 game most of the time. Its just not crisp looking at all. looks like it came out in 2013. The only things that look good are all the neon lights, rain puddles etc. some environment textures look suprisingly good. Or maybe they just look normal and everything else is so low-rez looking idk.

combat wise it feels most similar to Spider-man. As far as i can tell it doesn't have a deep melee system at all. In one way that its like Arkham is that to keep things from looking samey they just map a lot of different looking animations to the same button. So unlike something like avengers when u press the strike button, where you will always see the same strike. U get a different strike at least.

Things i hate. Fighting heavy enemies at the beginning sucks because u only have one way to beat them and it takes a long time. But i think u start unlocking abilities and skills that can deal with heavies later. The bat cycle isn't that fun. Its not bad. But its not as good as the batmobile in Arkham Knight or really any motorcycle in GTA or something like that. The camera angle feels kinda too close or heavy or something. It needs a boost button as i feel like its not fast enough. The drift is decent. the wheelie is ok. and u can shoot from it. But the map also makes it boring as the map design is kinda boring for driving around.
The general wonkiness of the game. Even the walking is bad. just try to walk as slow as u can down some steps and the game freaks out as if it never expected anyone to try to walk down the stairs. I don't like how the grapnel gun zips u so fast with no slack in the line. Like gravity doesn't exist.

the good. patrolling and crimebusting. In general they try to make sense. U can fail them. As in like the crime will actually get commited. They dont just wait around forever for u to stop them. And after some of the bigger crimes u have to leave quick because the police show up. Its better than enemies just standing around doing mostly nothing like they did in the arkham games. Im also a big fan of everyone having an ADS range weapon. The suits are kinda fantastic. And the game doesn't make the mistake that avengers made with loot not making any visual change to ur character. add to that customization and transmog options akin to Injustice 2/Ass Creed. lots of mix and matching parts with colors. So far im enjoying the story stuff. I feel like these are real characters that all belong in this world. Unlike in Avengers where Kamala was good an everyone else just felt so far removed from everything.

so my initial impression is this is like a 6/10 rn. Probably a 7/10 by the time i actually unlock abilities and skills. I wish Rocksteady made this. Pretty much all of my issues, they would've solved. They would've given us a block/parry button, an interesting gotham, better performance and graphical quality, better vehicles, and a weighty feel and quicker flow to the combat.
 

Strider7

Member
I think people are being a little hyperbolic. I’m really enjoying what I have played, and am not having any performance issues whatsoever. That being said, I’m running on a pretty beefy PC and am an absolute Bat-fanatic, so I am biased and my experience will vary from others. Personally, I love it so far.
 

Salz01

Member
The game is actually pretty good. Got it on PC. Playing on a laptop 1080p, with diss on, raytracing off, and I’m getting decent fps. 50 to 60. Plays good and the lighting is great. I think people are shitting on this too much actually. Arkham is great, but this is just a little different. I’m having fun.
 

DeceptiveAlarm

Gold Member
wIMDvOD.jpg
is this one of you guys?
 

Neolombax

Member
I gave in to my average game tendencies and bought it. Its actually an okay game. When its 30fps, its really fine but my issue is the framerate dips and it is quite inconsistent. It sucks but I still want to play the game. Combat is okay so far, its not devil may cry, its akin to marvel avengers. I found the story engaging thus far, had quite the opening. Im using Red Hood at the moment, played a few intro missions for Harley Quinn and Mr. Freeze. I think I quite like this iteration of Harley, she isnt as annoying.

Gotham is a big map and I like the art direction. It isnt as dark as the Arkham games but it has its charms. Open world activities are sparse, it isnt as dense with acitivities like in the Arkham games. Sometimes youre able to go into these mini mini dungeons inside buildings around the map to beat up some slightly more challenging goons so thats kinda cool (I think theyre even smaller than Lost Sectors in D2). I like that the enemies in this game can vary quite a bit and as I understand it, even the basic units will evolve later on in the game to be stronger versions with a slightly varied look (not just color palette changes), I like small changes like this.

All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised that it wasn't a total disaster. I hope the devs can quickly come up with a patch to improve the framerates.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Isa
I bought it mainly so I could be that guy in the Steam forums that posts videos of it working flawlessly and post my 'well actually' comments.

I was wrong and I have been financially punished for this.

No matter what I do with the settings it drops below 40fps at times. I get the same framerates at 4k highest settings or 1080p lowest settings. My GPU downclocks 500-600mhz as it is obviously very bored and waiting for the CPU to give it something to do so I fear that this isn't just some quick fix but something fundamentally broken with the game.

The excuse about the consoles needing to run at 30fps because of untethered multiplayer was obviously bullshit as we all knew it would be but they are probably correct that simply lowering the resolution won't help as I doubt it is GPU bound even on consoles. There is something totally broken with the CPU utilisation that they obviously didn't know how or didn't have enough time to fix.

The game itself even if it ran well is simply ok. I thought Spider-Man was a 7/10 game and this is worse in every respect so IGN's 5/10 doesn't look so crazy now that I've played it.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
As i expected, graphic are very nice in many moments (indoors are very detailed), faces and enemy models are way better in this one.

Performance with dlss are decent, basically locked in indoors but yeah when you drive the bike the framerate does the fuck he wants but moving on foot with the grappling hook is more fun so it's not a big problem for me when i can just mostly ignore the bike, playing at 1440p60 with a mix of ultra/high/medium on a 2070 super, the shill up guy and his "all setting on medium" can fuck right off.


It look better than knight except the water, much better art style, wet effect and great rain are what trick people into thinking that a 7 years old game could ever look better than a modern one, sure the fact that we even make a comparison doesn't play in favour of knights and it should look much better for being locked at 30 on console.

Combat is much better when you are not a gaming journalist showing your gaming prowess, animations are ok, it is weighty enough and the slide is way more toned down than other batman games, it has a bit more weight and slow pace than the other arkham games but it's far from unplayable, i like how different the characters feel.

General movements can be on the clunky side sometimes.

Writing is absolutely on par with stuff like spidey ps4 and arkham series, not great but absolutely serviceable with some nice moments.

Probably still a 6-7 game tops (so like a 5 from edge), but hardly a 3 or 4, but i only played 3 hours so my opinion can change a bit.

Just to put graphic in perspective

Knight bruce
maxresdefault.jpg


Knights bruce

gotham-knights-bruce-wayne.png


Batgirl voice acting is fucking bad, her voice is super grating, but she has a thicc ass, so... :lollipop_grinning_sweat:

Little spoiler: it's not up there with elden ring as goty contender:messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
Last edited:

Marvel14

Banned
I'm replaying Arkham City and its still brilliant. Spiderman creators must have bought some of the engine surely....so many similarities even in menus.
 
Last edited:

Dibils2k

Member
if i had to summarize this game so far, it would be "good enough"

look combat and movement is far worse than arkham games lol but it also has more variety with the power ups and ranking/crafting, it might be the game draught talking but its been great to get stuck into a game again
 
Last edited:

iHaunter

Member
Man,what kinda schools do you have over there where you live.Over here in Romania a 6 is the barrier of entry for passing an exam therefore a 6/7 is an average/okay rating,anything below is bad,a 4 is disastrous.In your country all the students must pass with flying colours If a 4 is okay.Nice!
Not talking about school, talking about game ratings... It's a different system. Also school ratings are idiotic.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
I'm about three hours in on PS5. Some super early impressions.

First things first - in a way this is the Batman game I've always wanted: open world, solve crimes, help Gotham citizens. Conceptually I like this a lot. However, obviously you're not playing as Batman and that just fucking sucks. No one in the Batman family is even remotely as cool to play as Batman. Literally every time I stand on some rooftop overlooking Gotham I think to myself "damn I wish I was playing as Batman".

The city looks okay. I like the neon-colored fog but it's a far cry from Arkham Knight's Gotham City as is well documented at this point. I also think having better rain effects would do this game a huge service. Everything just feels kinda flat, bland and boring. It's also not nearly populated enough, there are way too little citizens on the streets to make it feel alive.

The gameplay is okay. So far the combat is super simple and I don't think it's going to get any deeper. It's literally a button masher. Why they moved away from a perfect combat system that many games tried to emulate but barely ever succeeded in is beyond me.
The investigations are kinda dumb and I think it's hilarious there's a dedicated "SOLVE NOW" button that lets you skip piecing the clues together and just gives you the solution. You know, in case you're unable to rub two braincells together.

There's a lot of jank going on, especially with the parkour. The grapple is ridiculous and defies the laws of physics in every way. It's just dumb as fuck. There's also an extremely annoying bug/glitch where you kinda magnetize to a spot for some reason. So you'll jump down but kinda float to some point. It's hard to describe.

Bat bike fucking sucks and completely tanks performance. IT's not fun to drive either. It's ridiculous there are THIRTY FIVE unlockable color schemes for that thing.

Final thing, and it has been mentioned a thousand times already but cannot be overstated: how absolutely terrible the UI / UX is. Every menu, every icon, the way you navigate the menus, the way the menu segments are lined up, the font sizes. Everything is fucking ghastly and makes the game look and feel extremely cheap. Literally 1/10 design on that one.

Edit: hiding the Jim Lee skins behind a 25 euro DLC pack is abhorrent. Fuck you, WB.
 
Last edited:

Jayjayhd34

Member
1. Has anybody played yet on an oled, if so how bad is the judder.
2. can you turn off the hud completely, or at least have it dynamic? Or is it on all the time during gameplay.

I'm playing it on pc on a lg CX it plays fine the game must of been improved with patch as pretty dam smooth with odd stutter every now again holds 60fps very well too


The game it self has floors and does not live up to likes Arkham knight it's fun story's alright side activeties are addictive I give it 7/10 I would give Arkham 9
 

FeralEcho

Member
Not talking about school, talking about game ratings... It's a different system. Also school ratings are idiotic.
I still don't agree a 4 is an ok game...waay too low even If we use the full scale but i will agree school ratings ARE idiotic.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Coop isnt a bad thing, wish folks could just not play the Coop if they dont like it. Singleplayer only wouldnt make this game any better.

The problem is just this terrible annoying and barren Open World obsession with mediocre content in it. On top of that maybe a shit Story.

Games made for co-op are always much worse single-player experiences than games made for single-player. Always.
 
Okay is not 7/10. Okay is 4/10. Average is 5/10. Good is 6-7/10.
You are using the logical and correct scaling for ratings, but no one uses those anymore because reviewers only get games from the studios if they sort of say it’s good, so on meta critic e.g. the ratings are more like 7/10 okay, 8/10 average, 9/10 good and 9.5/10 is excellent. Unfortunately the review scaling is destroyed by game journalist shills because they want their free games.
 

Hot5pur

Member
The whole /10 scoring is probably most closely related to schooling.
If you only get 5/10 things right, that is by no means good nor is it average. The /10 rating kinda scales with the level of game. But let's say we're talking about AAA high production value games. A 5/10 means you only got half of the things right, and thats a disaster. 7-8 is good, 9-10 is excellent.

As for this game, seems expectations and poor technical performance hurt it most. Gonna grab it at $45 on PC and play in co-op, likely will take this 7/10 experience up to an 8, as it seems it was build for it. Also ppl say you can get a good 20+ hours of decent content before repetition sets in. Pretty reasonable, the 6-7 hours is a bunch of BS it seems.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Isa

Miyazaki’s Slave

Gold Member
YMMV: I’m playing on a 4090 with 64gb of ddr5, windows 11, intel i9 12000 series and a 2TB 980 pro Nvme…no-performance issues at all at 4K with ~90 to 120fps on an eve spectrum monitor.

So…the game looks fine to me when I am playing it. Outside of less detritus and “poison fog” the world reminds me of Arkham knight. Reflections and light looks really good at night imo.

The fight by night and plan by day cycle is fine as well. I got through the first night and just started the second.

haven’t really played co-op games in ages…but I think it would be fun co-op. I also like the ability to change to different characters to use different fighting styles.

Combat is fluid to me but there are for SURE some “magic levitation movement” when you switch to further away targets.

I don’t know what else to say, it seems fine to me for the price I paid.

Will I finish it? No, probably not. That is not the fault of the game…I hardly finish any games any more.

….Spark of Hope is awesome though…def play that 😁
 
Last edited:

DukeOfX

Neo Member
About 4 hours in, doing all the side quests. Reserving judgement until I'm done. Reminds me of the situation with Stranger of Paradise, extremely slow start and many graphical issues. Gameplay is completely different thank the Arkahm series, combat is slow, with few options (at the start). To compare, Arkahm Series would be Street Fighter 2: Turbo and this is Super Street Fighter 2.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
I'm about three hours in on PS5. Some super early impressions.

First things first - in a way this is the Batman game I've always wanted: open world, solve crimes, help Gotham citizens. Conceptually I like this a lot. However, obviously you're not playing as Batman and that just fucking sucks. No one in the Batman family is even remotely as cool to play as Batman. Literally every time I stand on some rooftop overlooking Gotham I think to myself "damn I wish I was playing as Batman".

The city looks okay. I like the neon-colored fog but it's a far cry from Arkham Knight's Gotham City as is well documented at this point. I also think having better rain effects would do this game a huge service. Everything just feels kinda flat, bland and boring. It's also not nearly populated enough, there are way too little citizens on the streets to make it feel alive.

The gameplay is okay. So far the combat is super simple and I don't think it's going to get any deeper. It's literally a button masher. Why they moved away from a perfect combat system that many games tried to emulate but barely ever succeeded in is beyond me.
The investigations are kinda dumb and I think it's hilarious there's a dedicated "SOLVE NOW" button that lets you skip piecing the clues together and just gives you the solution. You know, in case you're unable to rub two braincells together.

There's a lot of jank going on, especially with the parkour. The grapple is ridiculous and defies the laws of physics in every way. It's just dumb as fuck. There's also an extremely annoying bug/glitch where you kinda magnetize to a spot for some reason. So you'll jump down but kinda float to some point. It's hard to describe.

Bat bike fucking sucks and completely tanks performance. IT's not fun to drive either. It's ridiculous there are THIRTY FIVE unlockable color schemes for that thing.

Final thing, and it has been mentioned a thousand times already but cannot be overstated: how absolutely terrible the UI / UX is. Every menu, every icon, the way you navigate the menus, the way the menu segments are lined up, the font sizes. Everything is fucking ghastly and makes the game look and feel extremely cheap. Literally 1/10 design on that one.

Edit: hiding the Jim Lee skins behind a 25 euro DLC pack is abhorrent. Fuck you, WB.
Play more, not sure what difficulty you chose but the game on hard is way less button mashing than the other arkham games where you can't just stay still and counter almost everything, also the range of the sliding is smaller, some positional awereness is needed if you wanna dance between enemies ,you still slide but not downright fly like batman, the game also improves the more enemy type you discover and the more ability you unlock, the game imo require more thinking and less button mashing to look good and be fluid like a dance, not sure if i'm clear.

but yeah It is a bit janky sometimes not gonna lie, especially some precision movements while hanging\platforming and sometimes the character decide to attack another enemy if there is a group around you if you start button mashing and moving the stick (this is why i say that this play better when you don't button mash)

The grappling hook is fine to me, is super arcadey on purpose and you can use it to grapple and jump around the city pretty fast, and i didn't even unlocked any traversal ability for any character, i don't use the bike because on pc it cause wild framerate flactuations.

Also some character just feel better to use, for now if i have to make a preference list it would be:

robin
batgirl\redhood
wingdude

This is an action rpg, it has levels, a bit spongey enemies, loot, builds, skill trees etc, if people expect this to play like the past games they probably didn't even watched the overview trailer.

Suicide squad is probably gonna be more similar to past arkham games.
 
i could fly around an open world in an F-16 back in the PS2 days. Why am i on PS5 now, and the best a game can do in an open world batman game is a motorcycle?

where is my open world batman game with a batmobile, batcycle, batwing, batcopter, batboat. Where is my batman game with a full batcave that has tons of functionality?

the Belfry in this game is as close to a working batcave we've gotten. It has a training area. a vehicle customization area. a workbench for crafting. and the batcomputer. Its very odd that these are all available there, but also available in the pause menu. Its like something that ppl would've complained about only being able to do these things at the Belfry, so down the line they eventually make it easier and allow u to do these things in the pause menu. But its here at launch?? so why even bother with the Belfry functions?
 
Top Bottom