Developer: WB Games Montréal
Publisher: Warner Bros
Release Date: 21st October 2022
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox & Steam
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
By now the majority of you reading this have already seen the scores for Gotham Knights from other review sites. You’ve quite possibly read their criticisms and wondered if this is a game even worth buying in a sale, never mind full price. Gotham Knights was labelled as a doomed game even before release. Batman’s not in it. It’s not an Arkham game. 30 FPS. Folks were binning it from the moment it was announced and now it’s released those review scores seem to indicate those folks were right. I wouldn’t normally mention reviews from other sites when writing my own, but the 5/10s and 4/10s have shocked me. In my mind that score implies a broken fluster cluck of a game and this is not in line with my own experiences of Gotham Knights. There are problems for sure, which I’ll talk about here, but is it broken? Is it THAT bad?
Gotham Knights is an open world action RPG. Batman is dead and it’s up to Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin and Red Hood to take his place and keep Gotham clean. Clean of crime, I mean. No feather dusters required. You have the choice of playing any of the four characters and you can swap between them at any time. You can play solo or co-op with a friend or with a total stranger who has jumped randomly into your game because you’re a dilbert who forgot to adjust the privacy setting (guilty). I did worry pre-release that a game built for co-op could be unbalanced for solo play but this isn’t the case. It’s nice to have the option to play with a friend but you absoloutely don’t need that friend for the game to work as it should.
Gotham’s map is pretty large but thankfully not as large as I feared. The city itself is beautiful. The lighting is a chef’s kiss moment. The trailers made Gotham look dark and visually boring but actually it’s full of colour in just the right places. It’s a moody city but also quite beautiful. It’s really rather a pity that it’s a beautiful city full of very little interaction. There are random crimes, various pre-meditated crimes, sidequests, busywork quests and fast travel points to unlock but there isn’t a lot that will allow you to truly immerse yourself. You can’t peer into windows, very few buildings will allow you to go inside and even slamming your bike into a wall has no consequence. Side activities are fun but very repetitive. It’s that open world fatigue again and I think many of us feel our excitement sagging when we realise we’ll need to do the same thing again and again for the duration of the game. It’s a problem that is not exclusive to Gotham Knights. Assassin’s Creed, Cyberpunk, Watch Dogs – We’ve explored so many massive maps over the years and we’re tired. If you’re going to send us traversing over a huge area for the best part of 20-30 hours we need a better reason than a repeated quest.
There are fast travel options which open up as the game progresses, and as you upgrade your Knights they gain better ways to get from A to B. I admit City Swinging didn’t feel great at first. It doesn’t feel as fluid as the Arkham games and certainly nothing like Spider-Man. Batgirl and Nightwing are the only characters who can glide and that is an ability which needs to be unlocked. Robin’s travel unlock is probably the most efficient and precise although honestly it’s a bit weird. However once you get used to the traversal systems of each character they are effective enough and fun. Another way to travel is the bike. It’s got a decent top speed and it’s impossible to truly crash. It even sometimes corrects you if you’re about to rear-end someone. Best. Bike. Ever.
Aside from the little drop-in-and-punch crimes and various busywork missions there are a small collection of villain focused questlines. These quests are often beefier than you would expect and for me one of the highlights of the game. I won’t spoil with name dropping but you can expect to meet up with a few of Batman’s most famous rogues. It’s clear that a lot of love has been put into each section. There’s some craziness and a quality that is on par with the main story missions. Beautiful set pieces and some unexpected musical interludes will greet you as well as gameplay which employs action and stealth. You’ll need to be a certain level to participate without getting your arse kicked but those levels always feel reasonable and you shouldn’t need to grind too much to get where you need to be. Difficulty levels can also be selected in the options menu at any time, even mid fight, so if you’re more interested in the story and less interested in hoovering up everything on the map it is possible to more or less golden path your way through.
The main story is beyond a doubt where the game shines. If anyone thinks it’s PS3 era quality they need their eyes and brains testing. Not every game can be a God of War or a Last of Us and Gotham Knights does its best to present some wonderful moments filled with action and colour and several stunning moments. The voice acting is great, the graphics are great and the missions are fun to do. I can’t help but wish the developers had dropped the open world idea and gone with a more contained experience along the lines of Arkham Asylum. They’ve done an amazing job with the main story, and it truly is the spine of the whole game. If that could have been expanded rather than the focus on open world, co-op and repetitive missions we could have had something really quite special.
Combat is satisfying and fast. You have a light and heavy melee attack and a light and heavy ranged attack plus special abilities which need to be unlocked. In addition each character feels a little different and has different advantages. For example Robin is great for stealth with his stealth-focused skill tree. Batgirl is great for hacking and both have a brilliant evade which feels super responsive. I wasn’t so keen on Red Hood’s evade but his non-lethal guns are incredible for powerful ranged attacks. Nightwing has a brilliant aerial attack that sees him bouncing back up into the air and repeating the attack. You can switch characters at any time within the Belfry and doing so will trigger the availability of different character-focused cut scenes so it’s worth doing periodically even if you’re planning to switch straight back afterwards. My only complaint is that if you want to swap to another character for gameplay you have to unlock that character’s individual traversal ability which involves doing some pretty basic stuff all over again. Why in the name of all that is holy would you lock away the ability to move efficiently around an open world game? It’s like Batman starting Arkham City on crutches.
The Belfry is the game’s main hub. It’s where you return to after a long night’s patrol, where you can train, where you can upgrade and where you can examine evidence, move the story forward and activate some of the larger quests. It’s a big area and it’s a shame there’s no mechanic for personalising it with different colours or collectable items and furniture. Feels like a missed opportunity that could have given another reason for patrolling the dirty and corrupt streets of Gotham.
The workbench in the Belfry takes you into the usual menus with options for crafting and upgrading. You can assign points into the skill tree, craft suits, weapons and mods and change colourways. Crafting requires materials obtained from chests and completing quests. The loot system itself is a tad baffling. It just feels like it belongs in another game. I’m never sure what I’ve picked up and if it’s something I really need or how to get a missing loot type that is required for crafting a new blueprint for a suit I didn’t know I had. The UI is equally perplexing in its design and functionality. The devs made some very strange choices. I’ve heard it said that perhaps Gotham Knights was originally designed as a live service game and, honestly, I can believe that. The UI and the loot system and the nightly patrols with no reward at the end of the night feel as though they belong in a different game.
I feel like I’ve complained a lot in this review, but there is a lot to criticise. Some strange decisions have undoubtedly been made which have moulded Gotham Knights into a slightly topsy-turvy gaming experience. It could have been great. But it isn’t. The review scores are right to say that it isn’t great, but it isn’t bad either and it certainly isn’t broken. The framerate on consoles is 30fps and that is a disappointment. The framerate does occasionally dip but not to the point where the game becomes in anyway unplayable. There are sluggish moments and we do expect more from a AAA title in 2022 but it’s not the disaster you might have been lead to believe.
I’ve had a spiffing time. I’ve loved perching on gargoyles, sneaking up on enemies, shooting them in the face with Red Hood’s guns, meeting the Court of Owls and prowling around their hidden abodes. I’ve loved all the different suits and filling out the skill trees. I’ve loved Alfred and his fatherly advice and the family’s grief for Bruce. I’ve loved adjusting to evading instead of countering. I’ve loved the villains and the humour. I’ve loved trying to work out which hero is best and which to take with me on particular missions. Gotham Knights is a GOOD game and while it does deserve a decent helping of criticism it also deserves a lot of praise.
-S.J. Hollis
- Engaging story
- Fast and fun combat
- Good graphics
- Minor framerate dips
- Repetitive side quests
- Messy UI
