Batman: Arkham Knight – PlayStation 4
- For PlayStation owners, Batman Arkham Knight offers the exclusive Scarecrow Nightmare Pack, in which Gotham falls victim to Scarecrow’s fear toxin, transforming the famous city into a twisted, hellish nightmare. Tear through the city in the all-new Batmobile and face off against a towering vision of Scarecrow and his undead army as they spread terror on the streets.
- The Batmobile: Gamers have demanded it, and Batman: Arkham Knight delivers. The all new Batmobile sits at the heart of the gameplay experience and augments Batman’s abilities in every respect.
- Next-Gen Gotham City: Harnessing the power of the next generation of games systems, the entirety of Gotham City has been created in immense scale and with intimate detail offering players a truly legendary next-gen game world.
- The Epic Conclusion to a Legendary Trilogy: Rocksteady Studios returns to the helm of the multi-award winning franchise. Scarecrow is back to wreak his revenge against Batman joined by a completely new and original character, the Arkham Knight.
- Be The Batman: Batman, the Batmobile, the entirety of Gotham City. Batman: Arkham Knight is the complete and ultimate Batman offering.
In the explosive finale to the Arkham series, Batman faces the ultimate threat against the city he is sworn to protect. The Scarecrow returns to unite an impressive roster of super villains, including Penguin, Two-Face and Harley Quinn, to destroy The Dark Knight forever. Batman: Arkham Knight introduces Rocksteady’s uniquely designed version of the Batmobile, which is drivable for the first time in the franchise. The addition of this legendary vehicle, combined with the acclaimed gameplay of the Batman Arkham series, offers gamers the ultimate and complete Batman experience as they tear through the streets and soar across the skyline of the entirety of Gotham City. Be The Batman.
List Price: $ 10.38
Price:
|
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
 A worthy installment..but not the best., By
Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: Batman: Arkham Knight – PlayStation 4 (Video Game)
I’d like to apologize to Rocksteady on behalf of most of their audience for these games. We’ve been asking for the Batmobile in these games from the beginning and well…you gave it to us. This has become an example of “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it”. I will say that the actual Batmobile itself isn’t really the problem, just the way it’s used. That, of course, brings me to the tank battles. I would’ve been perfectly fine if there were maybe two or three of these implemented in the game because in the beginning I actually enjoyed them to an extent. Then there was another one, and another, and another, etc. Then there’s the times chasing people down in the Batmobile, trying to be stealthy in the Batmobile (terrible idea), Riddler making puzzle driving courses for the Batmobile. It just got to the point where it was shoved down your throat a bit. I think it would’ve been a better idea having it be optional to just use it if and when you wanted to. At the same time, I understand they took the time to implement this feature and they wanted us to use it but I think they still went a little too far.
My only other real complaint about the game is the lack of unique defined boss battles. It’s something that the previous games hold over this installment and they are missed. There are only two situations in this game that I would define as boss battles. One of those require some grinding to get, which can turn a lot of people off to it. The other, of course, requires using the Batmobile, so it’s not really a traditional fight just requires some decent driving skills. There are arguments to be made for other segments that could possibly pass for bosses but I believe that’s stretching it, especially when compared to previous games in the series. Hopefully the DLC villains can rectify this problem. Now onto the positives. The game does have a good story and a fairly satisfying ending. The Arkham Knight’s identity isn’t a big reveal for anyone that has a passing knowledge of Batman lore. But, he was still a good villain in my eyes. Scarecrow is a great villain and I wish there were more interactions with him other than basically hearing him over a loudspeaker. Still the way his tactics are used were pretty cool. I can’t really go into much detail without spoiling anything but i’ll just say I liked what Scarecrow did during the game. One segment in particular towards the end of the game that has become one of my absolute favorite sequences in a video game ever. Graphics are great. Not the best i’ve seen on the system but still a very nice game to look at. I like the implementation of having your sidekicks help you in certain situations making some of the combat sequences very fun and left me wanting more. Keeping with the combat, it’s just as fun as ever. The Arkham series from the beginning has set a standard on a basically perfect combat system that has gotten better with each installment. It’s a system that’s fairly easy to pick up and play with but mastering it is truly rewarding. The addition of being able to attack someone while grounded is a welcome addition as well as being able to take a thug’s melee weapons and use it against them is also great. There are new gadgets that are fun to use and the Batmobile takedowns are also pretty cool. It would be difficult to go into other things that I enjoyed without spoiling some pretty big parts of the story and some surprises so i’ll just wrap this up. Overall, the game was enjoyable. My favorite in the series is still Arkham City but this is a worthy addition. It has it’s low points for sure, but it also has plenty of positives. If you’re a fan of the previous games, I can recommend this one as well. If not, then this game is highly unlikely to change your mind. If you’re looking to jump into this series for the first time, then this isn’t the best starting point for obvious reasons.
72 of 90 people found the following review helpful
 Batmobile ruins game, By
DavidW (South Carolina) – See all my reviews
This review is from: Batman: Arkham Knight – PlayStation 4 (Video Game)
The Good: the combat feels as refined as it did in Arkham City. Using detective mode is still fun. Gliding around and tactically taking down baddies is still alot of fun. Fear takedown is just AWESOME! If I could just spend the whole game using fear takedown and solving mysteries with detective mode I would be happy.
The Bad: the identity of the Arkham Knight is obvious, even to me who doesn’t read comics. The story is pretty boring. The batmobile controls are frustratingly poor, and you have to use that stupid thing over and over and over again. I don’t mind the tank fights, but they’re not fun either. The puzzles are just tedious. I hate having to swap between batman and batmobile repeatedly. The chases are JUST AWFUL! The batmobile’s brakes are either not enough or way too much, they’re never just right. The acceleration is the same. The controls lack the refinement of games like gta5, and the powerslide is not good enough. Switching to battle mode to strafe is better for turning but too slow. It’s not Mako from Mass Effect bad, but pretty close. It wouldn’t ruin the game for me had not been for the fact that it’s constantly shoehorned in at every turn! Speaking of which, I also hate how the Riddler challenges are just lame race tracks. WHY!? Why would E. Nigma want to challenge batman with stupid races!? The Ugly: I originally bought this on the PC. That was AWFUL. I returned it and bought the ps4 version. So I go to play the Harley Quinn dlc and I found out that it’s pretty mediocre. Instead of crafting a combat system tailored to Harley’s style, they have her use batman’s system except (a) make her weak, (b) vulnerable, and (c) loud. So it doesn’t really work well, and it’s not that fun to play. Nightwing makes for a terrible boss battle. He has a singular weakness which is easily exploited. They try to make up for making him being too easy by swarming the place with more cops. Also noting that it’s short, I would just say that this is pretty lazy effort for extra content. If the dlc in the package is like this, then it’s just a waste of money. Simple changes that would have made the game more enjoyable: (a) don’t use the batmobile for puzzle solving,
103 of 133 people found the following review helpful
 Batmobile Simulator 2k15, By
Elias (Nowhere In Particular) – See all my reviews
This review is from: Batman: Arkham Knight – PlayStation 4 (Video Game)
(For the purposes of this review, I will not be reviewing any of the retailer-exclusive or preorder DLC. While it’s all very enjoyable, it could have easily been a part of the complete package, and I won’t justify it with any more space than this blurb, on principle.) The Arkham series isn’t that fresh anymore. When Arkham Asylum came out, it was a burst of creativity and a testament to how licensed games could actually work if done right. And when Arkham City was released, it took the established framework and used it to make one of the definitive open-world titles of the last generation of consoles. But now? Times have changed. Origins was very solid, but not exceptional, and Blackgate barely worth mentioning. The basic gameplay of the franchise has been aped so many times that it now feels tired. And grim, dark, brooding superheroes are becoming a bit passe. The times have changed since 2009. For better or worse, Rocksteady has changed with them. To my surprise, Arkham Knight manages to pull off the unthinkable and avoid the pits of sequelitis. At no point during my several, several hours of playtime have I stopped to think that this was more of the same. In fact, I’m duly impressed with how different everything is. While the basic ideas of combat and gadgetry usage are mostly intact, roughly everything else has been changed. To an extent, it almost feels like Rocksteady saw how much of a retread Origins was, then decided to push Knight into almost absurdly different territory for the sake of being original. "A" for effort, I suppose. Thing is, that effort actually pays off more often than not. It starts at the most basic level: the narrative. While the story itself feels somewhat conventional, the way in which it’s told is easily the most interesting I’ve seen in a game this year. What should be a formulaic, "Batman has to stop a big bad bomb and take out a big bad guy" experience turns into something that delves into psychological horror. This is a Batman that’s clearly traumatized from all the horrible stuff he’s been through, and it’s starting to get to him. Add in some of antagonist Scarecrow’s nerve gas and you’ve got a volatile, damaged antihero whose quest for justice is constantly thwarted by his own mind. That is to say, the way he sees the world isn’t quite how it actually is. And this is what makes Arkham Knight so particularly effective in the story department. Time and space start bending in the most bizarre ways possible. Players will pan the camera around Batman, then back around only to find that the room has changed, or that a new character is standing there. People that die may or not actually be dead, and major narrative events might not actually be happening. After the introductory bits, Rocksteady’s swan song for the Dark Knight turns into an often unnerving descent into the darkest corners of its protagonist’s mind. Players are simply yanked along for the ride, at the mercy of what’s one of the darkest Batman stories ever told. Of course, no story is perfect, and Arkham Knight’s certainly has some glaring flaws. Some twists end up getting blatantly telegraphed and dampen the surprise. The cast is a bit bloated and ends up feeling packed full of characters that don’t necessarily need to be there. And, most importantly to me, every female member of the cast is put in some sort of captivity at some point. Some might take issue with me pointing this out, but it needs to be stated. The source material has some really interesting female characters, and the way all of them get represented here is sorely lacking. I won’t go into much more details at risk of spoiling anything, but it really ground my gears to see some of my favorite characters only get utilized as lazy motivation for Batman to do a thing. That isn’t to say that the overall story in Arkham Knight isn’t good, because good lord, it’s excellent. Despite those particular flaws that stuck like a sore thumb, I quite enjoy the main narrative brunt of the game, and think it’s one of the better ones put on the market this year. Add on the fact that every side mission has its own sort of important narrative, and you’ve got a lot of content to sink your teeth into. Overall, from a narrative enjoyment standpoint, this is definitely a solid win. Rocksteady innovated the brawler with Asylum, but with so many other games aping the simple, fast-paced combat of that title these days, does it hold up here? Surprisingly, yes. The developer has gotten the formula down to a near-art. It’s still basically a series of intuitive, timed button presses, but the accompanying visuals, different sets of abilities and new varieties of enemies make things much more interesting. Also helping is the introduction of other characters into the mix. Playing through a good portion of the various missions, I’ve taken control of 5-6 unique characters, all of… |
Find More PlayStation 4 Games Products
A worthy installment..but not the best.,
My only other real complaint about the game is the lack of unique defined boss battles. It’s something that the previous games hold over this installment and they are missed. There are only two situations in this game that I would define as boss battles. One of those require some grinding to get, which can turn a lot of people off to it. The other, of course, requires using the Batmobile, so it’s not really a traditional fight just requires some decent driving skills. There are arguments to be made for other segments that could possibly pass for bosses but I believe that’s stretching it, especially when compared to previous games in the series. Hopefully the DLC villains can rectify this problem.
Now onto the positives. The game does have a good story and a fairly satisfying ending. The Arkham Knight’s identity isn’t a big reveal for anyone that has a passing knowledge of Batman lore. But, he was still a good villain in my eyes. Scarecrow is a great villain and I wish there were more interactions with him other than basically hearing him over a loudspeaker. Still the way his tactics are used were pretty cool. I can’t really go into much detail without spoiling anything but i’ll just say I liked what Scarecrow did during the game. One segment in particular towards the end of the game that has become one of my absolute favorite sequences in a video game ever. Graphics are great. Not the best i’ve seen on the system but still a very nice game to look at. I like the implementation of having your sidekicks help you in certain situations making some of the combat sequences very fun and left me wanting more. Keeping with the combat, it’s just as fun as ever. The Arkham series from the beginning has set a standard on a basically perfect combat system that has gotten better with each installment. It’s a system that’s fairly easy to pick up and play with but mastering it is truly rewarding. The addition of being able to attack someone while grounded is a welcome addition as well as being able to take a thug’s melee weapons and use it against them is also great. There are new gadgets that are fun to use and the Batmobile takedowns are also pretty cool.
It would be difficult to go into other things that I enjoyed without spoiling some pretty big parts of the story and some surprises so i’ll just wrap this up. Overall, the game was enjoyable. My favorite in the series is still Arkham City but this is a worthy addition. It has it’s low points for sure, but it also has plenty of positives. If you’re a fan of the previous games, I can recommend this one as well. If not, then this game is highly unlikely to change your mind. If you’re looking to jump into this series for the first time, then this isn’t the best starting point for obvious reasons.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Batmobile ruins game,
The Bad: the identity of the Arkham Knight is obvious, even to me who doesn’t read comics. The story is pretty boring. The batmobile controls are frustratingly poor, and you have to use that stupid thing over and over and over again. I don’t mind the tank fights, but they’re not fun either. The puzzles are just tedious. I hate having to swap between batman and batmobile repeatedly. The chases are JUST AWFUL! The batmobile’s brakes are either not enough or way too much, they’re never just right. The acceleration is the same. The controls lack the refinement of games like gta5, and the powerslide is not good enough. Switching to battle mode to strafe is better for turning but too slow. It’s not Mako from Mass Effect bad, but pretty close. It wouldn’t ruin the game for me had not been for the fact that it’s constantly shoehorned in at every turn! Speaking of which, I also hate how the Riddler challenges are just lame race tracks. WHY!? Why would E. Nigma want to challenge batman with stupid races!?
The Ugly: I originally bought this on the PC. That was AWFUL. I returned it and bought the ps4 version. So I go to play the Harley Quinn dlc and I found out that it’s pretty mediocre. Instead of crafting a combat system tailored to Harley’s style, they have her use batman’s system except (a) make her weak, (b) vulnerable, and (c) loud. So it doesn’t really work well, and it’s not that fun to play. Nightwing makes for a terrible boss battle. He has a singular weakness which is easily exploited. They try to make up for making him being too easy by swarming the place with more cops. Also noting that it’s short, I would just say that this is pretty lazy effort for extra content. If the dlc in the $40 package is like this, then it’s just a waste of money.
Simple changes that would have made the game more enjoyable:
(a) don’t use the batmobile for puzzle solving,
(b) make tank fights optional side quests and not necessary,
(c) in the movies the batmobile (Tim Burton era) uses a grapple to turn fast, if we had a press x to grapple approaching a turn and then left or right to immediately make the turn perfectly there would still be agency in the driving but without the frustration of the batmobile turning poorly,
(d) map L2 to the brakes and not battle mode,
(e) allow for use of weapons outside of battle mode without having to lock on.
Was this review helpful to you?
|