Gotham Knights looks kinda meh

Arkham, this is not

'Batman is Dead' reads the hook into WB Montreal's upcoming 'Gotham Knights' video game, now coming exclusively to the elusive current gen consoles. (What an announcement to make just a few months out from the prospective release, guys. Very not-cool.)  And with this game comes on of the most lauded comic book storylines in recent DC years, that of the Court of Owls; another story in which Batman 'dies' only to not really die, so I guess we all know the twist coming in this narrative long before it can even be teased. Gotham Knights borrows what it can in order to set it's narrative in practically the same place that Arkham Knight left it, with Batman AWOL and the Batfamily coming back to Gotham to keep it defended, without actually being a direct sequel in anyway. (I believe 'Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League' is the direct sequel to the Arkham franchise. It's all needlessly confusing.)

What this means is a rooster of the Bat family available for us to pick through, but with enough caveats that this is in no way the 'dream Batman game' that fans of the deep Batman lore have been asking for. I mean for one we're only getting to play as the core members of the Batfamily, I'm talking 3 robins and Batgirl. (Not even Stephanie- but Barbara.) We have at our disposal a Robin, (One of them) Nightwing, (Because that guy can't keep himself in Bludhaven for more than a weekend) Red Hood (To give us that moody gun-toting edge to the group dynamic) and Batgirl. (As the smart-one stereotype of the group.) No Batwoman, no Huntress, no Orphan, no Azrael, No Batmite, No Ace the Bathound. It's a lean group, which I suppose adds all the more room for the team to focus on the diversity behind the playstyles of each individual member; right? Everyone should feel totally different to play, in combat and city traversal: the two major vertices of play, right?

Good thing we have ourselves a brand new character trailer in order to test that theory! Yes, the reveal gameplay trailer only had the chance to show us gameplay of Batgirl, enough to let us know that although the story wants nothing to do with Arkham, the developers will more than happily knick it's playstyle to be the backbone of their game. (Steal from the best, right?) This time around we get to see Red Hood and Nightwing in action, two characters who have also appeared in previous Arkham games (not that this is another Arkham game- it's something different, I have to keep reminding myself.) so that the distinctive playstyles have a chance to shine. Or at least that was the intention behind this, I think. Allow players to see why it is that they'll want to switch between these characters and play alongside them with their friends, oops I mean 'friend'; because bizarrely this game still only has 2 player Co-op planned despite the cold-turkey split to next gen only consoles. (What, is Next Gen not powerful enough for 4 player Co-Op yet?) I'm not entirely sure about the success of the thesis, given the footage that we saw. 

Immediately the problems with the gameplay seem clear; the combat feels weak- which feels astounding to say given the obvious connections this game has to a DC game series with excellent combat in the Arkham games. Why didn't they just copy that standard? Everything seems to mimic the Arkham series, what with the high-angled perspective shift in fights that allows situation awareness for the player to pull off counters and dodges and general group-dispersal tactics- but the actual pace of the action bears a noticeable slow-down in terms of pace. Hits feel slow, there's only a little bit of feedback impact, attacks don't appear to flow into one another as they did in Arkham, it just doesn't look as satisfying to see our hero kick a group of thugs into submission. And I actually watch a decent number of Arkham videos in my spare time because of how satisfying the game looks as well as plays, so I can pretty easily identify when something is missing here.

But there are obviously going to be concessions in the way that the game plays when we're focusing on 4 animations sets that are totally distinct rather than just the one, so the floaty punches are conceptually forgivable. The bulk of the focus here is going more into the RPG stats behind the combat, or at least it was that case when the game was first revealed, I've noticed that since the backlash enemies don't have their levels floating above their heads anymore. However, they're still going to be focusing on craftables (yawn) with different stats on suits and rarities and... is any studio capable of making a game of their own volition anymore? One that doesn't fill the classic 'looter' checkboxes? Why can't we get new suits that just look cool? Or maybe that have one special power like Sony's Spiderman did? Why does it feel like this game's biggest influence was freakin' Avengers? You know, the game that was a failure!

And while we're talking about non-combat gameplay, during the demo's break in the Bellfry, the homebase between missions, we got to see a little bit of how the game will take advantage of the multiple protagonists. Namely, by allowing them to interact. And the interaction they chose to show off in this footage? A laughably stilted dialogue between Dick Grayson and some malformed 'star quarterback' iteration of Jason Todd that bares no small resemblance to one of the Capcom's many failed Chris Redfield clones. (His design was rightly mocked) And whilst we're on the topic of Red Hood; each hero has their own method of world traversal, don't get excited- they didn't come up with anything clever or interesting and just gave Nightwing a slow powered glider and Batgirl the same wing glider that Batman had. But Jason Todd's Red Hood gets a magical green smoke cloud double jump. Why? Because he resurrected by mystic assassin's or something, I dunno, read a comic. Sort of takes away from the gritty, gun-toting image of Red Hood when he flies away on green wings like Tinkerbell.

Luckily, as this is an Arkham game in all but name, we still have stealth as an option in gameplay which is sure to add some bare basic action variety. Does this mean we're going to go the distance and have proper predator sections like the Arkham series did? With vantage points and cat and mouse mechanics that got more fleshed out as the games went along? I don't know. We saw about thirty seconds worth of stealth and it was all crawl and backstab like you'd see from any cookie cutter action title. Which in itself does not give me much hope. (If they had Predator mechanics, why would they deliberately not show them?) Oh, and to put a cherry on top of the cake, some people seem to think the enemies are too tanky, as consequence of their new RPG stats. I personally don't see the problem myself just yet, but this gameplay reminds me how that absolutely will be an issue in higher level tiers, because otherwise why have level gated enemies at all?

I really did put out the benefit of the doubt for Gotham Knights when it first launched and we some small nagging problem points, but now we're closer to launch and the game has settled itself on being firmly next gen- the rough edges are becoming wholly less excusable. Maybe if the game was balanced to allow full four player co-op they'd be some inane fun to be had jumping around the city and bashing heads, but with the limitations this is really starting to shape up as a bargain-bin version of the Arkham series which is going to be competing with an actual proper successor to those games in the near future. Every mechanic borrowed from those games has been done worse and all the 'new' ideas are tired industry trends. In short, this gameplay made the game look average at best, mediocre at worst. Maybe the Court of Owls are better off running things afterall...