Gotham Knights Review

If you're watching this, I'm dead.

Once upon a time there a video game. And it was a damn good one. Batman's Arkham franchise revolutionised third person action adventure games with it's every refined breath and quirk, bringing a startlingly comic lean gothic world together with one of the most influential hand-to-hand combat systems ever devised by man. I'll bet that if we track the strings of 'influence' that the punch-and-counter blueprint of Arkham has had on gaming, we'd map ourselves webs stretching to just about every single genre game with specific character controls in the past decade, outside of dedicated shooters. Arkham was such a staple icon of what video games even are that anyone with the sheer hubris to exist within that shadow would have themselves one heck of a legacy to overcome. Such was the unenviable position that Gotham Knights volunteered for.

While not actually a sequel to the Batman Arkham series in any significant fashion, Gotham Knights was a Batman themed Warner Bros. Published open world hero crime fighting game set within ostensibly the same city- and yes, with a combat influenced, at least in some small esoteric way, by the foundations that Arkham laid all that time ago. The connections pretty much made themselves, even if the team of developers themselves were not Rocksteady. WB Games Montreal are not a team as big as Rocksteady, nor as celebrated or resourceful, and thus throwing them in a cage fight with the kings of the genre was never going to turn out favourable in their direction. It would be like trying to compare the Mafia games with Grand Theft Auto- of course one side is going to show up worse, the comparison dooms the other. What Arkham presents and represents, however, is perhaps an idealised version of everything Gotham Knights wanted to be ontop of itself.

But enough beating around the bush, what is Gotham Knights? Well, it proposed to be the first Batman game to discard the scowling brooder and place his extended Bat family in the spotlight for a change. Well, four of them at least. In a narrative that threatened to touch on one of Batman's most significant modern era villains, the freemason/illumnati-esque 'Court of Owls', we would be presented with a murdered Batman which would set a grieving combo of Barbara Gordon (Batgirl), Tim Drake (Robin), Dick Grayson (Nightwing) and Jason Todd (Red Hood) on a justice seeking journey to avenge their fallen father figure. As the concept would regularly present, this means a co-op centric adventure tale sprawled across Gotham as you and three friends struggle to- huh? It's only 2 player co-op? But... but there are four heroes... why would- okay, already starting to see the cracks...

Co-op was always going to be a deviation from what people expected from a successor, spiritual though it may be, to the Arkham franchise- although any potential controversy or support it might have gained was soon washed away when trailers and gameplay revealed the real serpent hiding in this garden. Enemy levels, gear drops, rarity colours- this was another damned Looter Game! They're like a black plague sweeping across game design, sucking the life and hope out of everything they touch! God, I'm so sick of these awful games and endless integrity compromising design decisions and mindbending systemic concessions always bent in pursuit of keeping people playing for as long as possible, rather than in making those moments in which they are playing as good as they can be! Seems WB realised this too, because the final game isn't actually a live service like all these systems would prelude. Instead it feels as though such a corrupted heart had been ripped from the game sometime late into production and it's jagged, gore-strewn scars mark the rough edges of the imperfect package which is Gotham Knights.

Now, when I said that Gotham Knights was inspired by Arkham in an esoteric manner, what I meant to say was despite sharing a publisher with the Arkham games, Gotham Knight's gameplay shares about as much DNA with it's spiritual predecessor as any other action adventure game on the market does. You have basic and heavy strikes, dodge markers and counters. It all- functions. There is none of the effortless fluidity and dynamic situational depth of what Arkham achieved, but there is a basic serviceable flow that you might find replicated in any pretty good action adventure combat system out there. There is even a little bit of input depth sprinkled atop with stringent dodge time windows and a damage boosting 'perfect hit' mashing system which I could never quite get down right. And then you'll start unlocking momentum abilities that present flashy group attacks or heavy beatdowns or power support abilities. It's all above average stuff, which makes it a full head above the barely functional trite modern Assassin's Creed presents as 'RPG gameplay'.

Perhaps the greatest compliment to this system that the development team made were to invest heavily into the uniqueness and number of their combat animations, because they make a lot of the difference. Having every character animated in a totally distinct fashion with all of their own popping strikes and takedowns makes their combat feel more distinct and fresh than perhaps it might actually be. And though Red Hood might be the only Knight who actually plays genuinely differently from his comrades, (to debatable success. I found him way too slow to enjoy but I know some people like his gun-kata stylings.) the rigid judo of Batgirl's takedowns compared to the flipping acrobatics of Nightwing's knockouts tickle the thirst for combat variety in the most basic pleasure centres of the brain, providing the most basic illusion of distinction. (Devil May Cry this is not. But it's no fumbling trainwreck either.)

On the other end of combat, however, is the actual gear system which influences the damages and stats of your chosen Bat-vigilante as they patrol the streets in the night-by-night setting of this game. You'll end up in the Belltower before missions, crafting yourself new sets of 'bigger number' armour using a bevy of totally forgettable coloured materials that you picked up off the bodies of beaten thugs for some reason, and slap them on so that you can keep up with arms race of ratcheting levelling which plagues the early game of all level based gear games. This is the reason I hate this design. It always devolves into slapping together new gear with a higher arbitrary 'combat rating' in order to keep the same basic damage output you did the night before when enemies were a slightly lower level. And sure, when you start messing around with the hilariously unsophisticated modding system you'll slap together gear that trivialises most enemies- but does that really sound like ideal power scaling to you? And don't even get started on the way that, unless you b-line the main story, you'll find your character out-levelling the instance-based story mission areas in a matter of a couple hours. Either barely scrapping by to keep up or dominating over everyone with ease? It's a mess of an output scaling problem caused solely by the existence of the gear system in the first place.

And all of that is assuming you manage to last with this game long enough to parse it's ugly mess of menus to being with! Gotham Knights features an exceptionally messy flood of crafting menus, resource windows and tabs that will leave the newcomer fumbling and head scratching at every junction. I couldn't even reliably tell what equipment I even had equipped when I first started playing the game, which made me check out of the gear system pretty much immediately. And though I like the idea of the 'day by day' patrol framing device which characterises the game, there's a strange disjointed narrative flow which arises because of it. Forcing the player back to the Belfry in order to equip field-crafted equipment kind of feels annoying when doing so automatically ends the night- even though you're incentivised to clear the map of crimes every night so that you gather enough clues to generate crimes to solve for the next night- meaning that you'll likely craft an upgrade when you need it, but then suffer through the rest of the night grinding away at frustrating content with suddenly spongy enemies that have outpaced your gear for the rest of the night before you can equip it. A bizarre cycle there.

But let me not slide too far past the concept of dynamic map crimes which generate at the start of every patrol night, because they are a concept worth talking about. There is an array of possible crimes that pop up across Gotham as decent little side activities to keep the aspiring vigilante preoccupied between the larger investigation to solve Batman's last case. For the most part the variety of possibility scratched that same 'crime fighting itch' you look to resolve in any superhero game, even if there's a systemic similarity in a few of them. For example, stopping an illegal hack and saving a witness are conceptually distinct, but in practice they both involve fighting off waves whilst protecting a single point- all that really changes is the venue. You'll also find the same indoor locations repeated as crime spots, but I realise there's only so much possible variety in locations. We can't have everything. (At least there's more variety than in Watch_Dogs Legion, as faint praise as that is.)

The narrative of Gotham Knights promises a dive into the machinations of the Court of Owls, and in that pursuit the game does an admirable job of piling on the mythos and mystery of the secretive cabal of blue bloods who guide the powerful of Gotham from the shadows. They build up their mystique and the fear that those who know of them have of running their mouths, and they lay the foundations of a detective story the likes of which even Arkham never quite committed to with it's focus on cinematic eye-popping set pieces. And then Gotham Knights squanders all of it's own work by spitting out a half-digested 'bad big org' that feels no more interesting or nuanced than all the other thugs who roam the Gotham streets.

There really is no understating just how painfully self-sabotaging this is to the story they were building. The power of the Court is in their influence and connections, their memberships consist of the oldest and most powerful families in Gotham- and yet they don't seem to be anything more than goons getting in scuffs with Martial Artists in Bat costumes. Their grand plans are easily, almost accidentally, unravelled by the Knights barely a mission after stumbling upon then, and then the story gets tired and decides to swap them out for the League of Assassin's at the end. Another ancient order that is trying to influence Gotham through the use of monsters created using the Lazarus pit- making the switch utterly meaningless from a narrative perspective.

The death of Batman is intended to be treated with the weight such a loss would have, primarily by giving each of the Batfamily their own interpersonal side missions that touches on how they step up to fill the void that Bruce left by leaving for the milk one day- I mean dying. They are all fine nudges at the characters of the Knights, although I found some of them a little undermined by the fact that a few of the back and forths with Alfred only change up the Knights dialogue, not his. Which means that if you're switching between the heroes in order to hear ever story, you can have the same conversation with Alfred four times where he responds exactly the same to each individual Knight. It's kind of like how Saints Row does it's multiple voices, except these are supposed to be emotionally interrogational scenes wherein Alfred reaches inside and pulls out the inner hero of all of these traumatised heroes- except he's recycling his own material, the cheap bastard!

If you go in expecting a decently deep interrogation of the various Knight's personalities, as one would hope for in a story of these heroes 'coming into their own'- well, prepare for disappointment. Most of these characters are given surface level arcs that mostly chalk up to 'I'm having trouble being a member of a team despite the fact I've been doing this for years now', and these issues are dealt with exclusively in exclusive-to-the-main-plot optional cutscenes that feel entirely divorced from the central events of the game. Slightly missing the point of having character development, by declaring quarantine around all the actual 'development'. And when the Knights are actually working together for the core plot, they are written to the level of your average Dick Wolf cop show. Everyone gets their say, surface level characteristics are pandered to and the most simplistic conclusions are stitched together with such a song and dance you'd have thought the group had just finished decoding Dan Brown's DaVinci Code at the end of every conversation. I may never forget the 'brain rush scene' which required every Knight developing on each others ideas in order to come around to the startling, cyclical, conclusion that the Key one of them discovered last mission- probably opens a door. They just need to find the right door. I kid you not, someone wrote that. With all the preppy, quirky ghosts of overtold, cop-com jokes glittered on to salt the wound. (Just call this 'Law and Order: Gotham Knights'.) 

The end of the story achieves precious little to resolve the events of the story, given that the Court are still active (albeit wounded) and the League are still hopping about- (albeit sans one Lazarus pit) almost as though someone was hoping this game would just be the framework through which they could stick on additional narratives with new factions ad nauseum. You know, like in a Live Service. (Which is another example why Live Services jeopardise the integrity of their games.) The only real event of impact is the very definitive death of Batman who is now very dead for good. And that... pretty much means the game starts where it ends. I suppose that given the ending speech wherein your chosen Knight monologues about their dedication to the city, in a bizarrely singular fashion as though the other Knights don't exist, you might also say that the Knights came into their own as heroes but... they each had years of Vigilante work under their belt before the beginning of the game. Committing to continuing exactly the same sort of work they'd already dedicated their lives to is semantics as best, redundant at worst.

There are exactly three side-quests to keep you busy outside of the main content, and luckily they are decently beefy quest chains. Although to justify their length that means in this game about the Gotham Knights stepping up to face the duties of protecting Gotham, only three villains from the Rogues Gallery bother show up. Harley Quinn is promoted to gang boss in an attempt to show her 'growing up' from the Joker in the evil direction, whereas she's usually portrayed becoming a sort of anti-hero. This Harley retains the basic air-headed sillyness you know whilst touching up the psychotic menace just a little- and there might have been something to her where her overall plan not so... flimsy. The content is serviceable and her set-piece moments rival some of those from the main missions, but I would have expected a bit more of a substantive plot from the girl's grand major villain debut.

Mr Freeze was a mistake. I believe that well and truly. In an attempt to 'evolve' the character, the writers made the inspired decision to just pluck out his humanity. You know, the one thing that made his character more compelling than your standard villain-of-the-week nobody? Yeah, they just got rid of that. Totally arbitrarily, too. It's not like they establish that Nora died, or Freeze's condition is worsening or the Blackgate dinner lady got his lunch order wrong one day- he just woke up one day and decided he was fully evil. He might as well go around with a heavy Austrian accent making 'Freeze' puns, at least that would give me some interesting aspect of his personality to... well, mock- but... that's something! And thus was born the most boring iteration of Mr Freeze ever conceived. Good Job, Gotham Knights?

And finally there's Clayface, who I'm certain was conceived of in reverse. No one in the writing room had a compelling reason why this would be a perfect villain for the new Batkids, rather the animation department thought they could pull off a really sick looking clay webbing effect and wanted to show it off. And it does look good, those set pieces shine! but Clayface's entire narrative is based around a traumatic injury he suffered facing Batman and how he blames him for the incident. And without Batman there to be confronted with the consequences of his actions, intentional or otherwise- or even to defend himself, it just sort of goes nowhere? It's also the shortest questline too, by a considerable margin, as though the team genuinely couldn't come up with a complete narrative for the guy. (Shame too, his story was the most interesting that I wanted to see explored.)

As for the actual boss fights that round out all of these side quests? Yeah, they're pretty generic. Just simple attack cycles and huge health bars. There's no mechanical thought put into the construction of any of these battles beyond the occasional need to grapple up in order to avoid Freeze's AOE attacks. And there couldn't really be, could there? Because these battles had to be made possible to be completed by every Knight, alone or in pairs, limiting the scope of mechanics the team could work with. Which isn't to say there's nothing they could have done- MMOs pretty much present blueprints on how to create interesting fights that aren't just 'mash attack until the thing is dead', but Gotham Knights doesn't have that patience and it doesn't expect it's player to either. Which is probably wise, I probably wouldn't have the mental fortitude to withstand a Harley Quinn raid boss. 

Gotham itself is a huge wasted opportunity in Gotham Knights, offering up a generic city scape that lacks all the gothic personality of practically any iteration of Gotham that has ever existed. From a distance, atop rooftops, it can look a little atmospheric (although not a patch on the Arkham games) but the streets are barren, the city interactions surface level and the spread of content agonising. I don't think any serious consideration went into the placement of generated crimes during the daily patrol, for the actual minutes worth of pointless downtime you'll have to endure just going between objectives.  Traversal options are pretty pathetic aside from Batgirl's glide and Dick's paraglider and the mini-activity for unlocking fast travel points is so mind-numbingly pathetic I'm convinced it was created as a sole example of everything not to do in game design. It's a  'scan the drone' objective that has you wait around, without moving, for several minutes as you watch drones go about pre-programmed paths and land in front of you in order to recharge. I don't know what genius conceived of a gameplay mechanic where you do literally nothing, but they might have finally topped the 'Ubisoft tower' as the most tedious open world-side activity. They must be so proud.

As you push on forth towards the latter of the game and start hitting level plateaus at significant junctions- or the cap nearer to the end- just as is the case with every gear-score inspired game, the actual build crafting can begin. And this is actually where Gotham Knight's combat starts to feel pretty good. There aren't really a comprehensive list of abilities or effects for the gear you equip, it's just damage scores and elemental bonuses, but the bonuses themselves are really visually fun to proc and satisfying to match up. Changing up your elements towards an enemies weakness, such as switching to a full pyro kit to burn out Freeze's regulators, builds into the fantasy of the equipped well-planned hero, and mixing and matching so that your Batarangs freeze whilst your baton stuns with electricity can evolve small fights with just enough tactical variety to feel fresh again. 

Unfortunately late game is also where the variation enemies start appearing, and unfortunately the team did not seem to borrow from the legacy of it's spiritual predecessor here. The first variation that all the factions get, the heavy, is simple and comprehensive. Large health pool, heavy windup attacks, they're about as fun to deal with as your build is tight. If you have a solid build, they're the highlights of the battle, if you're just winging it, they're painful timesinks. But every other variant is a pain in the ass. The Assassin's from the League hone in far too much with their attacks stealing your situational awareness to only focus on them during sword flurries. The Owl Talons can only become vulnerable after hitting them with a charged range attack, as opposed to Arkham variant enemies who would typically feature a range of options to make them vulnerable, most of which flow into general combat. (But then, flow was a lot more important to the design philosophy in Arkham.) And the super special talons they introduce in the late game? I literally only fought them in that introduction fight. I don't know if the team just forgot to insert them into the remaining few case files or if spawn rates are random and I got unlucky- but that felt like a missed opportunity. Ultimately, combat enemy variety was attempted, but to a sad and unimpressive presentation.

For it's endgame content, which also doubles as the only worthwhile multiplayer content beyond just general city wondering or double teaming missions that don't feel like they were especially designed to challenge two people at once, Gotham Knights proposes only it's raids that skewer the gear level system up a bunch of levels and teases a special something new that is never quite lived up to. When I read the teaser email from Wonder Woman presenting the Raid as taking on Starro- I got a little excited. The giant Starfish of legend would surely be a crazy fight, and I was only sad the game's playerbase had dropped off so much there was no way I'd get to play it. (Unless I was crazy enough to grind the dozens of floors to get there solo. Assuming that's even possible.) Thankfully the Internet saved me this embarrassment by revealing that the final Starro encounter is merely a Starro-controlled Manbat. Manbat being the same painfully overused miniboss the game throws at you four times in it's last two chapters. Shameful. The only other raid just delivers a boss rush of all the main game villains at the same time. Neat concept, but uninspired content recycling.

Conclusion

Gotham Knights suffered under the weight of its design philosophy, which sacrificed so very much in order to be a Live Service back for the very brief years when that was in vogue. Though we were saved from that dark reality, the scars of that design foundation haunt the final product to this day. And yet, even if we were to exorcize all those elements and take the final product for what it is- Gotham Knights is solidly average. It's combat can be pretty solid when everything comes together, with the majority of the game already behind you, but Gotham is empty, the story is a mess and the writing is both bland and inauthentically quirky in the same breath. Oh, and did I mention that this game starts with a twelve minute cinematic? That's right! Rag on Kojima games all you want, but at least he progresses the story in his belated cutscenes! Knights drags out the death of Batman into a 12 minute slog of fighting and explosions before you've ever even touched the controller, and expects you to be blown away from the admittedly high quality animation. I was starting to get Kingdom Hearts HD collection '358/2 Days' flashbacks from that intro, what in gods name where they thinking?

The game drags itself down to the territory of mid so solidly that actually don't think I can recommend this when everyone of the Arkham games eclipses this title in all but Netcode. Because none of those games had it. Wait... actually, Origins had a kickass asymmetrical multiplayer which was supremely underrated- so I guess Arkham even had better online services than Gotham Knights. So go buy the Arkham series. Seriously. They're so much better. Gotham Knights is one of the most middle of the road games you can buy, but for the glimmers of something better here and there I managed to dig out- I can just about eek out an extra third of a mark in my ultimate score. Which means Gotham Knights earns a C+ grade in my arbitrary rankings. Lets hope this is the most mediocre that a modern Batman game can be- although I'm seriously starting to wonder given what's on the horizon...