In the build up to the release of Gotham Knights, there was much ado about whether or not the series would be tied to the Arkham universe established by Rocksteady Games or if it would be its own thing. After the release of Gotham Knights, however, fans are probably thanking their lucky stars that this is only tangentially related, at best. What was supposed to be an entertaining story-driven narrative with multiplayer opportunities has instead become a miserable and boring slog and that’s assuming you can even figure out how to operate the menus in the game or arm yourself with the best gear. How did things end up so badly? I have a guess.
A lot of folks got their hands on the game and thought it more closely resembled a mobile game than a console exclusive. There was even a bonkers theory going around that it was originally a mobile game and then was converted to a AAA title at the last minute. The impossibility of that aside, I am inclined to believe the problem is a bit more straightforward and obvious than that. It seems like they intended for this to be a live-service game before the crash of the live-service model proved it to be a bad selling point. In other words, they began development seeking something like Square Enix’s Avengers until they saw that it was not only a miserable failure, but fans hated the idea of the live-service model. That was only reinforced when the same company released Guardians of the Galaxy to critical and commercial praise.
Gotham Knights has all the same foundations for upgrades and loot that Avengers did. The only difference between them is that you can’t figure much out in Gotham Knights. That’s because their UI is so damn convoluted that it’s become an entire source of content for gaming outlets to write out, never mind the content within the game. Hell, Forbes called it the worst UI they’ve seen in a generation. They also agree — or I agree with them, given the dating — that this game was meant to be a live-service game and not a mobile game.
It took me probably about an hour before I fully understood the menu system well enough to work it without much issue. Even after I became familiar with it, I couldn’t help but notice how cluttered and poor it was. Take uniform crafting for example. Instead of just upgrading the uniform you have on, it has you craft an entire new uniform. In some instances, it actually crafts an upgraded version of the outfit you’re wearing and in others you get an entirely new uniform after crafting. Either way, you retain a bunch of old junk instead of just being able to craft your old junk into more usable non-junk. It boggles the mind who thought this system was practical and advisable.
Sure, you can dismantle and gain resources from your old outfits. But why call it an “upgrade” when you’re making an entirely different outfit. That’s not an upgrade, that’s a new suit. This same thing happens with your side weapon. I chose Batgirl and every time I upgraded my tonfa, which was often, I wound up with a new tonfa and before I knew it, I had an entire inventory of useless tonfas. If you’re going to let your players upgrade the gear, it helps if it’s an actual upgrade. These might seem like petty complaints but when you’re already working with a cumbersome and convoluted system of gear maintenance, it sucks that much more to have even more junk confusing you along the way.
As for the story, it can be entertaining enough at points but the voice acting ability varies between characters and some of the dialogue is borderline cringeworthy, and I like cheesy comic dialogue. Add this to the fact that my character’s lips almost never seem to fully line up with what I’m reading on screen and I promise you my setup isn’t the issue. Not only am I running a fully loaded PS5 with 4TB of storage, my system is hardlined in and my television is 4K UHD with VRR. When you add this to the fact that you can only max out the graphical output to 30fps. Not only does it struggle to hit 30fps, it looks like a last generation game that only came out on current generation hardware.
When you add it all up, this is a game that Warner Brothers should have scrapped or completely reworked. None of the ideas for this game work and the fact that they advertised it as a multiplayer game and couldn’t even have that feature at launch suggests to me that they only pushed this out to get those holiday dollars. It’s clear that this game was nowhere near ready for players and probably should have had at least another six months to a year of development time. It’s honestly just another stunning example of those being involved with DC Warner dropping the ball.
Unless you’re a die-hard Batman fan or someone who just needs something to do while you wait for God of War: Ragnarok to drop, I can’t recommend buying this game in good faith. It’s not fun to play, it’s not fun to try and figure out, and it doesn’t justify itself as a game worthy of either the PS5 or Xbox Series X/S. Avoid this one like the plague or play the Arkham Trilogy instead. You can download all three games in the Arkham series on either Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. You could also buy and play Modern Warfare ‘22 instead. You can check out my review on that game by clicking on this link. I promise it’s much better than Gotham Knights.
Verdict: 3.25/10 BSO stars
