Gotham Knights

[Scraper]

This game is getting panned hard in the the reviews. To be honest once I learned it was an online Co-op centric game I was already out, but I at least hoped that it would have a decent enough single player storyline to make it worth a play through. Sadly that doesn't appear to be the case according to reviews. They also say the frame rate is sub 30FPS, which is a crime when you're talking about the Series X and PS5.

[Octavious]

Ya looks like a total fail. Shame maybe they can patch it up to a point where I would want to play it later. 30 fps is ridiculous though. This isn't the switch.

[coopasonic]

As a batfan with a beefy PC, I'll be giving it a try. The reviews I saw were positive on the story side of things and mostly down on the performance, repetitive combat and open the world blandness. I'll let you know next week.

[Max Peck]

As long as I get decent performance on the PC version, I'm still in. I guess I'll just have to see how things go for that initial 2-hour refund window on Steam.

[Octavious]

I don't even meet the minimum specs with my CPU on the PC version. That's now two games... I really don't have the patience or money to upgrade my computer right now, so PC gaming might have to sit to the side for consoles. 1st world problems.

[Max Peck]

I'm sitting between the minimum and recommended requirement for CPU (I have an I7-9700KF) and I slightly exceed the recommended requirement for GPU (I have an RTX-2080S), so I expect to get 60FPS at 1080P with middling quality settings.

[naednek]

looks like it's time to wait for the $15 price next year

[Scraper]

looks like it's time to wait for the $15 price next year

My thoughts too, by then they might be able to fix it up and add some content to it.

[coopasonic]

As long as I get decent performance on the PC version, I'm still in. I guess I'll just have to see how things go for that initial 2-hour refund window on Steam.

I have to enjoy it since I'll buy it from greenman and forego that refund option. This game is basically made for me. I'm above recommended spec, though I'll be playing at 1440p. My co-op partner/son si right around the min specs, so we'll see on that end. It may be time for him to get an upgrade (and by upgrade I mean hand me down).

[coopasonic]

I'm 4 hours in and I totally get why people would call it repetitive or grindy and I am typing this because I wanted a break from it... already. When I get back on, I'll try one of the other characters. I went with Batgirl for the first few nights and haven't seen much value in her hacking skills.

[Jaddison]

I played an hour and refunded. Maybe I'll jump back in but right now it just wasn't for me. The motorcycle driving was maddening and the combat was no great shakes. The story was intriguing but I got it from multiple sources that it takes a lot of grinding to get through interesting investigations

[coopasonic]

I'm now 14 hours in with the glider options unlocked for 3 of 4 characters and all the fast travel points unlocked. Getting around the map is far less problematic now, the only thing that is still a bit annoying is the repetitiveness of the open world encounters.

[coopasonic]

19 hours in, two big named villains down. Level 21 out of a max of 30 (first play through, NG+ gets you to 40). The combat def gets better as you master perfect dodge and learn to use momentum abilities. Robin has better stealth capabilities than the rest and it makes it even more fun for me.

[gbasden]

19 hours in, two big named villains down. Level 21 out of a max of 30 (first play through, NG+ gets you to 40). The combat def gets better as you master perfect dodge and learn to use momentum abilities. Robin has better stealth capabilities than the rest and it makes it even more fun for me.

How do you like the co-op aspects of the game? Does it work well? Also, what does the performance feel like on a decent PC? The only reviews I've seen have been the console versions.

[Pyperkub]

Anyone playing on the xBox? Are the performance issues at least only in the PC version?

[coopasonic]

19 hours in, two big named villains down. Level 21 out of a max of 30 (first play through, NG+ gets you to 40). The combat def gets better as you master perfect dodge and learn to use momentum abilities. Robin has better stealth capabilities than the rest and it makes it even more fun for me.

How do you like the co-op aspects of the game? Does it work well? Also, what does the performance feel like on a decent PC? The only reviews I've seen have been the console versions.

Haven't had a chance to co-op yet. My son has been distracted by school and activities. The way it is set up seems promising, but I can't say for sure yet.

On the performance, it has been very good for me. I haven't seen any noticeable slow downs or glitches. To be fair, though, I am not as aware or critical of frame rate hitches as many.


System:
3080
32GB
i9-10900K
1TB NVMe SSD

[gbasden]

Haven't had a chance to co-op yet. My son has been distracted by school and activities. The way it is set up seems promising, but I can't say for sure yet.

On the performance, it has been very good for me. I haven't seen any noticeable slow downs or glitches. To be fair, though, I am not as aware or critical of frame rate hitches as many.


System:
3080
32GB
i9-10900K
1TB NVMe SSD

If it's like the video of console play, I think even you would notice severe stuttering or sub 10fps play. I'm glad the PC performance is more solid!

[Scraper]

Anyone playing on the xBox? Are the performance issues at least only in the PC version?

By all reports the performance issue are worse on the PS5 and Xbox. As usual the PC version will depend on your hardware.

[Little Raven]

Ok Coop, break it down for me.

Like you, I am a RABID Arkham fan. I have hundreds of hours in every Arkham game. I love the predator system. I love the combo system. Hell, I even like the batmobile in Knight.

Now, to be clear, I play video games mostly to pretend that other people don't exist. So the co-op stuff is beyond meaningless to me. But I'm happy to enjoy the game play if the single player is remotely viable.

So....do I go for it?

[gbasden]

Anyone playing on the xBox? Are the performance issues at least only in the PC version?

By all reports the performance issue are worse on the PS5 and Xbox. As usual the PC version will depend on your hardware.

According to reviews, performance is horrid on console with performance locked at 30fps and dipping far below that in the large open world environments.

[coopasonic]

Ok Coop, break it down for me.

Like you, I am a RABID Arkham fan. I have hundreds of hours in every Arkham game. I love the predator system. I love the combo system. Hell, I even like the batmobile in Knight.

Now, to be clear, I play video games mostly to pretend that other people don't exist. So the co-op stuff is beyond meaningless to me. But I'm happy to enjoy the game play if the single player is remotely viable.

So....do I go for it?

Remotely viable? Absolutely.

I think the biggest challenge is that the combat system is dumbed down quite a bit. Dodge -> counter is not that far off from parry -> counter, but the switch from combo up to ultimate to get hits to fill momentum bar to open up ultimates is just less fulfilling.

I've done two big boss fights, one was really cool and the other was a boring grind.

The bat cycle is too slow, the gliders aren't much better so you are left with fast travel, which has an obnoxiously long animation.

On the plus side, I am level 25 (cap for NG is 30) and I haven't felt like I was grinding at all, but I am an open world nut that doesn't mind clearing the map each night. I complained about the repetitiveness of the generated encounters in one of my earlier posts, but now that the encounters are more difficult and there is a bigger variety of more interesting enemies, it bothers me a lot less.

In the Arkham games, if you were a completionist there was a lot of puzzle-y stuff, figuring out how to get riddler trophies and the like. There is none of that here. Collectibles are background that you will barely notice, but aren't locked away behind puzzles for the most part.

Crafting is fine. Skill trees are fine.

Story and cutscenes are fine. Nothing mind-blowing but I am not skipping them.

Broken down enough?

[stimpy]

Ok Coop, break it down for me.

Like you, I am a RABID Arkham fan. I have hundreds of hours in every Arkham game. I love the predator system. I love the combo system. Hell, I even like the batmobile in Knight.

Now, to be clear, I play video games mostly to pretend that other people don't exist. So the co-op stuff is beyond meaningless to me. But I'm happy to enjoy the game play if the single player is remotely viable.

So....do I go for it?

Remotely viable? Absolutely.

I think the biggest challenge is that the combat system is dumbed down quite a bit. Dodge -> counter is not that far off from parry -> counter, but the switch from combo up to ultimate to get hits to fill momentum bar to open up ultimates is just less fulfilling.

I've done two big boss fights, one was really cool and the other was a boring grind.

The bat cycle is too slow, the gliders aren't much better so you are left with fast travel, which has an obnoxiously long animation.

On the plus side, I am level 25 (cap for NG is 30) and I haven't felt like I was grinding at all, but I am an open world nut that doesn't mind clearing the map each night. I complained about the repetitiveness of the generated encounters in one of my earlier posts, but now that the encounters are more difficult and there is a bigger variety of more interesting enemies, it bothers me a lot less.

In the Arkham games, if you were a completionist there was a lot of puzzle-y stuff, figuring out how to get riddler trophies and the like. There is none of that here. Collectibles are background that you will barely notice, but aren't locked away behind puzzles for the most part.

Crafting is fine. Skill trees are fine.

Story and cutscenes are fine. Nothing mind-blowing but I am not skipping them.

Broken down enough?

No. Are there Bat Nipples?

[coopasonic]

There is no Batman beyond the opening cutscene and the training intro where his back is turned, so technically I would say no. I have not properly examined the dozens of available costumes for availability of armored nipples to be 100% certain, though.

[Little Raven]

Broken down enough?

Yup. WB owes you a commission for a sale.

[Blackhawk]

There is no Batman beyond

Boo!

[rittchard]

I always find it fascinating how game review word of mouth (and I guess movies as well) seem to take a life of their own. I tried to avoid reviews for this before I started but before I'd installed I'd already started hearing bad things.

Keep in mind I'm a much bigger Marvel fan than DC, and I've never been much of a big Batman fan. But as I mentioned earlier I always enjoyed Batgirl in the old TV series and I like Nightwing more or less, particularly on Titans.

In any case, I'm playing on PC with about as good a system as you could hope for, so maybe that's part of it. But I really liked what I played (admittedly not a lot of time spent but at least enough to get a first impression). I loved the opening cutscene, I thought it was a great action piece and I enjoyed the villain being someone I was vaguely familiar with from the DC CW shows.

After the opening tutorial I made it to the beginning portion of the real game. I had a minor brain disruption where I couldn't figure out how the "GPS" worked so that was a little frustrating. Totally my own fault though. But it did give me the opportunity to jump around and look at the city from above and the views were fantastic. Only annoying thing is I kept going out of play zone. But the game played uncannily like the Spiderman game I just started recently. I love that Batgirl can jump down a huge building and take no damage lol. The building to building "grappling hook" jumps, the takedowns from above, some of the combat moves, even the way she sits on a lamppost seems like it was all "inspired" by the Spiderman game. My biggest surprise is more people didn't bitch about that, but honestly I found it really enjoyable.

I can see how it might get tedious doing similar missions, but overall I thought it was pretty cool. Nothing particularly innovative but looks like a solid game. Oh and I haven't checked out the multiplayer at all, I imagine that could be a lot of fun if you had a friend to play with.

[coopasonic]

28 hours and done. Enjoyed it all the way through. Stupidly tanky enemies were a bit annoying at time, but only when I wanted to save my momentum abilities for something else which was mostly dumb.

[YellowKing]

I finished this one up last night.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. There were a few annoyances - notably an early boss fight that is way too difficult for the suggested level and a couple of annoying timing sequences.

Combat was fairly rewarding, as it was not easy and triumphing over difficult fights was very satisfying. Not as good as the Arkham series combat, but serviceable.

I think the biggest flaw in the game was that being locked into the Belfry hub/Gotham mission structure felt restrictive at times. Being not quite open world and not quite campaign based made it feel a bit lackluster in both areas. I also wasn't a fan of the open ended repeating contact missions, as I never felt it necessary to grind for gear.

Still, as a Batman fan I loved the story and running into the various characters. I played through the entire game as Batgirl, as I never felt the need to switch characters up. Overall a B- for me, and don't regret the $30.

[Smoove_B]

I just finished this last night and I agree 100% with Yellowking's commentary. I think I wanted it to be more like the Arkham games and once I stopped fighting that urge, it was better than I had given it credit for in the first few hours. Understanding the Belfry mechanics and how to level up gear was something different than what I was looking for as well, but once I dialed down the difficulty I could just enjoy the story. Combat was definitely less satisfying than any of the Arkham games (which is probably my biggest issue) but dropping the difficulty fixed any annoyances there as well.

The look of the game (especially some of the characters) was most excellent. If you're a DC fan, it's likely picking up during a sale.

[gbasden]

I'm playing multiplayer with a friend, and we are enjoying it as well. Would recommend on sale.