Gotham Knights review: forgettable action, compelling Batfamily beats

Batman is dead and his job requires four people. That’s the central conceit of Gotham KnightsWB Games Montreal has released a new action-packed third-person game called. In the opening cinematic, which drags on for what feels like an eternity, long-time villain Ra’s al Ghul uses some magic, a sword, and his general annoying demeanor to essentially badger Batman into a heroic, yet sacrificial death. To keep the heroics of Gotham going, Batman’s four protégés – Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and Robin – pick up where he left off in combatting, and investigating, the criminal underworld of Gotham.

Notably, Gotham Knights is not a follow-up to 2015’s Arkham Knight. Although there are many characters shared between these games, it is fundamentally different. It takes place in an entirely separate universe. Because it can be confusing, I feel the need to make this clear. That game ended with a dead Batman and a Gotham city in need of a new generation of saviors – that’s not this dead Batman, and these saviors are not the ones that city needed.

However, this game shares a significant amount of the game design framework with that franchise. The action game is based on one-vs. many combat encounters. You can use heavy or light attacks to improve your rhythm and punch them out. Additionally, you have the ability to charge up a meter to launch special Momentum attacks to instantly knock out an opponent or stun groups. You can pick up an Arkham game if you’ve played it. Gotham Knights, you will not feel alienated; if you’ve never played one of these before, you’re probably going to pick it up fairly quickly, anyway.

Red Hood, with his back to the camera, surveys Gotham City in Gotham Knights

What makes it different? Gotham Knights The ensemble configuration is what sets the bativerse apart. The ensemble setup allows you to choose one of four Batman inheritors instead of being the sole player. There’s Nightwing, a former Robin and circus performer named Dick Grayson, who was raised by Batman to become a vigilante after the death of his parents; Batgirl, aka Barbara Gordon, is a tech whiz who practices Batman’s outsider methods alongside her late father’s sense of justice; Tim Drake, the most recent Robin, is a smart teen who is always running his mouth and taking the sneaky detective route; and rounding out the team is Red Hood, Jason Todd, who is You can also see it here a former Robin, who was kidnapped by the Joker, killed, eventually resurrected, became a murderous vigilante, and then was eventually “woken up” and brought back to the side of good by Batman.

This may sound like too much information. Gotham Knights This backstory is not something that DC Comics expends much effort to explain. As with most DC Comics, it is easy to understand. Gotham Knights It is happy to just drop you into this endless stream of canon sentences and assume that either you’ll figure it out via exposition or you’ll break down and study a wiki along with the in-game menu-driven information on these key characters. This general feeling of comic-book-ness — that you’ll either figure it out or give up trying to — permeates the game.

All across Gotham KnightsA staggering number of canonical Gothamites appears, with some complex levels of canonicity. Are they referring to a different interpretation of the character or is this an entirely new one? Is this a clever reference to an existing character? Arkham game? How about comics or a movie? Early on, a character mentions that Harley Quinn had been off doing a “government job” that reads very clearly as a Suicide Squad reference. How can I find out more? It is important. The DC Universe’s tendrils are wrapped around everything and nothing here in a way that is much more ambivalent than the clear “pocket canon” of the Arkham franchise.

Robin does a sidekick, while propped up by his bo staff, after having used a teleportation ability in Gotham Knights

These connections and references have little to no impact on the quality of the potatoes and meats. Gotham Knights experience, which centers on a few key activities: You patrol the city to fight crime, you learn about these four heroes and how they are living after Batman’s death, and you do more grandiose linear missions where you hunt down key villains like Harley Quinn, Clayface, and the mysterious Court of Owls.

These activities all blend beautifully together. For example, Mr. Freeze’s “case file” (or questline) begins with a linear mission centered on some thefts at STAR Labs. Red Hood, my character for that mission was able to enter the lab and realized that the Regulators had been responsible. This was a gang made up of hackers and techno-criminals. He cleared a few rooms of them, and then realized that the theft was centered on some cryo-whatever supplies, and damn it don’t you know that Mr. That stuff is what Freeze is about.

Then, of course, Freeze got away, and the only way to continue the open case was to roam the open world map, find Regulators committing crimes, and interrogate them to find Freeze’s next location. My hero was faced with new challenges, including big kidnappings and heists. This is the wax and wane of the game, and it flows in a way that I personally find more engaging than the similar structures that have appeared in games like 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man. Here, it feels like real Batman stuff — like you’re hitting the streets and coming back with hard data about the supervillains piloting ice mechs in a bid to control the weather.

What is less appealing to me is what most people are probably most interested in: the moment-to-moment combat, which dominates at least 75% of the game’s playtime.

Nightwing and Red Hood square off with two thugs in a dimly lit, art deco style hall in Gotham Knights

This is a typical mix of the genre. Heroes fight bad guys and some villains need to be defeated by heroes in certain ways. The heroes are equipped with a variety of skills that can help them deal with these bad guys. You might punch a random Mob member, but Talons is a special, pseudo-zombified entity that must be struck with a ranged attack to knock them down. Combat relies on a combination of special Momentum abilities with their own charge bars and memorizing the counters of all these opponents. Momentum attacks aim to end things quickly for the most part. By the end of the game, I was no longer deploying Batgirl’s pummeling blow attack tactically. I instead charged the bar, spamming as much as I can, because it effectively killed the enemies (although it did so boringly), and let me get on with the plot.

A series of unexciting but expected combat granularities are added to this. You can earn ability points at certain levels, which you can use to improve your attacks and maneuvers. Some of these matter very little, like gaining more crit damage, and others matter a whole hell of a lot, like Batgirl’s ability to remotely disable some electronic devices. Each collectable suit and weapon has its own stats, with mod chips that enable them to be upgraded. This makes the numbers even more impressive.

This was the only thing I noticed as I played the game at medium difficulty. The elemental status mechanic allows you to create status effects that deal additional damage that are similar to the ones in this game. The Division games — but this did not seem to make or break any fights across the entire experience. These may be of greater importance on the toughest difficulty. They could also become more relevant for Heroic Assault which will launch later this year.

Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, stands facing the camera, with the Belfry home base in the background in Gotham Knights

This is something that should be noted. Gotham Knights It is possible to play the entire game in online coop. However, the time constraints of the review made it impossible for me to do so. Some boss fights felt tuned explicitly for this kind of co-op experience, and most of them followed a pattern of “do a thing, do a different thing that’s harder, do both of those things at the same time” that required intense time and space management from a solo player. However, most fights I saw were engaging and enjoyable, even though they eventually became a bit boring because of their length. I can imagine those fights would feel tighter if there was a co-op partner.

Playing was the majority of my time. Gotham Knights was spent nodding my head and thinking “OK, yeah, cool.” It’s that kind of game. There are some brilliant moments, like Harley Quinn’s turn as an evil wellness guru, that I think are well executed and plotted. But the majority of the game involves just moving around the globe and engaging in fights. Sometimes, however, there is excellent comic-book storytelling that shows four characters trying to restore the world to their deceased Batdad. It was a pleasure to fight my way to the next story point, about Red Hood or Batgirl. Anyone looking for basic Batfamily action can feel the same.

But Gotham Knights is lacking some of the interpretive moves that made both Rocksteady’s Arkham games and WB Games Montreal’s own Arkham Origins So unique, and so captivating. It’s yet another encounter on the same rain-soaked streets.

Gotham Knights The game will be available on October 21 for the PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. A pre-release code was provided by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The game was played on PS5 for review. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. They do not affect editorial content. However, Vox Media might earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.