Gotham Knights the next Batman? - Oh Indeed

[DeathKnight]

The dev's excuse for locked 30fps and no performance mode on consoles is the "fully untethered co-op experience in our highly detailed open-world". They claim it's not as straightforward as lowering the resolution and getting a higher FPS.

Doesn't make sense unless they're doing a lot of ****ery behind the scenes like linking different aspects of the game and engine to framerate for some strange reason. I can't see this game pushing the console hardware to the point where the framerate can't be doubled by reducing rendering resolution or other details. Sounds like a cop out.

[Mangler]

Did they drop co-op from the pc version?

If they didn't, their explanation does not make any sense.

[Dungeoncrawler]

Does the combat still play like batgirl's ass without 4k ultrawide and raytracing?

[Mangler]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTIBwYgvhZY

[yt]RTIBwYgvhZY[/yt]

Not batman looks like it could be a game that looks pretty dope with HDR enabled.

[metroidfox]

Gamespot played an early build of this, and the theme of their video was: "I'm not as explicitly worried about this as I used to be, but it's also not very fun."


I think we could see this coming from a mile away, but this is going to be a game that wouldn't need to exist if not for the corporate machine.

[Megaman]

.

Recommended
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K or Ryzen 5 5600X
RAM: 16 GB
GPU: GeForce RTX 2070 or Radeon RX 5700 XT
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 45 GB available space
Additional Notes: 60fps at 1080p, High Settings

[nutcrackr]

How many polygons in Batgirls' ass?

[Dungeoncrawler]

How many polygons in Batgirls' ass?

Is that Barbara Gordon, or Tim Drake?

[Seyiji]

Is that Barbara Gordon, or Tim Drake?

Its Tim Barbara aka Gordon Drake you know the one that had the booty implant after getting blapped in the rear skelemen bones

[DeathKnight]

5/10 from IGN: https://www.ign.com/articles/gotham-knights-review

[Megaman]

That’s a shame.

[Seyiji]

[yt]hTSW-BkulsI[/yt]

[Mangler]

Literally no one could see those low review scores coming, clearly all sites got paid off by marvel™.


GaaS claims another victim.

[Mangler]

It does look like it could be an "OK" game to play/buy on a deep sale once they remove some of the grind though.

[Jet Black]

Review from Jeff Gerstmann's patreon:

Gotham Knights Trip Report
I’ve been playing Gotham Knights in short bursts on the PlayStation 5 for the past week or so. I haven’t finished the game, and I don’t think I’m going to, so here’s what I’ve seen so far as a sort of “Trip Report” from my first… I don’t know, 7-10 hours with the game? I kinda jammed this out on my phone this morning so I’m going to guess that auto-correct created a few typos along the way. I’ll stream some of the PS5 and PC versions when we reconvene on Friday morning.

Have you heard the news? Batman is dead! Yes, after a long, drawn-out introductory cutscene, Bruce Wayne bites it in an attempt to stop Ra’s al Ghul. The Batcave is destroyed in the process, leaving a team of remaining heroes to literally pick up the pieces. Gotham Knights deals with the aftermath of that battle as you attempt to piece together what Batman was looking for on his last case while also attempting to contain a Gotham City that’s on the verge of boiling over. The cops hate you, the criminals ain’t scared of you, and hey, who the hell are you, anyway?

You get four character choices: Red Hood, Robin, Nightwing, and Batgirl. You can switch between them more or less whenever you like with little penalty, as characters will all level up in unison. Also, the differences between the characters feel minor and mostly stat-based from my time with it so far. The combat system is largely identical between characters so everyone has light-and-heavy ranged and melee attacks. Everyone can dodge, everyone can “aim down sights” for precision ranged attacks, and so on.

The game tries to differentiate the four characters with language like “sharpshooter” for Red Hood and implies that Batgirl is good against single targets… which doesn’t actually sound great considering most of the time you’re brawling with like seven dudes at once. In practice, there are things on the skill tree that do differentiate players, and this seems like something that might matter more in co-op games, which, pre-release, I wasn’t really able to see. While reading up on it just now I discovered that it’s two-player co-op and not four-player co-op, which just made me shake my head and say “whaaaaat?” I figured the way the game’s spaces felt big, open, and empty was because all four of the characters would be in action simultaneously. Apparently not!

Playing alone, Robin seems like the right choice, as he has stuff on the skill tree that makes stealth easier. Like “enemies take 20% longer to notice you” easier. Since some parts of the game require stealth, this is where I settled after initially spending time with Red Hood, who is very gruff and has guns. The differences between characters feel very minimal to me, but perhaps they’ve got endgame traits that matter more or something.

By day you’re in the Belfry, a home base where you can talk to the other characters about how much you miss Batman or feel lost without him or whatever. There’s one scene with Alfred trying to finish his last game of chess with Batman by guessing what Bruce would do that comes off as especially corny. The Belfry also houses a Spy Hunter arcade cabinet, allowing you to play a weirdly janky port of the arcade game whenever you like. At any point you can leave to start patrol duty for the night.

Once on the streets you’ll see map icons for random crimes, premeditated crimes, story missions, and so on. The world feels weirdly empty and extremely large. You’ll primarily get from place to place by either riding the batcycle or using your grappling line, which lets you connect and zip to a point ahead of you. While reeling in you can hit the jump button to leap forward and, hopefully, find something else to grapple on. Sometimes there just… isn’t. I ran into plenty situations where I zipped ahead and, with nothing ahead of me to zip to next, the game just automatically attached me to a tall building off to the side, stopping all my momentum and wasting a ton of time. It just doesn’t feel like a great traversal system. The bike is more straightforward but, on PS5 at least, has zero sense of speed and is an absolute bore to drive. I’m curious to see the game running at higher frame rates on PC to see if that changes anything. Over time you will gain the ability to unlock fast travel points but this requires you to go there first and scan drones, a task best done while on the way to go do something else, ideally while muttering “well at least I’ll never have to drive all the way out here ever again” to yourself.

The combat feels like a simplified take on the Arkham style. It’s easy to bop around between a group of targets, occasionally tapping the dodge button when one of them finally winds up an attack. You’ll find a lot of shooters and Molotov throwers in big groups, giving you another reason to dodge. Enemies with shields require you to open them up with a hard melee attack, done by holding down the melee button. But this rhythm of attack, dodge, attack some more should feel pretty familiar to you by now. As you take damage you can push right on the D pad to use a medkit for instant recovery, but you have a limited number of kits before you’ll have to return to the Belfry to restock and move the story forward.

You can end your night by returning to the Belfry at any point. If you’ve already completed the main missions, this is what allows the story to progress, opening up new main missions on the map the next time you patrol and replacing all the random crimes with more of the exact same random crimes but in new locations.

Killing enemies gets you XP as well as crafting materials, which come in like ten or so different types and lead to situations where, upon completing a wave of enemies, you just see that you received 1,700 or whatever random icon that just was. Dying causes you to lose a percentage of your crafting materials. Each character has three slots to equip—suit, melee weapon, and ranged weapon. You’ll collect or craft these items and they’ll have different elemental affinities in some cases, as well as basic stats and bonuses like crit chance. Some pieces have slots on them, allowing you to install modchips that confer further numbers upon your already existing numbers. You’ll get different colors for some of your costumes and some suits will also have different hood or arm choices, if you want to do some light visual configuration. You can also just swap to a default look, if that’s more your speed. Gotham Knights only barely feels like a loot game at the onset. All the pieces are there, but none of the items I’ve acquired feel like they actually make a difference beyond making sure that a basic “power” number keeps going up.

Visually, I think there are some good skyline shots and seeing Gotham City from a distance, from above can look pretty cool, at times. Closer to the ground it loses that and just feels like generic wet roads with generic crimes happening on top of them. The frame rate on PS5 mostly sticks around 30, though it has its occasional dips. The game seems to use the PS5 “resume activity” function, but it doesn’t appear to get you in-game much faster as you still have to sit through all the same copyright notices and logo builds regardless of how you start the game. As of this writing I also have to sit through a timed message about flashing lights each time the game starts up, which seems like someone forgot to only force on first boot or something.

I like the idea of trying to retrace Bruce Wayne’s final investigation and figuring out who lies at the heart of a deep conspiracy. And the way a lot of the classic Batman characters react when, say, Robin shows up to a meeting instead of Batman, allows for some interesting moments and confrontations. If anything about Gotham Knights was going to keep me playing Gotham Knights, it’d be this. But these fleeting moments are wrapped around a loot game with boring loot, a Batman game with a weak take on Batman combat, and a Gotham City with nothing going on.

Also, if you saw it back when some previews ran, there’s a scene where, inexplicably, a really shitty cover of Livin’ La Vida Loca plays as you fight your way out of a prison? While it’s probably there in an attempt to add a little more Harley Quinn-like RaNdOmNess to the proceedings, it just feels out of place, given the rest of the game’s general tone. Also also! The way people keep talking about Batman being dead and how heavily they lay that on makes me suspect that they’ll find a way to resurrect him by the end of the game. I don’t know if I have the will or true desire to see this one all the way through, so that’s just a guess.

I’m left a little torn on this one, as I do want to see how it runs on PC, but I’m not enjoying it enough to actually start over and play through all the early game stuff again just to see it through. But also the sluggish movement and frame rate stuff of the PS5 version makes playing it there feel like a real drag. Either way I don’t think what I’ve seen of this one so far adds up to a recommendation beyond “I don’t think this is something you’d want to spend $70 on.”

[clerick]

I really wanted another arkham game, figured maybe we'd get batman beyond. Instead we got this, such a bummer.

[nutcrackr]

69 on ps5 is a big ouch. Worse than crappy Scorn at 71. Worse than Arkham Origins at ~76 (which imo wasn't that bad tho)

Am not really surprised though, as it looked bad. Also wtf, this is 2 player co-op with four characters lol?

Imo it was a HUGE missed opportunity not to just do a very simple batman game with batgirl investigating batman's death and doing it solo with a lot more investigation work, minimal combat, exploration, more gadgets, and just keep it simple.

[logical]

I really wanted another arkham game, figured maybe we'd get batman beyond. Instead we got this, such a bummer.

Batman Beyond would have been amazing. Beyond never seems to get any love. Except for the one skin in one batman game:

[nutcrackr]

[yt]Z6Vno8r4cN8[/yt]

Runs like **** and looks worse than arkham knight lol. Was stupid of them to target 2160p

[Dungeoncrawler]

So they fight crime at night and hang around the crib all day?

[theshadowcult]

Rumour is it was a live service game like the marvel one, when it tanked they switched to single player, only they didnt take out the live service crap. So thats where all the meaningless grind comes from, as well as all the currencies and collection items mechanics. They should have just left the cash shop in.

[Dungeoncrawler]

Well I watched the Batman battle/prologue and it didn't look that bad *shrugs*. I thought that part was displayed fairly well.

[Sundance Kid V2]

Well I watched the Batman battle/prologue and it didn't look that bad *shrugs*. I thought that part was displayed fairly well.

Same. I see the game get a lot of flack.. but watching the videos, it looks like batman brawler games. It actually looks like fun ...

Then people compare it with Avengers (lol) because of the stats thing... but Avengers (gameplay) looked like CRAP from the first video...

[theshadowcult]

Same. I see the game get a lot of flack.. but watching the videos, it looks like batman brawler games. It actually looks like fun ...

Then people compare it with Avengers (lol) because of the stats thing... but Avengers (gameplay) looked like CRAP from the first video...

the thing im seeing brought up isnt that the gameplay isnt fun, but rather it does become unfun very quickly.

for example, shill up says it takes about 2 hours to unlock world traversal for each character. thats 8 hours not even including any campaign gameplay. also that the traversal is a must because actually traveling around the game without it it significantly ****.

ive seen others say different grind boredom in other areas.

[koralis]

the thing im seeing brought up isnt that the gameplay isnt fun, but rather it does become unfun very quickly.
...
ive seen others say different grind boredom in other areas.

So, in theory they can fix it by making it less grindy. Can't fix bad, but that seems doable just by lowering the threshholds to be below people's boredom level.

[clerick]

Batman Beyond would have been amazing. Beyond never seems to get any love. Except for the one skin in one batman game:

It's such an underused property. Really wished they utilized it...

[Sundance Kid V2]

the thing im seeing brought up isnt that the gameplay isnt fun, but rather it does become unfun very quickly.

for example, shill up says it takes about 2 hours to unlock world traversal for each character. thats 8 hours not even including any campaign gameplay. also that the traversal is a must because actually traveling around the game without it it significantly ****.

ive seen others say different grind boredom in other areas.

Yea.. i heard that. But something they can fix. Maybe people like traveling in the game like they want to...

I don't know... I'm not saying its the best game.. but not as crap as they make out.

[theshadowcult]

I cant remember a single major game that reduced the grind after launch. In fact there are at least 2 that increased it. Also, its warner bros, they absolutely are not going to make the game better for the players.

[Sundance Kid V2]

Watching more reviews.. some youtubers (whatculture) likes the game.

Will wait for more reviews, and people playing the game.

[Dungeoncrawler]

If the price would have been something like $40, I would have purchased it day-one. Unfortunately its not, so I'll wait for a lower price or until one of my viewers gifts it to me

[Mangler]

Peeps are saying that the campaign is COD-ish in length if you only do the MQ.

[theshadowcult]

Watching more reviews.. some youtubers (whatculture) likes the game.

Will wait for more reviews, and people playing the game.

I watched some of the stuff they did. They arent actually saying anything different to anyone else, they are just being more positive about it. However they are going into the story stuff a bit more, which as far as i can see has been positive accross the board from the reviews i looked at.

They also talk alot about how they make the game fun for themselves which is irrelevant to the discussion of the game anyway. literally any game can be fun when you make your own fun.

[Megaman]

Steam reviews are mixed.

[Sundance Kid V2]

I watched some of the stuff they did. They arent actually saying anything different to anyone else, they are just being more positive about it. However they are going into the story stuff a bit more, which as far as i can see has been positive accross the board from the reviews i looked at.

They also talk alot about how they make the game fun for themselves which is irrelevant to the discussion of the game anyway. literally any game can be fun when you make your own fun.

Yea... true. I loved the Batman games. Hoped this would be good!

[theshadowcult]

Yea... true. I loved the Batman games. Hoped this would be good!

So did i. Especially as its co-op. No idea why its only 2 player cop and not 4, seems weird, but its a still a co-op "batman" game.

[Sundance Kid V2]

Ok.. this game is bad.

Denuvo Removed

So sales is so bad... they removed the DRM (because they have to pay licenses).

Ouch.

[nutcrackr]

steam user score is 70%, guess not everybody hates it?

[Megaman]

Patch

General:
Invincible enemies playing a "meditating" animation will no longer appear in crimes.
Various UI issue fixes.
Fixed issues caused by graphical settings not being applied properly.
Various localization fixes.
Fixed various Keyboard/Mouse specific input issues.
Co-op:
Fixed an issue that was preventing being able to join friends through invites.
Stability:
Various crash fixes throughout the title, most notably during the S.T.A.R. Labs "free the scientists" fight and the Harley Quinn Hospital Boss Fight.
Fixed an AMD specific crash related to shadows.
Known Issues:
There may be some compatibility issues with Nvidia Ansel that we are still investigating for this patch

[SirBaron]

"make it look better than Arkham Knight"

"fixed performance issues with streaming assets in overworld"

Missing from those patch notes.

[Sundance Kid V2]

Looks like it was mistake... DRM is back lol!!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/yer2dh/denuvo_added_back_to_gotham_knights_removal/