Trying to drive around tight city corners so you can get close enough to launch yourself out of the Batmobile, tackle Firefly and beat the crap out of him feels absolutely awesome. Those missions have players driving up to a burning building and then chasing the high-tech arsonist as he tries to escape. The Firefly chases at least feel more true to Batman's spirit. Is Rocksteady attempting to ape the goofy Batman of the '50s comics? If that's the case, then why is everything all neon counterpointed with shadows and grit? Why have a tank fight at all? The tag-team fights add a welcome spin on the series' brawling. Which is more or less precisely what's happened here: The Riddler has you try to beat a course time while you drive up walls and make tricky jumps underground.Īre these Batmobile-specific diversions entertaining? Sure! But when you're riding the elevator back up from the Riddler's subterranean fun times, it's hard not to wonder what the hell any of that has to do with being Batman. The Riddler races, meanwhile, feel like Mario Kart built by an insane person and set in a city sewer system. The whole thing feels more like a version of Battlezone, the 1980 arcade game, if it were made by Daft Punk. He then has to defend that secured bomb from neon red-tinged robot tanks while the virus uploads. In the first mission, the Arkham Knight (as the game's villain is called) has sprinkled bombs throughout the city that Batman must diffuse by attaching a wire to them (with the Batmobile) and uploading a virus. To Rocksteady's credit, all three were pretty entertaining. I got to indulge in three Batmobile-centric mission types in the demo: bomb disposal, Riddler racing (seriously) and a chase sequence where I tried to catch the jetpack-rocking villain Firefly. How does the Riddler afford all these underground racetracks? Unfortunately, that decision to constrain Batman to the streets also seems to have opened the door to some truly Schumacherian missions (sadly devoid of sexual innuendo) for Batman to complete while joyriding. Where most of Arkham City had players using grappling hooks to swing around and glide through the city's rooftops, Arkham Knight keeps players grounded in the Batmobile. The Batmobile, which has both destructive and acrobatic panache, lends a perspective absent from the previous games. This is his city and while it should change - especially after the middle of town was converted into a freaky prison colony in the last outing - it shouldn't be wildly different every time. That familiarity isn't a bad thing, though, as continuity between Batman's video game adventures should enhance the fantasy that you actually are the Caped Crusader. In fact, if Gotham seems overwhelmingly familiar when you start playing, that's because the city, though significantly bigger, does indeed borrow architecture from the last game. Batman's dank, wet world is gloriously represented even if it feels like you've been on these streets before. The streets, thugs and heroes of Arkham Knight glisten with detail and reflected light. The face-lift that open world's received on the new PlayStation 4 hardware is truly impressive. Commissioner James Gordon remains remarkably understanding of his peers.įor its new entry in the series, Arkham Knight, developer Rocksteady chose to double down on the open-world exploration of predecessor Arkham City, giving players an expanded metropolis and a souped-up Bat-vehicle to explore it with. But for a fan of Batman: Arkham Asylum like myself, however, this sample of Arkham Knight was disconcerting. If you were a fan of that Joel Schumacher-directed 1997 nipple fest or the open-world distractions of the 2011 video game Arkham City, then that gameplay might sound pretty awesome. And if any of the above sounds a whole hell of a lot like the camp film Batman & Robin, well, that's because it's eerily similar. This is a description of the things I did in a demo of Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Knight, due out this June on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Onscreen, a computer-animated Alfred appears and gets snippy with master Bruce. On the streets of Gotham, giant, bulbous tanks strafe around each other shooting at the speeding Bat-vehicle as it tries to escape. Neon green and red lights flash as Batman maneuvers the Batmobile through loop de loops in a gaudy underground racetrack.

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