The first thing the developers of Gotham Knights want you to know is that it is not an Arkham game. The problem is, they made an open-world stealth/brawler set in Gotham City starring Bat-adjacent characters fighting members of the Bat Rogue’s Gallery. When you do that, you’re going to get comparisons to the Arkham games. Aside from not being in the same continuity, the developers didn’t want to be placed side by side with such an iconic series because there were a number of ways they didn’t measure up. In all fairness, one can fail to meet a high bar and still make a decent product. So lets give them a fair shake.
So, if this is not in the Arkham series, what’s the premise?
Well, in the ten minute long opening cutscene, we get a protracted fight between Ra’s Al Ghul and Batman in the Batcave which results in both of them dead and the cave destroyed. Now this isn’t an ambiguous “are they or aren’t they” kinda ‘dead’, the cutscene ends with the main characters finding the bodies and then wraps up with the funeral for Bruce Wayne. So, we finally get handed the tutorial mission, and the objective is to find Kirk Langstrom (Manbat). Only one problem, as we arrive on scene, the coroner is wheeling him away too. After the tutorial you eventually get to free roam the city. There you find a memorial to Commissioner Gordon. Wait a minute… nah, that can’t be a pattern.
The gameplay loop is set up such that each night of patrol there are a certain number of ‘premeditated crimes’ as well as random criminal activity littered around the map. These go away if not resolved in that night, under the presumption that the criminals succeeded without your intervention. The main plot and side mission objectives stick around night to night. When you return to the home base in the ‘Belfry’ (The Clocktower), the night ends.
In terms of playable characters there are three Robins (Grayson, Todd, and Drake) and a Batgirl (Gordon). What, no Stephanie Brown? She was both a Robin and a Batgirl… but then they’d have to address the fact that she was Drake’s girlfriend and maybe pay someone additional royalties. Anyway, the four do play slightly differently, with the differences becoming greater as you level up and unlock more abilities. Ironically, the one with the largest character model (Jason Todd) has the shortest melee reach because his melee weapon of choice is a pair of handguns. There is one scene later on where they are tuning the propellant and projectile composition so that he doesn’t just perforate the people he shoots, thus explaining why twin pistols do tickle damage to enemies. At the other end of the spectrum, Drake’s staff gives him the longest melee reach of the lot, so I ended up defaulting to him for most of the game with specific exceptions. Hence why all of the screenshots show the one character still using the Robin identity.
It is raining in this scene
The game leans heavily into playing dress up with multiple outfits for all of the playable characters and a system for customizing the coloration. You can also apply some preset appearances to override whichever one you have equipped in case you wanted the stats but disliked the appearance. A lot of these costumes have bright color schemes and even when they’re darker tones, tend towards a higher saturation. It is as far as you can get from the Arkham aesthetic as you can get without even stretching canonicity of appearance. I do have to give credit to the art team for their character models and animation. They did a fantastic job, and in cutscenes, the characters look more like actual people than in the Arkham games. For an accurate comparison I did play through the entire Arkham series when I got fed up to provide a fair comparison. I several cases, I got Deus Ex Deja Vu, that is my mind went to memories of dialog scenes from the original Deus Ex when watching a poorly lip-synced, very stiff Batman talking to someone. It did get better, but it did highlight where Gotham Knights deserved some credit.
Fight Scenes
Where they earned demerits is in the writing, but I’ll come back to that. The combat is… passable. I play on keyboard and mouse, and the default control configuration shows the hallmarks of a shitty console port. One of my key gripes is that ranged attack and stealth takedown are on the same key, with the context deciding which happens. I went to look, and there was no option to bind them to separate keys, so if you mistime your stealth takedown by so much as a pixel, instead of just failing, you order a very attention-getting ranged attack. In the gallery of combat screenshots (sorry about the lighting, the setting tends to be very dark) you’ll note in the lower right an array of seven abilities bound to the keys 1, 2, 3, and 4. A quick tap triggers the bottom row, while holding the key triggers the upper. Since movement is on W, A, S, and D, this leaves them in reach, but tends to cause me to stop moving while I trigger the ability. So I never use them and opt to rely on mobility instead. There are even more depths to the combat system that I simply never engaged in – because the control schema of a keyboard made it awkward to impossible to execute deliberately.
At the intersection of combat mechanics and character animation we came to one of the first problems. The context-based animations don’t always work. In particular, getting off the roof of a truck in combat to engage the goons has more than once failed, resulting in the character dancing in place on the roof – while getting shot at. I did manage to dislodge the character eventually each time it happened, but the delay allowed the goons to gather into a large mob, making the brawl a bit more troublesome than it otherwise would have been. The second intersection of combat and character animations rendered Grayson so annoying to use that I basically left him in the tower all game. You see, in order to help the four characters who all had a basic melee attack, a heavy melee attack, and a ranged attack feel different, each was given bespoke combat animations that reflected their style. This is before we got into the special moves on keys 1-4. As the last of the Flying Graysons, poor Nightwing was given a very acrobatic and showy move set. The problem is, you couldn’t interrupt the acrobatics to take a new action, and he would often take his next move against a seemingly random enemy, often on off-screen. Plus some of his attacks simply didn’t execute if you were under a low ceiling such as any indoor area or under an overpass. Being harder to control, I simply didn’t bother and stuck with the others.
If you were paying attention you might be going “But you said you mostly used Robin”. Mostly. You see, in addition to the main plot (a war between the League of Shadows and the Court of Owls), there are a couple of side plots involving several supervillains from the classic Rogue’s Gallery. You can play each segment of these side plots with whichever character you want, but what irked me was the dialog always acting as if the currently active character was the one who did everything in that plot up to that point, even when you changed. So I decided I would play through the side plots with a particular character dedicated to each. Jason Todd got to chase Mr Freeze, Barbara Gordon went after Clayface, Tim Drake dealt with Harley Quinn, and Dick Grayson got… nothing. There were only three side plots. Aside from those three, the only classic member of the Gotham villain’s club was the Penguin, and only because Grand-ma-ma Cobblepot was a member of the Court of Owls. You never fight Oswald, though you do break into his office three or four times.
Stealth Mission
That leads to the next big issue with the game design – the repetition. There are only so many mission types for the premeditated crimes, and only so many locations where they might spawn. So you get very familiar with these arenas and the approaches, and it gets very samey as the game wears on. If you think you can just start skipping them, well, you need the loot and experience to keep your gear and character level up to par with the story missions. So get grinding those repetitive patrols.
By contrast, the hand-crafted story missions are fairly well done, but most are linear with only a few opportunities to pick your approach. You are required to be stealthy for that part and fight in this arena, and anything off the beat path is typically a short run to a secret. Fortunately, most of this linearity is only visible in a few spots, or in retrospect. The environmental design usually feels like it could really occupy the space it’s supposed to be in – except the Court of Owls’ underground bases. I kept going “How is this area not flooded? Gotham is a string of islands. The rock can’t be that impermeable”. But that’s neither here nor there. There was no room on the overworld map for these huge set piece dungeons to be secret, so they had to be buried. The Court set pieces didn’t tend to end with a boss fight, but did usually contain instakill deathtraps. Most of the boss fights came during the side missions. The boss fights were another major letdown. With a handful of notable exceptions, I defeated the bosses but running in a circle around them, waiting until they had committed to an animation that couldn’t rapidly rotate towards my current location, firing off a few ranged attacks and resuming running around them in circles. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. The exceptions were A: whenever they summoned a goon swarm into the arena, B: when the Clayface fight became a motorcycle chase, and C: the first Freeze fight where the weather machine provided indestructible cover, and he couldn’t figure out the tactic of just walking around it.
Yeah, the boss fights in this game were pretty subpar.
The final issue I ran into was the writing. It was inconsistent to the point of being obvious where the different writers/teams worked. The main story writers managed to remain the most politically neutral, the dialog writers less so, and those filling in the text for the emails couldn’t seem to help themselves. Emails? Yes, on the batcomputer interface there is an email tab. Some of the emails are plot relevant, but there is a bunch of fluff, including communications from various members of the various iterations of the Titans as well as the Justice League. So there was familiarity with the comic book canon. But some of them are just so mischaracterized that it hurts. Take for example the email in this screenshot:
They actually left this in.
That is the kind of message a company puts out in response to a cancel mob Rhee-ing at them online, and it’s directly addressed to one of the main characters. That means there is a message in little Timmy’s outbox somewhere Rhee-ing at this movie website about an article talking about movies starring a guy who later went on to become a tragic mass of animate clay. You don’t have to cancel Clayface, everyone knows what he did. But the writers made our protagonists into terrible twitter people. It’s most prevalent in the emails, so you can ignore it, but it does creep into the edges of the dialog, and some parts of the set design for the Belfry.
Now, if the game were great, I could look past that. But it’s not great. It’s mediocre. I actually abandoned it after they killed off Jacob Kane (Bruce Wayne’s maternal uncle. I hadn’t heard of him before the game either, but it looks like he was created for the Batwoman comics). Plot-wise the game was already overstaying its welcome, and I couldn’t help but notice that the named characters who were outright killed so far – Ra’s Al Ghul, Bruce Wayne, Kirk Langstrom, James Gordon, Jacob Kane – were all from an oddly narrow demographic. I think both Harveys (Dent and Bullock) are in hiding to avoid these writers. And for those of you familiar enough to point out that being dead is typically an inconvenience for Ra’s, well, they pushed his body into a crematorium oven in Mission Two. So, yeah.
You’ve stretched my suspension of disbelief in your neutrality, writers.
Still, if it’s on sale, and you’re not expecting much, it’s playable.
“You start calling me ‘Robin’, and I’m outta here” – Max Gibson
“Okay, Alfred.” – Terry
I haven’t played video games since about 2001. I was hooked on Diablo, then joined the SCA and started hitting people with sticks. Video games lost all their appeal.
Kinky!
My oldest sister started out as a
TrekkieTrekker, went gaga over Star Wars, may have dabbled some in Tolkein groups, then finally ended up, with her hubby, deeply immersed in SCA to the point where events take up most of their weekends, and they attend Pennsic just about every year. I think my sister’s personal motto is “anytime but the present.”My dad was a manly man who was a truck driver, watched football, grilled and wore cowboy boots. It wasn’t until I got older that realized he was also a nerd because he also took us to all those Star Trek conventions.
“The 10 minute opening”
I would already pass. I want to get started, punch some peeps and tea bag unconscious bad guys. Too much back story!
Back to playing “Roof Pooper’ for the Atari 7800.
Yeah, 10 minutes is a tad long.
Anyone ever play Burger Time? Good game.
Pitfall FTW
“North. North. Climb tree. Get egg.”
“You cannot afford the egg.”
Zork 2023.
“You have no egg.”
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
I preferred Elevator Action when it came to shitty 80’s arcade games.
Satan’s Hollow and Crazy Climber were my coin op jams. And Red Baron if I could find it.
Go for it!
Nice! That was a good one. Galaga, Spy Hunter, Super Sprint, Tron…
Galaga FTW. Tempest, Zaxxon, Gyruss, Sinistar.
I AM SINISTAR!
RAAAAAAGH!
I HUNGER!
Don’t forget Xevious, a poor man’s Galaga but a decent game none-the-less, oh and 1942 and 1943: the battle of Midway.
Yeah I liked Xevious too.
I played the shit out of 1942 but it was on a Commodore 64.
I played a lot of 42/43 at the arcade.
#metoo
Castlevania!!
Ironically given the comment I just made below, Battle Zone.
I recently went to a retro arcade for a kids party. They had Burger Time but didn’t have any of my favorites. Still, the unlimited play meant I played games I normally didn’t.
There’s an updated Rampage out there.
Rampage was teh cool
Ah yes, grabbing people from their apartments and eating them. Good times.
Watch out for the toaster!
I don’t remember any Cylons in the game.
I’ve played it a few times at Dave and Buster’s with my nephew.
Wow! It’s almost too fast for me. I will definitely play it when I see it though.
I’ve noticed this in first person games to, where you can’t even see your character. It’s odd.
I played and finished all the Arkham games, except Arkham Knight. When that one forced me to do too many tank missions I lost interest. I want to pretend I’m Batman, not a tank driver? pilot?
I don’t get the dress-up thing that plagues so many games. I completely ignore it. I have never given a flying fuck what my character is wearing.
If you can design your own clothes it can be fun. Giant chicken suit, or sequin jock strap. Both good choices.
I liked when Fez played with this.
Early in the game the character gets a cute little two-pixel fez and the drama when it happens is off the charts. And it has no bearing on the rest of the game whatsoever.
I usually cycle through until I find something I like to look at and then just leave it there. I’ll mod a game so new armor is invisible or looks the same so I don’t have to keep changing to get better armor.
I only care if the clothes provide stat changes otherwise I only care if I find the outfit ridiculously amusing. It’s crazy that people pay money for cosmetic skins.
I play on keyboard and mouse, and the default control configuration shows the hallmarks of a shitty console port.
Have you tried getting a Xbox controller? I’ve used one for first-person games on my PC.
I have one. I hate using it.
While it’s not the reason I hate using it, controllers also make my hands hurt. My main problem is the awkward positioning of the controls.
The worst part is that X-A and Y-B are swapped between Switch and XBox, meaning muscle memory from one will screw up the other.
Let me introduce you to the wonderful mixed up world of console emulators.
“Wait! Is that R2? What do they’ mean, press triangle??!!?”
I’ve never had a Playstation so I always scratch my head when I see references to “triangle” or “circle” or whatnot. Like, wut?
I had to look it up for Sony PS1 Doom codes. Even worse, the R1/2 and L1/2 buttons were swapped. Took a while to figure it all out.
Have you looked into controller gloves?
+1 The Wizard
beat me to it (by about 8 hours)
I always use a controller, because that is what I grew up using. I never had a PC good enough to play graphic games until I was in my 20s, so all my playing had all been done on consoles with controllers.
It depends on the game but if controller and keyboard are roughly equivalent I always prefer controller.
Learn for our new WEF inspired future!
https://papers-please.en.softonic.com/
Oh thank god, normal people talk.
In other words, I am calling all of you NERDS!
Why, thank you.
A series for Glibs that like both video games and firearms.
Although, just watching this episode now I see many faults in this episode that other episodes didn’t have.
APB, driving around as a cop harassing citizens, collecting donuts and beating suspects until they confess. What more could you ask for?
Melvin Purvis didn’t kill himself.
Just made a big ol batch o home made barbeque sauce. Tonight I try cooking my chicken tenders coated with pork rinds. Mmmm, pig chicken.
Related
https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200312/df20031210.jpg
You gotta reach for the stars lest you find yourself grasping at straws – Confucius, probably
Ah, yes, after he split from the Lu Club 7 and began his solo career.
Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
Here?
That is not a flattering screen shot of Guy Fieri.
OMFG! Fucking heavenly! If I knew buisnus shit, I’d be rich!
I don’t know from video games OR comic books (Tres Cool has already attested to the fact that I’m a nerd in my own way,) but I assume the makers of this game still have to license the premise somehow from DC even if they don’t use Batman himself. Is the point of using only “Bat-adjacent” characters to get by more cheaply? Or is it because someone else has exclusive rights to use Batman in their games?
Some people are Batman, some people are Robin. The cucked play video games to.
The studio that made this game was “Warner Brothers Games Montreal”. They are a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Games, part of the big media conglomerate that owns DC Comics. I doubt they had a creative limitation imposed by licensing, only by their own limited creativity.
Freecell, Vegas solitaire, mah jongg solitaire, basic Jewel Quest, Tetris, and basic Angry Birds. That’s my speed.
I miss Q-Bert, and Crystal Castles.
!#%@*
Qbert was the bomb.
OT seventies TV trope: everyone in the food and beverage industry wears a red vest.
Has anyone actually seen this in real life? I haven’t.
I’m just happy when they wear a shirt these days.
I think it died out along with the nurse hat.
When I had an extended stay in the hospital a couple years ago, I couldn’t help but think that all the doctors and nurses looked like bums who just walked in off the street, given their attire.
Did you happen to encounter this guy?
Probably.
It’s weird because I’m a slob but here I am questioning why everyone else looks like a slob these days.
This was in the sidebar from your video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV5WqRnFejI
SW nerdy meets music.
That too. I’ve seen a lot of travelers over the past couple of years. Bums is a pretty accurate description.
I’m sure ‘travelers’ is as distasteful these days as calling them gypos.
The proper term is Gypsie!
They took “gypsy” back. I remember a couple gypsy shows on TLC that might have been peak trash, which is saying something for TLC.
Pinterest says “gypsy” is a term of hate and hate has no place at Pinterest.
Gypsy nurses?
Used to have gyppo loggers around here. Don’t think I’ve heard that term recently.
I’ve never heard the term “gyppo”. Regional thing?
Maybe?
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/gyppo_logging_in_oregon/#.Y9idAC-IahA
Whipple. Nurses wear a whipple. It is derived from a nuns headdress, also called a whipple.
It’s so jarring on TV and in movies now that it’s gone.
I think that head covering is a “whimple” not a “whipple” (which is a surgical procedure to remove a tumor from the pancreas.
Or the guy that squeezes the Charmin.
Wimple?
So a qango funded by a foreign government that’s been meddling in domestic politics for years is deeply concerned about foreign meddling? Got it.
I have OSTs of two games, LA Noire and Chrono Trigger, both of which I adore. I have no idea what either of them are about and “Chrono Trigger” is a stupid name.
I played a little Chrono Trigger – it’s supposed to be a classic of its genre.
But yeah, I have a bunch of OST’s. There is some really good video game music out there.
I’m open to finding more if anybody’s got suggestions. I think Riven put together a Friday p.m. links of game OSTs, didn’t she?
Hard to recommend unless you actually play the game. A recent favorite is GRIS.
Not really the OST you’re looking for, but still a jam
I was in a game re-sale store with my little brother a bit ago, and saw crates full of what I thought were soundtracks. I was about to call him over when I realized they were LaserDiscs.
sounds great. >.>;
Ho. Hey.
It’s morning time again, Glibs.
https://youtu.be/zvCBSSwgtg4Points
🎶🎶
Good morning, Sean, Stinky, homey, and Roat!
My quest for today: find out how hard it is to replace a brake light on a Subaru Impreza…outside when it’s about 27 degrees F. 😐
Morning
Good morning, U! How was your “going away” lunch yesterday?
It went okay.
Sorry, I had to log on to work.
Looking at the emails, I want to call out sick. I’m not going to do that.
Just a couple more days. You can tough it out.
Mornin’
I have a special technique for replacing brake lights in cold weather. It involves a cell phone and the occasional tow truck. Like Colt 45, works every time.
Probable steps:
1, Find replacement bulb at Autozone.
2. Back car up to just outside open garage door for best light.
3. Open hatch, remove screws holding in tail light assembly and pull out assembly.
4. Star in bewilderment at multiple bulbs. sockets, and wires.
5. Put assembly back on car and call dealership for appointment.
“Russian Firm Offers $71,000 Cash Bounty For Destruction Or Capture Of Western Tanks”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/russian-company-offers-71000-cash-bounty-destruction-or-capture-western-tanks
Righteous bucks…I wonder how many years pay that is for the average Russian soldier.
Compared to the cost of a tank, that’s amazingly cheap.
That’s was my first thought.
Several millions vs. 70 grand? Not worth.
suh’ fam
whats goody
Library meth.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/pipe-wielding-tesla-driver-sought-in-l-a-road-rage-attacks-arrested-chp/
Oh good. They final caught this nut.
Now let the DA drop the charges so he can go on and kill people. 🙄
Yeesh, try that around here and you’d last about five minutes.
The DA is killing people?
‘He was being held on $5 million bail.’
I’m not a huge bail reform guy, but that seems excessive.
https://billypenn.com/2023/01/23/working-families-party-philadelphia-city-council-at-large-republicans/
Wait, what?
Republicans in Philly??!!?!
😲😲
Who doesn’t want more of that? Go commies! Oh sorry, “working families”. 🙄
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/montgomery-county-bakery-eagles-doughnuts-super-bowl/
Local news. 4 lb donut.
https://www.khon2.com/local-news/massive-boulder-smashes-through-palolo-home-barely-missing-owner/
I hate when that happens.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/laverne-shirley-actress-cindy-williams-dead-at-75/ar-AA16VrC1
😞
Vienna VA takes action against the scourge of pickleball
Killjoys are coming for your fireworks
No fun allowed
Plenty of fun to be had, they haven’t banned peaceful protests.
“Protest for fun and profit.”
During the Vietnam War, anti-war protests were the place to be if you wanted to hook up. Probably not much different these days.
The anti-war protests seem to be more middle aged now. The youngsters are eager to die for the cause.
What anti-war protests? They disappear when donks are in charge.
There’s one coming up in February.
You can get on another list if you go.
Another entry in my FBI file.
Burning small businesses is “greener” than setting off fireworks. Duh!
It’s science.
Everything from A to Z banned, banned, banned! It’s for your own good, dammit!
In 1970 or 71 I called the ‘New Left’ America’s Puritan Revival. And here we are…
Of course the “environmentalists” aren’t at all concerned about this: Evidence says offshore wind development is killing lots of whales
“Environmentalists”
https://www.desktopdress.com/desktopwallpapers/thumb/hear-no-evil_see-no-evil_speak-no-evil.jpg
Mornin’, reprobates!
Mornin’ to all and sundry
Raises hand:
Me too, me too! Good morning, good morning, the best to you this morning
Good morning, 4(20)!
Good morning, ‘patzie and Shirley!
It’s a nasty -2 here in lovely mid-Michigan. Not exactly “good” ;-\
Wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to go out this morning to pay my car insurance and go to my bank to stop payment on a lost check. Bleah.
Oh, well. I should probably haul myself out of bed and get the ‘real’ day started. Whee.
-21 here but still, warmer than yesterday. I won’t go out for awhile though.
Yuck. It’s 45 here. The snow drought continues.
Minus 2? Yikes!
Every payday, I pay the household bills due before the NEXT payday. Last time, I was annoyed to see that a check I’d written and mailed two weeks prior still hadn’t cleared my account. I may be dragged kicking and screaming into paying more bills online. (I do some, but NOT the ones that charge a fee for the privilege.)
Your bank doesn’t offer free online checking?
What bank offers such a thing? They all gleefully charge for the ‘privilege’ of being trapped in a cycle of NSF fees
USAA? I’ve got two checking accounts with them (both online because USAA doesn’t have b&m), and I don’t think I get charged for either one.
My experience sorting the incoming mail at the credit union where I work tells me that a lot of those “bill pay” services just cut a check themselves and mail it (often a dozen or more in one envelope,) so I might gain in convenience but not necessarily in speed of payment. I haven’t even paid attention enough to know whether that’s how ours works.
It’s not the fastest for bills but I don’t pay for checks or postage. I can get online bills from some companies, send checks like personal checking, schedule recurring payments or one-time future payments. It’s all in the system showing pending payments and history for each payee.
The routine are paid automatically, credit cards online and a few days early.
Yeah, all my bills are autopay except for rent.
I’m still working through the set of Bugs Bunny Forever stamps I bought three years ago.
Ooh, snow! Unlikely to stick, but a nice view for the morning pipe and Covfefe.
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
In 2015, I handed over a chunk of servers for a particular application to the Websphere group, but because of sloppy records, every so often a ticket for one of these servers comes to my group, including servers built after the handover. Annoying, but no big deal. One such ticket arrived yesterday and when the people recently added to the group for after my departure asked about upgrading that box, and I told them that it wasn’t our system and why.
The question I got in return? “Can you give me a list of servers belonging to [Other Group]?”
Why would I keep track of servers owned and created by another group?
“I don’t know and I don’t care”
My favorite dumb question from back when I used to pick up my boss’s calls if he was unavailable:
Me: “I’m sorry, he’s on another call right now. May I take a message or put you into his voice mail?”
Caller: “How long is he going to be on that call?”
People tend to vastly overestimate the psychic powers of administrative assistants.
GT at work.
https://cdn.images.dailystar.co.uk/dynamic/33/photos/929000/936×622/1587929.jpg
“Can you tell me if I’m going to be late?”
psychic powers
– The system just went down.
– How long will it take to restore?
“How long is he going to be on that call?”
“Could be days. Would you like me to tell him somebody called?”