You may have already seen a clip of Gotham Knights’ prison brawl scene, where dozens of prisoners and guards alike fight in the yard, and you beat each and every one of them down while a cover of Ricky Martin’s Livin’ La Vida Loca blares over the intercom. In one way, this really does not represent the full game: musical covers do not accompany all of the big fights, instead mostly giving way to the trumpets parping, clearly inspired by the theatrical scores of John Williams. It’s very safe, in that sense, but another part of the video is very representative of the final game: waves upon waves of nameless bad guys to beat down.
There are so many waves of nameless bad guys. There are a bunch of different mission types in Gotham Knights, and they all involve beating down bad guys. Crimes are generated every time you enter a new area, and are quite literally endless, giving you infinite chances to punch people – even dirty cops. Premeditated Crimes are bigger heists, kidnappings, and sometimes bomb threats where you’ll beat bad guys, while interacting with an NPC to free them from some sort of fate. There are bigger case files, which are far more interesting, and have multi-level questlines that focus on a big-bad like Clayface, Mr. Freeze, or the Penguin. Still, these mostly just involve beating up bad guys.
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These crimes will be marked on your map, or you can happen upon them while moving through the open-world city. Gotham is made up of multiple islands connected by bridges, and you can traverse the city either with the Batbike, by using a grapple gun to scale buildings and move across the city, or by fast-traveling. The Batbike works fine, and can wheelie directly over small cars, so that’s nice. The grapple gun is decent for traversing a few hundred meters, as you can grapple from rooftop to rooftop, but grappling and jumping is as complicated as this gets, meaning you won’t be swinging through the city with style like in Marvel’s Spider-Man. Of course, once you unlock the ability to fast travel around the city, there isn’t as much reason to ride the Batbike around town as much while punching those villains.
Someone needs to beat up bad guys, and sadly, Batman is out of action. Bruce Wayne dies in the game’s introduction, and it’s down to his proteges, the Gotham Knights, to find out what he was investigating when he met his end. Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl, and Red Hood are all present, and they are constantly in a state of mourning. When they’re not out on the streets punching people, they’re in the Belfry, the new home base, and here you can swap characters, customize your gear, and interact with the other knights. When they do interact, it’s almost constant angst and grief – they even interrupt a game of a Just Dance-alike so they can start talking about how miserable things are. Sorry to say, this is not how you make a likable cast of characters.
You can play as any of the four, and can join up with friends online in two-player co-op in order to tackle the game in multiplayer. That is going to be the best way to take this game on, as doing the punch-fight in the streets of Gotham can get very lonely and tedious when you’re flying solo. The game is formatted by Nights (without the K), each one being your patrol. While out on patrol you can take on any of the aforementioned crime types in the overworld, interrogate factional NPCs for information on other crimes and missions, or chat with friendly NPCs for new challenges and rewards.
You can’t do everything in a single night, and you’ll need to return to the Belfry regularly between missions, or to have more types of crime spawn. Once you return you’ll be scored for how many crimes you solved that night, how many bad guys you beat up, and more. If you’ve just dipped out of the Belfry for a quick interrogation before returning to continue the main mission at hand, your score won’t be very complimentary, but it appears to be ultimately meaningless, other than reminding you that there is an infinite amount of crimes going on every evening.
Between missions you should regularly check your equipped gear, and investigate whether there are new items to craft, mods to slot, and more. This is an action RPG, and what that really means is that your punches are powerless unless they’re backed up by some incredibly fancy gloves. Without the right stats, your attacks are meaningless, so you’ll regularly be upgrading gear and spending Attribute Points to unlock new abilities. Regardless of who you play, the entire cast will level up, so you just need to swap out gear and ensure the Attribute Points are spent well.
The main reason to swap characters is the variety of abilities and passive buffs. For example, Red Hood has a much easier time dealing with heavy enemy types, as he can grab them more easily before throwing them and detonating a sonic bomb. Robin is way better when it comes to moving stealthily, which is very helpful in tougher areas, since a stealth KO is always a KO, regardless of the level disparity you might be fighting against. Batgirl is better at interacting with technology like alarms and cameras, while Nightwing is a solid-all rounder. Nightwing’s real benefit comes in the form of his elemental attack which comes as one of his Momentum abilities.
Momentum is a “special” gauge or meter that builds as you do battle, and can then be spent on abilities. Some of them are highly situational, and you can be knocked out of an ability animation, which means you need to think about where to slot them into your otherwise standard strategy of punching and dodging. Nightwing’s elemental attack uses the element of his weapons to assault the enemy. Ice attacks are great for freezing enemies in place, while electrical abilities will do a burst of damage. Fire is similar to electricity, but is particularly useful in select battles, such as when you’re against Mr. Freeze.
It’s easy to see how the variety of abilities makes perfect sense when playing as part of a team, but if you’re going it alone, then Nightwing is unquestionably the best character to use, with his abilities making dealing with groups of enemies much easier. And there will always be groups of enemies. Foes aren’t very threatening, not even armored heavies, but they have the potential to be very annoying. Certain bad guys require a heavy attack to break open their defenses, or a charged ranged attack to push them off balance before you punish them.
These are very easy to do, but not when you’re under pressure from multiple foes. When alone, it ends up being an exercise in patience. Yes, you can dodge and attack infinitely thanks to clearly telegraphed moves from opponents, but that gets old after the first few hours, and the fact is, it never really improves. This is a clear step back from the action ballet that the Batman Arkham series is known for, and once the tedium sets in, things never shake-up. It feels like a grind, and that’s because you will have to.
Remember the abundance of infinite crimes? You best be paying attention to a good chunk of them, because it won’t be long until the case files you’re following that present the “main” content of the game require you to be a higher level than you are to tackle them. Like other action RPGs, progress is suddenly gated, not literally, but by difficulty, encouraging you to spend your time with side objectives potentially for hours. Of course, you can also equalize this bump in difficulty by swapping the game to Easy mode, which will suddenly increase the damage you do, and lower the damage you take, allowing you to enter missions you’re not leveled for, and come out successful, with huge amounts of XP.
This kind of tactic is only necessary in the kind of game where you look for shortcuts to play, and that’s the kind of game Gotham Knights is. The unending churn of minor crimes, the static combat, and the constant ticking off of new gear pieces, Attribute Points, and mods – it’s content. It’s a checklist of things to do, none of them particularly outstanding. It’s definitely a game made in 2022, but difficult to recommend unless you’re a hardened Batman fan – or it gets put on Game Pass.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
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