Recently, Gotham Knights’ gameplay walkthrough featuring Nightwing and Red Hood was compared visually and mechanically to Batman: Arkham Knight. The main concern fans had was that Batman: Arkham Knight, a seven-year-old game, looks more polished than Gotham Knights, a game that has not launched yet but is marketed as a next-gen console exclusive. This is highly subjective, and while some fans agree with this comparison, others disagree and are pleasantly surprised with what has been shown from Gotham Knights thus far.
RELATED: Gotham Knights Graphics Compared to Batman: Arkham Knight
Fans Compare Graphics in Gotham Knights to the Batman: Arkham Games
It is arguable that Batman: Arkham Knight is one of the most visually striking and impressive titles from the previous console generation. Then, with 4K resolution upgrades and other visual enhancements, Batman: Arkham Knight stands out among current next-gen titles despite being seven years old. Batman: Arkham Knight’s open-world shows a massive improvement over that of Batman: Arkham City, where each street is lined with neon and soaked in a constant downpour reflective on each character model.
So much intricate detail is featured in the city and in each model, which makes for a fantastic final entry in Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham trilogy to bookend the series. Because Gotham Knights is the latest AAA, open-world DC title since Batman: Arkham Knight, comparisons were always going to be rampant, even if the developer had not worked on a Batman: Arkham game nine years ago.
Gotham Knights is not currently finished or polished, but its most recent gameplay demonstration offered the best look at its open-world yet. Comparisons have shown how colorful Batman: Arkham Knight is in comparison, while Gotham Knights’ open-world looks bleaker and less intricately detailed. Nightwing and Red Hood’s traversal, while uniquely different from that of Batman: Arkham traversal, has also been criticized for having rougher animations and for looking less engaging than Batman: Arkham Knight’s satisfying grapnel boosts.
Gotham Knights has five months before its currently scheduled release date, which may or may not end up being enough time to quell fans’ concerns and apply enough polish to smooth out these rougher edges in graphical fidelity. But fans’ concerns do not end with visuals alone, and combat has also been addressed in terms of how it compares to Batman: Arkham games in terms of fluidity and satisfaction.
RELATED: Gotham Knights Video Analyzes Concerns With the Combat
Fans Compare Combat in Gotham Knights to the Batman: Arkham Games
Nightwing and Red Hood’s gameplay demonstration showed an estranged version of Freeflow combat that is not Freeflow, but features similar mechanics to have characters bounce between enemies. Hit sparks emit from each strike, and fans had been confused as to what that was, noticing also that they were not synced to the character model’s animations and hit-boxes.
Further, one big mechanic that seems to be omitted from the combat in Gotham Knights is a parry counter, which may take players a while to get accustomed to. Counters are ubiquitous and foundational in Rocksteady’s rhythmic Freeflow combat, where players get the most out of individual strikes back-and-forth between enemies in a mob and employ special moves once certain combo multipliers have been reached. Counters featured a visual indicator that would flash above an enemy’s head and notify players to press the counter input and parry them.
The extent to which these counters appear has, in the past, given off the impression that Freeflow combat was elementarily simple, and that all players needed to do in a fight was mash the counter input to avoid taking damage. Rather, Gotham Knights’ enemies and bosses scale accordingly alongside the player’s own character levels and therefore players cannot become overpowered after a session of grinding. It has yet to be shown if this structure will reinvent how players approach the open-world, but enemies are certainly more tanky than in Gotham Knights games due to this shift.
Regular, unarmed enemies in Batman: Arkham games would average three hits before they went down. But Gotham Knights’ enemy health padding may also be the result of players being able to experience Gotham Knights fully in co-op. It then makes sense if enemies should be harder to defeat since players can take them out as a dynamic duo.
In Gotham Knights’ defense, Batman did need to strike any armored enemies a ridiculous number of times to defeat them in Batman: Arkham games. But doing so was also beneficial because it grew players’ combo meters for active finishers and special gadget takedowns. Visual inconsistencies in animations may very well be fixed before release, but new combat mechanics may be jarring since they are a foundational part of the game.
Fans Shouldn’t Compare Gotham Knights to Batman: Arkham Games
If fans hope for better visuals in Gotham Knights, that is fair. But comparing its graphics to another game is fruitless and begs further comparison. Gotham Knights has many visual idiosyncrasies it needs to iron out before release, but comparisons to Batman: Arkham games may not elevate it in any constructive way.
In particular, combat will not be the same due to Gotham Knights being a completely separate title with its own gameplay as an action-RPG. Many features are indeed comparable, but the same could be said about any open-world action-adventure game. Ultimately, fans want the best experience possible, but their anticipation for another game set in the DC universe should not be colored by their expectations of what a DC title has offered in the past. Gotham Knights wishing to be unique and dissociate further from Rocksteady’s games is admirable and preferable.
More gameplay will need to be shared and discussed in order to comprehend every feature Gotham Knights plans to add. With any luck, WB Games Montreal will create a unique and satisfying experience with Gotham Knights’ action-RPG combat. It will be interesting to see how visuals improve from now until release, and fans will hopefully be pleased with the final product this October.
Gotham Knights is currently scheduled to release on October 25 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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