This was originally going to be a response to Charlize's blog post about Arkham Knight but kinda turned into its own thing. I tend to write off the top of my head and not proofread anything I do write so I am sorry if this is a wreck. I may touch it up at a later juncture, but for now it exists deeply flawed, as all things are.

It's really interesting to compare the "last"(we'll see.) of the Arkham games(Knight) to the first(Asylum) and notice that as the series has progressed and included more and more aspects of being Batman, such as the Batmobile, Gotham City, a wider range of moves to perform and obstacles to overcome, the games have sort of lost the laser focus that Asylum had and was only really capable of because of its smaller size and limited scope.

I felt this way several times while playing Arkham Knight. While I reached the end of the game feeling like I was glad to have experienced it, I also found that there were several points that I just felt frustrated with how much the game was trying to do all at once. In City the combat was maybe the best it's ever been. It ramped up the difficulty of the combat encounters gradually, introducing new enemy types as the game advanced, and only after giving you enough time to get comfortable with the latest variation introduced.

In Knight it feels like the game just constantly throws new enemy types at you with every other encounter and without giving you much room to breathe. There's many more variations than there have ever been in any of the Arkham games. By the time you get to the end of the game these specialist type enemies make up at least 80% of any given group and it just gets so fuuuuuckinnn teeediouuusss having to cape stun a big guy, jump over him, do a beatdown that is constantly interrupted by these enemies that are using attacks that you can't counter so you have to redo the whole cape stun into beatdown thing and just UGH. And more than any other Arkham game, the enemies are allllll about picking up dropped equipment so if you're not using the special move that destroys weapons enemies are holding, they will just pick them up over and over and over and over and over. Figure that with regularly faulty targeting that makes me attack people holding shields or stun batons instead of people that aren't and it just gets really annoying.

Anyway. The game is loaded with side stuff that isn't necessarily worth doing in that it doesn't really contribute anything to the overall story and really feels very strange and out of place given the immediate urgency of every single main mission. Like, Batman's going to drop a hostage situation or hold off on saving one of his best friends because a dead body was found strung up? I got a real Ubisoft open world game feel from playing Arkham Knight in that it feels like there's a ton of side stuff in this game because there's an expectation for there to be and not because it necessarily NEEDS it, you know? It often feels like the developers are saying "There are Militia checkpoints to deal with because we needed more side content!" And the game is cooooonstantly reminding you to go do side stuff. If you don't have an active objective, there's a big ol' prompt telling you that you need to have one. After finishing every three or four main missions, Alfred will chime in like "Hey buddy, maybe you should go check on those firefighters instead of stopping Scarecrow? Just a thought."

And even in some of the side stuff there's all of this buildup and then just pulling the rug out from under your feet because OOPS you haven't found the next step in the world so you either waste your time trying to find it(you have to get VERY close to some of these objectives to put them on the map) or just keep doing main missions until the game mercifully grants you the next waypoint. It's different when you're just collecting Riddler trophies or Sea Shanty lyrics or doing backyard brawls or whatever, but to have these side threads involving named villains that are mini plots in their own right gated off or just put on hold for periods of time until you progress far enough in this way feels a bit strange. It kills the mood.

People have said enough about the Batmobile. I think it's just fine in its implementation and isn't necessarily overused, just underutilized. With a few more tools at the car's disposal it could have been really cool, but by the fourth or fifth time I was shooting something to pull it down to become a ramp or an entrance for Batman to get into on foot I was like "okay, I get it."

BUT, I have been digressing as I am wont to do. Sort of. All of that stuff serves in contrast of Asylum's lack of all of these things. Asylum didn't have a huge open world, it was very Metroidvania in its design; you go and find a new gadget that allows you to return to different areas and bypass previous obstacles, which then allows you to delve deeper into the story it was telling and further into this very meticulously crafted environment created by people who clearly had a reverence and love for the source material with tons of references to villains and characters that weren't showing up in person in the game's story. You dealt with a number of villains that had their time to shine that fit into the story as a whole, and a lot of work was put into making you really feel like you were trapped in the lair of the beast. (But because you're Batman you have the advantage) There were a ton of really cool moments in Asylum that can't really be replicated with the open world design mindset, such as the fear toxin sections which Knight tries to recreate but doesn't do so nearly as effectively, the opening moment of being introduced to the Asylum and reacting to it all going very badly(that initial fight and frantic run down the hallway covered in chattering wind up teeth comes to mind) and many others. Thinking about it now, you totally run over Bane with the Batmobile in Asylum. Why were there no boss fights in Knight that utilized the Batmobile beyond "drive away from it" or "shoot it because your car is also a tank"?? Perhaps the last encounter with the Riddler does this? I didn't get that far in that storyline because fuck Riddler puzzles.

It's an argument to be had about the differences between a smaller scale experience and how the developers can really work with the environments and mechanics to hit the player with very focused moments, and a larger playspace that has fewer "ooh, ahh" moments but more personal freedoms. There's a place for both of these things, but when it comes to a Batman game I think the first one works better because a Batman game should be about empowerment and focusing on his rogues gallery and Batman's interactions with them. In a more open setting, you don't really have many opportunities to engage with the villains aside from them spouting a monologue at you from time to time as Scarecrow does from the screens all over Gotham in Knight or being a fight at the end of a series of missions because it pulls the player away from the focus of so much to do!!! I don't really think there's much room for argument in saying that in this regard, City is the best of the games because it marries the open world with smaller Zelda-esque "dungeons" that involve villains other than the "main" one even though City isn't my personal favorite of the series.

First off, good write up, of course. Also a bit interesting to see someone write a blog in response to something I said! Or at least have that be the original idea.

Anyway, after replaying Asylum immediately after playing Knight, I feel like Knight hasn't aged as well as I expected it to. People always talk about how focused it is, but it just felt like it was lacking content to me. There's more back tracking in that game than you remember. Also, all the boss fights are bad. And the Scarecrow hallucination bits are instant fail stealth platforming sections.

It was also way easier than I remembered, though that's probably more because I was just coming off of a harder, more complex game.

Oh, and the story in Asylum is pretty straightforward and simple, in a way that I think is a detriment, at least compared to the other games.

It's pretty clunky in spots too. And too much crawling through vents.

Anyway, the point I was trying to get at before I started rambling is that I don't think Asylum is as good as everyone remembers. I'd also say that I like Knight more. But I'll probably like City most, still, once I get around to replaying that.

Now, to decide if I should replay City first, or play Origins first.

PS, I wrote this on my phone right after waking up, so I'm sorry for typos or rambling.

Don't get your hopes up for that Riddler fight.

You just fight a bunch of regular robots, then avoid an attack by Riddler an punch him. Repeat 3 times and you are done

Arkham Knight felt like it could have been a really good 15 hour game that they tried so hard to stretch into something more. More collectibles, more enemy types, more Riddler stuff! More of everything! Except tightly crafted in-door environments and memorable boss fights that is. I was just getting bored of the game because the main story is really uninteresting and none of the main quests felt like they did anything to differentiate themselves from the stuff you do in the sidequests. Everything just felt like "more of the same".

I groaned every time the game said "Oh you thought you collected all the bombs/towers/apcs/strongholds? Well guess what, here are even more of them!"

I dunno, opinions. I still think it's as good as it was, and I remember the shitty parts of it very well (like the boss fights and the terrible whatever that is the Killer Croc encounter) - and yeah, they were as shitty as I remembered when I played it three months ago. However, the combat/predator encounters and truly memorable parts - like the first walk through that Joker teeth-filled corridor which Artelina mentioned, the first time you end up in the big hall in the first major predator encounter or when the Joker mooks cheer for you when you're supposed to go to the final boss fight - I still remember very well, while I fail to recall anything about City that's past the prologue.

Sure, the story is simple, but it fits to a stand-alone game. If anything, I felt more like "being the Batman" than in the other games, as the game treats the whole Asylum crisis as just another day in Batman's life. City and Knight have the problem that while their stories are more complicated, they completely fail at flowing naturally, something which the underrated Origins managed to do the best out of all four games - the way City clunkily contrives reasons for Bats to go between villain to villain and how clunkily Knight fails at doing even that isn't what I would call a step up from Asylum's extreme straightforwardness. And I dunno, Asylum managed to treat its villains with dignity and as important parts of the game, not repetitive sidequests or setups for lame jokes. I mean, what happens to Harley Quinn, Two-Face and Hush in Knight is a war crime.

Asylum is also less robust than City, but the problem is that I'd much rather do the shit boss fights of Asylum than ever attempt to get all the Riddler bullshit or track Zszaz in City, let alone doing more Batmobile in Knight.

Not the biggest batman fan myself BUT I tend to like Asylum. First off City and Knight having to really fabricate reasons why Gotham is empty is just...lame. Asylum felt neat because it was essentially Batman in the lions den.

It made sense why it was abandoned and why all these villains were congregating. Also boy do I just hate the trend of making everything Open World these days. I think Asylum was the right balance for me between extremely linear and Open World.

If Knight ever gets discounted on PSN heavily I might consider picking it up and seeing what its like but I'm with the Asylum supporters on this. They nailed it the first time out. Every other attempt has been passable.