The (purported) final of Rocksteady's Arkham games can't quite escape from under the shadow of Asylum's unexpected brilliance, due in part to its apparent nervousness to stray too far from the conventions established in that game, but is still a fantastic conclusion to the series. The fundamentals of the game are much the same as City, with the same progression through open world type side missions showcasing various Batman villains, along with a somewhat apocalyptic main story for Batman to slowly have his cape torn up through. Riddler trophies and puzzles are back, detective mode, the once innovative brawler combat system that has now become something of an industry standard (to the games detriment, as the combat does occasionally struggle to feel as fresh as it did in Asylum), this is very much another one of the Rocksteady Batman games. The biggest change to the gameplay is the introduction of the Batmobile, which is unfortunately one of the weakest aspects of the game. The Batmobile is controlled either in car mode or tank mode, and whilst the car mode provides some fun chase scenes (and some okay racing segments courtesy of some very shoehorned-in Riddler segments), the tank mode is confusingly dull. There are so many sections of the game where you'll be required to fend off huge waves of idiotic tank drones who point big red lasers at you before firing, so the goal is to dodge the red bits and shoot the tanky bits. It's like a bad 3d "shmup" and you'll come to dread these segments. Perhaps the game's biggest fault, though, is that there are so many of these and all of the other types of gameplay. The game feels artificially bloated, with repetitive forms of near-identical missions peppered throughout the world, lengthening the game a little far beyond the amount of interesting ideas it has. There are only so many groups of enemies you can bat-punch, Riddler trophies you can bat-find and waves of drones you can bat-explode before the whole thing starts to feel like a chore. That being said, the main story missions are interesting throughout (even if the story is perhaps a little more predictable than it thinks it is), most of the side missions are at least initially interesting, and the game looks absolutely incredible. The problem is that Arkham Knight sticks so closely to the formula of previous games in the series that it starts off feeling a little too familiar, and then on top of this it forces you to perform almost every activity more times than is fun, so by the end of the game the whole thing just feel unpleasantly repetitive. The gameplay is still absolutely solid and very fun, for the most part, but it's certainly time for Batman to take a very, very long break.
