REVIEW: Gotham Knights – Grief and Chaos in Gotham City 1l5f21

Gotham Knights is the new title from Warner Bros. Montreal, released October 21. In it, you take on the role of the Batfamily (Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood and Robin) to investigate crimes and decipher puzzles created by the ingenious and classic villains and gangs of the Batman franchise.  4b324r

Coming with frame delivery limitations and a somewhat stuttered gameplay, the game can frustrate unsuspecting people a lot and minimally please fans of Warner's successful franchise. Even with a series of errors and falling into outdated formats or clichés of the games, the game brings an interesting narrative, minimally fun gameplay and very competent graphics.

Check out my experience with Gotham Knights below.

New protagonists, same Gotham 221l40

Batman is dead. In the beginning, what happened to the Batman is explained in a quick and mind-boggling way, as in his classic movie and comic book clashes. The Batfamily arrives at the scene of their downfall and is shocked, so they gather to work on clues to their killer and new crimes in Gotham City.

In the midst of a completely chaotic Gotham City, with crimes happening all around, the protagonists Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood and Robin go out at night with their uniforms and technological equipment to prevent these crimes from happening and investigate various gangs and villains that may have contributed to the death of their much-loved mentor.

Following this narrative and discovering more and more clues in deep investigations is extremely fun and, at some point, one of them will easily conquer you, and the exchange between the characters in the new hiding place, called “Belfry”, guarantees a certain freshness in the gameplay. any time. Little lasting freshness, because the game gets repetitive very quickly (I'll explain in a moment). There, Alfred, Bruce Wayne's (Batman) butler, will always be willing to lend his brilliant to this unstoppable team.

Immediately, it is possible to be impressed by a good narrative resourcefulness that brings out a whole lore intriguing from the Batman comics, but with a certain advanced game time it starts to get tiring with the same directions it takes. 

There is some exaggeration of moralistic discourses and tensions created in certain situations, always avoiding the real root cause that Batman's comics address: every criminal has his reason and his motivations for being. In other words, it lacked to present some of the distant past of certain villains and punctuate the formation of their character.

Walking in Gotham was easier 4r2h3w

Gotham City in the game is set only at night, which makes it shine and be very unique. Since Gotham Knights is categorized as an open world action-adventure title (which is not lacking in superhero games, isn't it?) mapped across the city. 

The big spatial problem there is the movement. Both on foot and on the amazing Batmoto, she looks extremely truncated at all times. Moving around Gotham is a big sacrifice: getting to the marked points takes time, controlling the grappling hook on buildings is boring and limited mechanics and there is not the same fluidity we expect from games of the same genre. Riding the Batmoto is horrible, there is no sense of speed (even at full speed!), especially on large avenues and bridges, just the opposite of what happened in Batman: Arkham Knight, by Rocksteady Studios, for example. 

These are such important fundamentals that they just make me think all the time: “Why didn't you learn anything from your previous games, Warner?!”. This leads us to a quick imagination that something is not right at the game publisher and that it has not been paying the necessary attention to the learnings and long-term relationships with its various developer studios.

It is evident that Gotham Knights is inspired by games from the not-so-recent past published by Warner itself and several other superhero games from other companies, which are very consecrated in the medium. gamer. The latest Marvel's Spider-Man and the Batman: Arkham trilogy are examples. However, Gotham Knights loses itself too much in bad or unpolished mechanics, in outdated and futile loot systems and several design slips that end up tarnishing its very existence. A lot of lost potential and very good wasted references.

One of the BatGames ever made 6h1s24

Even with a good history of Batman games made in the past, Gotham Knights manages to be pretty average and expendable for today. 

It stands out for bringing a good story originating from the most recent Batman comics, invoking all the lore da Court of Owls and a great cast of classic comic book villains like Penguin, Harley Quinn, Clayface and Mr. Cold. The grieving of the hero characters and their allies is very well done at all times and makes a real impact on the storytelling, conditioning and strengthening them all.

It may sound exaggerated, but Gotham Knights gets repetitive quickly in its combat, especially, and in the back-and-forth of tiring and unbalanced missions within a city that is difficult to get around with the protagonists. In reality, it was not possible to explore the spatial factors of this city, which is empty in several points, and the variation of enemies within gangs. Surprisingly, there are only 3 or 4 enemy patterns for each Gotham gang. When faced with uncreative bosses and mini-bosses, more frustrations are also generated.

Hostage to such a dull combat, the only alternatives are to explore the item modifiers (chips implantable in the heroes' combat equipment), which, in of gameplay, don't change much; choose the best skills of the heroes; and switch between each character frequently. Even so, none of this takes away the bitter taste that the game leaves in a short time.

Restricted to an unfortunate 30 fps on consoles (even on the new generation), without a fluid performance at times, its lost potential is very noticeable with all the layout of its graphic beauty, but it's nothing that affects the experience as a whole. Not to mention some bugs present at certain points and an unconvincing open world AI.

The navigation on the map is also not the best. You must unlock fast travel points throughout Gotham's regions, in small species of minigames to find 3 drones and their respective charging stations on top of buildings (!). Too much work and unpleasant. In addition, the interface (UI) of the menus is poorly organized, showing an excess of information that tends to confuse the gamer a lot. A lot of unnecessary complexity in a simple game.

In a system of evolution of costumes, melee and ranged weapons, in which it is possible to adapt and buy new items, the game is even more complicated: inserted with RPG elements added to dynamics of loot scattered around the scenario, this evolution becomes extremely confusing and difficult to master, while the UI also does not corroborate the understanding of how this evolution works.

Despite many cons, Gotham Knights has a satisfying progression, even if it is slow for several moments (in the sense of evolving the heroes and advancing in the story), which makes you feel the power and weight of each character's abilities.

The post-Batman era deserved better rxf

Gotham Knights is a good choice among the industry's hero and heroine themed games. It conquers quickly and it balances well in its premises, narratives and in its gameplay attributes that can even be shared in online co-op, even with a very unnecessary amount of errors, truncated elements and, of course, a lot of repetition. The expectation was that it would deliver a lot more up to this point, but this is a just acceptable game that is being sold at prices of triple AAAs in stores (from R$299).

While it brings a very thought-provoking plot and strong characters, it is very clunky in of gameplay and performance. It's as if all that Gotham environment and its narratives won you over, but the combats, movement, scattered information and futile or confusing mechanics completely take you away from this world. These are factors that play against your will all the time.

The title is the first that deals with the Court of Owls in games, including, but to excuse it as a product with many flaws would be naive in the middle of 2022. It certainly deserved much more attention and affection from Warner Bros. for this unprecedented event that makes the eyes of Batman fans shine. Therefore, it deserves to be played, even if it carries a series of flaws.

The game is available on the online stores of Epic Games Store, Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store.

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