The Real Villain of Arkham Knight is the Batmobile

[Rad Party God]

Yup, Arkham Knight seems like a complete clusterfuck, even without the technical issues of the PC version (outsourcing the port and adding Denuvo... WTF was WB thinking!??).

I love you for referencing the Cinema Snob and I'll one up with Batpussy

 

[ServebotFrank]

Yeah I'm glad someone shares my misgivings about the Batmobile.

Pros:
-You can use it to send Batman flying high speeds to the sky and it is awesome.
-It's Black
-Every shot with the cannon feels powerful.

Cons
-Boring to traverse the city in.
-Fights are a fucking chore.
-The mini gun feels weak.
-The fights with the Cobra Tanks are a fucking nightmare.

I just did the fight where you have the fight the Arkham Knight and his squad of Cobras and I was pulling my fucking hair out because you're supposed to sneak up on each enemy and keep them in sight for five seconds before the game will allow you to shoot. The problem is that each of the tanks are right next to each other and taking out one without being spotted is hair pulling. When you finally fight the Arkham Knight he is much faster than the Batmobile and it's hard to avoid him. After you take down his armor you have to shoot him while driving backwards which means you cannot see where his missiles are landing behind you. It's a baffling bad design for a boss.

 

[Something Amyss]

Batman is a bit like the Doctor. He doesn't carry a gun, unless he does. When Matt Smith picked up a gun to shoot at a piece of inanimate technology, Dave Tennant fans immediately screamed about how the Doctor never uses a gun, ignoring that one of Tennant's final moments in the show involved him doing just that. And also threatening one of his greatest enemies with one.

Also, Nine used one, and the second, third, fourth, fifth, and eight versions at least.

It's not particularly hard to find images of Batman with a gun. Or even using one. And let's not forget the 1989 movie someone already posted a clip of.

What I've been told about the tank...er...Batmobile is that it's a joyless experience, tedious and forced down your throat. Yes, that sucks. But if we're talking Batman not using guns, eh....

(Yes, I know that was only one entry, and I agree with most of the list based on what I know. But this one annoys me a little)

Honestly, I think we should blame Christopher Nolan and The Dark Knight for this one. While the Batmobile in the movies wasn't a tank, it did have guns and certainly didn't mesh very well with how Batman was supposed to avoid causing collateral damage. Rocksteady just took the next logical step.

In fairness, Nolan's Batman is an idiot. I kept hoping he'd grow out of it, but he never really does.

This Batman's supposed to be smarter and more experienced. Collateral damage is something I expect him to think about.

 

[OverEZ]

I agree with this list wholeheartedly. Implementing the Batmobile was a terrible decision and seemed to only serve to give the player something else to do because Rocksteady was scraping the bottom of the idea barrel this time around. And those terrible Riddler driving ranges? Really? Does he have so much time and manpower on his hands that he can create massive race tracks with moving platforms in the sewers just to inconvenience Batman a little bit? Also what if the tanks were manned? What would he do to the tanks if he couldn't just shell them with a cannon? The whole game raises more questions then it would ever answer that I don't even care about the identity of the Arkham Knight at this point. This on top of the terrible PC port Rocksteady when out with a fart rather then a bang. I can only approach their next game with great caution.

 

[Banjo-Kazooie Blue]

I HATE this version of the Bat Mobile. It was shoehorned into EVERYTHING. Just when you think the game might actually start to be fun they force more of this thing on you.

 

[jklinders]

Huh.

Yet another game with shoehorned vehicle sections that are badly implemented due to fan demands and are not even in the slightest optional? Pass.

I don't quite get why people want these so much. It makes sense in some games like Battlefield or GTA, but when it is so far removed from the core game that the devs can't even quite get the controls right, the devs should just take a step back and say "damn, this shit aint working. Cut it out and turn it into a bonus game mode they can select from the menu." No need to completely waste the work, but subpar shit in an otherwise polished game is just bad design.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

"You start off in a room full of guys, and the crowd gradually thins out as you work."
Work, eh? Best damn job a strong guy with too much fighting skills could hope for, I guess!

But WOOOOOWWWWW, this sounds like an awful, dispicable design disaster! Even worse than all the purely technical disasters in this game (next week in the column?)...

 

[Solkard]

Reminded me of this,

 

[Casual Shinji]

What I've been told about the tank...er...Batmobile is that it's a joyless experience, tedious and forced down your throat. Yes, that sucks. But if we're talking Batman not using guns, eh....

It all comes down to the idea behind the Batmobile being more appealing then the actual practice. Mechanically it's pretty sound, apart from the reverse button, but you just don't want to drive a car in a superhero game. You want to do superhero shit, like beat up thugs and fly/jump across the rooftops.

It also makes the steets feel more empty, since the roads are wider to account for the driving action. Arkham City while also being an open-world felt cozier with its more narrow streets.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

So I have returned to this article's comments simply to vent. I already made my distaste for the Batmobile known, but now I straight hate it.

Most of the VR challenges revolve around that thing, and I find myself lucky if I can get one star on some of them. Mainly, the stupid races. Somehow I managed to get 3 stars on the Cobra battle after only two tries, but trying to ram/take out Militia cars? That took me a good forty minutes to hit three stars, and by then I was straight screaming at the TV.

Oh, but the VR challenges where you actually play as Batman, or more specifically, Azreal? Where you use the skills you've developed over the past three games? I STOMP them. I got my combo count over two hundred on the first try for one of them. It was a blast, and it made me really miss the feeling of being Batman the superhero, not Batman the "I drive a tank GRR!!!!" person.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

The Batmobile/Tank is the reason im picking up the game later when its much cheaper - otherwise it would have been a day one purchase. The tank battles look so boring especially when every incoming rocket is sign posted. Driving as the batmobile is ok if it was just a way to get around the city quicker. But they have integrated it into missions and races and that just isnt that interesting.

 

[Banjo-Kazooie Blue]

Everything In Arkham Knight is a stark departure from everything good in the Arkham series. The new Bat Tank possibly being the most blatant example. I didn't even find these section fun. I tried to skip as many of them as possible only to find I needed to the Wayne tech point in order to pay for the few useful upgrades I needed buried under the mostly useless ones.

 

[DanielBrown]

Yeah, I was very disappointed by the game. Almost no indoor areas(and the ones we had were really small), like 50% of the game spent in the batmobile and the gadgets were good for fuck all. I only had to use line launcher once ffs. Story wise it felt quite lacking as well, but that's probably because of the Batmobile as I just wanted it to end.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Everyone is hating the Batmobile, and I actually like it. It gives the game a different feel for sure, but isn't that a good thing? Everyone complained that Origins(which I think is very underrated) was just more of the same, and now we get a game with a different feel, and it still gets a lot of flack. We already had three games with the usual formula, it makes sense for the final game to have a different feel.

Let's not forget, the Batmobile is the only way for Batman to do his job properly in this game. His enemies brought an entire army of drone tanks, he just chose to be more efficient in taking out all of the drones by utterly destroying them. There is no drone repellant in his utility belt to stop them, so what else can he do to save the day?

 

[ekrolo2]

Batman using various types of explosives and missiles in other media is okay, but giving him a turret that fires non lethal rounds for people? DIS R NTO BUTMAN!!!!

Totally agree with the other stuff though.

 

[SeventhSigil]

Might as well join in on the venting, albeit late.

Yeah, the implementation of the Batmobile was all over the place. First was the Arkham Knight's steadfast insistence on USING drones, just 'because then Batman wouldn't hold back, something something wanna beat him at his best' when as far as I can tell he could have accomplished all his goals far more quickly, and more effectively, by sticking human pilots in the tanks and helicopters, thus keeping ol' Brucie from just obliterating them with his 50mm cannon. =P Any claims that the Knight (and yes, I know who he really is,) wanted to avoid handicapping Bruce via the 'don't kill' rule is sort of hard to believe given he has no issue outnumbering Batman five hundred to one... and then even less issue hopping in a tank himself towards the end!

Then, after giving you a massive, heavily armed tank, they decide 'Hey, y'know what's Batman-y? STEALTH!' So you spent waaaaay too long in the game in your massive, heavily armed tank trying to be sneeeaky, and creep around the streets... seriously, someone should just loop The Pink Panther theme song over the final tank battle between the Arkham Knight and Batman. It felt kind of ridiculous trying to sneak behind tanks, which apparently didn't bother including so much as a single crude microphone in their scanning equipment to hear the not-exactly-silent Batjuggernaut creeping up behind them.

Also, the way they handled fighting Deathstroke (IN TANKS) can go straight to hell. >.<

Now, despite all this... I did actually enjoy some simple 'Wheee!' escapism by hopping in the Batmobile and driving around Gotham, but dear God too much of the game was built around the thing. There were elements that seemed interesting, like when Batman gets pinned down by a pair of turrets and a bunch of guys with machine guns, ascends to a safe point in the ceiling as they open fire with blistering machine guns, and then remotely controls the Batmobile to come deal with the opposition, but going to be perfectly blunt here, (and this ties into Shamus' next article) another great solution to that dilemna would have been ROBIN. -_- Batman pinned down by baddies? Switch over to Robin, who's keeping watch or shaving his head or whatever, have him swoop in from behind to dispatch the baddies, or even cause a distraction, at which point Batman leaps out and they take on the ambush together. Teamwork!