After the Batman Arkham series of games, Warner Bros returns to us to present a new title that takes place in the world of the famous Batman with the action game and the open world Gotham Knights presented to us by the development team WB Games Montreal and with a greater focus on the element of team play, so are we on a date with a new series?
The story takes place after the death of Batman in a battle between him and one of his most famous enemies, and here the task of protecting Gotham City shifts to his four disciples, Nighwing and Red Hood in addition to Batgirl and Robin, and a story that focuses on the role of the Court of the Owls in managing crime behind the scenes The story begins with an excellent beginning and interesting developments occur, and when we expect it to develop in a way that rises to the excitement that we initially obtained, the events become predictable in a way that we lost interest in them, especially since the events suggested that we are on the verge of epic developments, and we will avoid further detail so as not to spoil the events for the reader.
The development team made the dialogues between the Batman family an important element in the development of events, but this attempt was not successful for two reasons. Advice and attempts from other characters, and we have another character who is sad most of the time and a character who does not know what his role is in the team. The second reason is the continuous reference to the history of the characters from the comics and the events they went through, but all these references to the past of the characters will only be understood by those who read the comics.
The gaming experience ranges from battles to moving around the city or solving some simple puzzles in which you examine a crime scene or the like while linking important evidence to each other to reach conclusions. For battles, the game allocates a button for attack and you can continue to press it to carry out a heavy attack with a button to avoid and a button Specific to ranged attacks that depend on the character you are playing as Red Hood wields a pistol while Batgirl wields a Batarang for example other buttons are assigned to character-specific skills that can be applied when the “momentum” meter is full which is filled by dealing damage to enemies and successfully dodging their attacks.
A system that suffers from simplicity that makes battles get boring quickly. Fortunately, there is a kind of acceptable diversity among the characters. Playing as Batgirl provides you with the ability to hack some tools, while Red Hood focuses on direct combat, and Robin has an advantage in stealth. You can switch between characters through Returning to the main headquarters, but the feeling of limitation in the gaming experience will overwhelm with time. Another drawback is that certain types of enemies turn into squishy balls as you level up in the game. Unfortunately, all the bosses are squishy balls and their encounters do not differ much from the usual battles.
Navigating the city is done by using the hook to reach the roofs of buildings and high areas quickly. A motorcycle can also be used, which could have been faster than it is. The mysteries in which the crime scenes are examined are not deep, but rather an attempt to break the usual routine of movement and battles What is annoying is the development team’s attempt to increase the life of the experience and push you to do the side missions by placing many of the characteristics that are known to exist from the beginning behind the pretext of completing the challenges. There are certain types of challenges that must be done in order to reach all the skills of the characters, and there are challenges that must be completed to unlock Travel points and challenges that must be completed to reveal a faster way for characters to move around!
Although all characters level up together and you get development points for all characters, many of the challenges we mentioned to reveal the special abilities of the character and some means of transportation must be done for each character separately! For example, one of the challenges requires defeating a certain number of enemies in some way, while interrogating 10 enemies who carry out random crimes in the city, and you have to do this for each character who wants to access the rest of their special abilities!
When you finish your night in Gotham, you will return to the headquarters to discuss the latest updates with your comrades and to craft your own equipment from armor and weapons, and here we face the same problem that many games that offer RPG elements face, which is the need to return again and again to craft or develop your equipment to be in line with Increase the difficulty level because not doing so means that your battles will become very long.
What distinguishes the game is its beautiful depiction of Gotham City, that city that differs in character from one neighborhood to another, with the participation of those neighborhoods in being a potential scene for various types of crimes, especially with the death of Batman and the exploitation of gangs and super criminals in his absence, also beautiful in the game is the side content associated with the most famous enemies Batman as Mr. Freeze, Clayface, and other characters, and we found that the tasks associated with them are actually more fun than the main tasks of the story because of the suspense it contains to know the plan of that villain and try to thwart it before it is too late. The game offers huge content in addition to the contents of supervillains, from various challenges in nature, and the possibility of encountering crimes in various parts of the city during your wanderings, but this content varies in quality, and it is a problem that many open world games suffer from recently, as the focus has become on the number more than the quality in a way that makes the player feel full.
Although the marketing of the game focused on the side of team play, the game can be played individually without any problems, but the group play experience makes it more fun because you are able to carry out special attacks to eliminate enemies with your companion, and the presence of another player with you makes the elimination of enemies a process Faster and less boring, and the beautiful thing is that your friend can join the experience in a smooth way that does not require a loading screen, with his appearance in your world as soon as he connects.
From a visual point of view, the game presents an excellent technical level, while taking care of the various details of the city, such as fog, lighting, and reflections, with clear attention to the designs of the characters in their smallest details, despite the large number of costumes for each playable character. From the technical side, the game suffers from problems with the user interface, which does not respond as required. Sometimes instructions appear that take up a large part of the screen without your ability to close it, and at other times the interface disappears or does not respond to your completion of the task and the elimination of enemies. The most important problem is the frequent stopping of the game, which It happens randomly when using quick navigation points sometimes or in the midst of battles, and it is a very annoying problem that we encountered in the review version on PC, but fortunately the game saves the various things that you have done and we did not suffer from losing the progress that we made despite the recurrence of this problem.
We ended the experiment after about 26 hours in which a balance was made between doing the main missions and some side missions in addition to doing many other challenges and activities. In the end, we can say that what distinguishes Gotham Knights from the rest of the open world games is its identity as a whole, as it is no different from In general, these games have what they have and what they have. The content may be huge and varied, but the quality is different, and you will feel repetitive and bored quickly due to the squishy enemies and the limited combat system. It is another medium-level open world experience for those looking for this type of experience.
