It was delayed for over a year but arrived in time for the holidays: Gotham Knights tries to replicate the runaway success of Batman Arkham. It offers a host of open world heroes, weapons, missions and non-stop action in the open world of Gotham Knights, so what did we think of it?
History strikes again
In the game, we will not play Batman, but we will be drawn to the story of his heroic death and his legacy, following which the Knights of Gotham enter the battle who want to regain control of the city, fight crime and restore hope to its citizens. The game that takes place, of course, in the wee hours of the night, is led by one of the heroes with whom you are required to fight street gangs and solve the main task of that night.
During the tours you come across contacts on the map who help unlock the tasks and activities and receive prizes and rewards for completing them. Gotham City is full of side missions that encourage you to deal with small crimes, and decipher clues that will allow you to deal with the main missions.
Most missions have bonus objectives such as finishing without being detected or killing enemies with weapons from a long distance. But the crime solving mission is part of the story and there are more challenging enemies and objectives. If you fail or leave the area, you will not be able to return to them again.
The great advantage of Gotham Knights is that it provides four characters that you can play with and switch between during the game, which makes it feel like four games in one. Each character has a personal journey of self-discovery that they take to learn how they deal with death and life. These scenes bring out the best that the gaming and comic book worlds have to offer.
Difficulty in attacks
In the co-op mode you can fight together or split up to look for clues to unlock the next main mission, or tackle optional missions twice as fast as you can alone. However, the battles in Gotham Knights are definitely not the cutting edge of the game, most battles are won by pressing the attack button without any sense of difficulty or effort on your part.
I liked the presentation of the different heroes, they feel diverse enough both in terms of backstory and in terms of abilities, control and gameplay. Certain enemies are only vulnerable to specific tactics, which ups the challenge a bit in trying to defeat them. There are heavy and light attacks that require the use of a special combat mechanic called momentum that requires precise targeting. If you don’t aim your camera directly at the enemy during some of your momentum attacks, you’ll miss the move big time.
Video: This is what we thought of Gotham Knights
The bottom line
Gotham Knights is a good game and fun to play. However, the story is less exciting than one might expect and lacks significant content. The combat fails to develop in significant ways, there are too few boss fights and a lack of variety in how you fight them.
Batman Gotham Knights is available for Xbox Series X | S consoles, PlayStation 5 and PC. It comes in launch editions in standard, Delox and collector’s steelbook cases. The price of the standard edition is 299 shekels, the deluxe edition will be sold for 369 shekels and the collector’s edition for 1499 shekels and is distributed in Israel by Adli United.