Gotham Knights

In the end, either solo and especially in co-op, it’s an easy recommendation for me. All four heroes play fantastically and are quite different from one another. It also looks great on a Series X. I hope that Gotham Knights becomes a series because this is one hell of a first entry.

Gotham Knights surprised us in a positive way: it's not a revolution for the genre, but it's able to entertain the fans of the DC Universe, especially because Batman's not here.

Overall Gotham Knights is a fantastic single-player game and an even better coop experience. Fans of the Arkham series will be right at home and inexperienced players will pick the gameplay up with very little difficulty. Beautiful skyscapes, brutal combos, and unreal levels of customizability put Gotham Knights right up there with some of the best Comic Book Video Games.

Gotham Knights, orphan of the iconic figure of Batman, takes up the torch with panache. Our heroes honor the Dark Knight for an exhilarating adventure inspired by comic books. The city of Gotham, darker than ever, the technical and nervous fights, and the complementarity of the four vigilantes blow a breath of super-heroic freshness on the universe of Batman. Without being perfect with its camera flaws and sometimes redundant missions, the Warner Games title hits hard and proves that Batman is not the only hero worthy of the name in Gotham.

Gotham Knights is the game that everyone wants to hate, but that shouldn't be the case as there is a lot to love here. It's a good open-world game that explores a brilliantly realised Gotham City, powered by some fun, fluid combat and a wicked world that is easily explorable. Hanging around the rooftops as you take in the main story, smaller incidents or even as you hunt secret challenges allows Gotham Knights to shine, even if the Batcycle sections don't feel particularly great.

While it’s not without some mild downsides, Gotham Knights is an outstanding title that deserves a space in any Batman fan’s game collection, especially if you want to see his protogés get some deserved spotlight for a change.

Gotham Knights is a dark, dense and surprisingly gripping action adventure that almost manages to step up to the level of the very best of the Arkham series. There's a cracking story to dive into here, a huge and wonderfully detailed city, tons of lore for Bat fans, brutally crunchy combat, four cool superheroes to get a handle on and some of Gotham's most infamous villains to take down as you fight to prevent an all-out turf war. We were slightly concerned going into this one but, as it turns out, we needn't have been. If you can ignore some messy menus and a few too many upgradeable bits and bobs, you'll have a great time.

Gotham Knights brings a familiar world and characters, borrowing basics from the Arkham series, but lacks the polish that the Arkham series was known for. It offers fun co-op and variable characters, but the side content sometimes seems rather generic.

Gotham Knights is a worthy heir to the Arkham saga, with a new approach and a starting point of a new universe. Good gameplay and a great story that takes place in the biggest Gotham yet, which is full of activities but it feels empty.

You may spend a lot of your time comparing Gotham Knights to the Arkham series, and that's to be expected. But this is a different beast, and something to be relished on its own terms.

Gotham Knights should not be confused as a sequel to the excellent Batman: Arkham Knight. Instead this Spin-Off explores a new and interesting story about the death of Gotham’s protector and falls victim to some of modern gaming’s worst trends. The crafting system feels unsubstantial and while the four different playable characters are all different and interesting, it feels like substantial abilities of the prior games were taken away and locked behind different characters, rather than each member of the bat family bringing something new to the table. Despite its shortcomings and missteps, we found “Gotham Knights” to be very fun to play, when focusing on the story over the repetitive open world activities and the multiplayer is an excellent fit for both the story and style of game.

Gotham Knights has a lot of potential which, however, stays partly unexpressed: the fights suffer from a lower physicality compared to the previous Arkham titles and even the city traversal appears less convincing, while a graphics performance mode would have helped in the most frantic action scenes. It however remains a game capable of entertaining and highly recommended to fans of the Bat-family, mainly thanks to a good story that manages to keep us glued to the screen.

Gotham Knights smartly puts focus on some iconic DC Villains and showcases a new threat with an interesting story full of conspiracies and secrets. It does a good job of establishing this story with underrated heroes, tying in fun action which is enhanced greatly by playing with a friend. Other elements, like boring diversions from the main story, a tacked-on crafting system, and an over-reliance on throwing piles of long, repetitive battles in your path towards the end are less successful, but I still enjoyed my time exploring Gotham City overall. Especially if you have a sidekick, this is a superhero adventure that is well worth suiting up for.

Gotham Knights' situation as a game aptly reflects the struggle of its protagonists — the new team has big boots to fill now Bats is gone, and while they can't quite live up to his legacy, they still manage to make an impression by doing things their own way. Combat is decent once it opens up, and traversal and the overarching gameplay loop are both great, but it's a shame that Gotham Knights' performance leaves a lot to be desired. Much of New Game+ feels like you're building a character for an endgame that doesn't exist at this point, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the four-player Heroic Assaults are like when they arrive in November. I'll be combing Gotham for those last few collectables until then, and despite its technical issues, I must say that I was surprised how much I warmed to Gotham Knights after it failed to grab me initially.

An adventure that ends up being quite dull compared to the stakes involved. Relying on the (old) Creed formula, the title remains pleasant in hand and doubly pleasant in co-op.

Gotham Knights is a lot of fun, and for someone looking to mindlessly beat criminals as a superhero, it's an easy recommendation. Yet, anyone interested in anything more than that is going to face a lot of disappointment with its story beats, gameplay elements, individual features, and many other elements.

I really wanted to love Gotham Knights, and mostly, I did. However, I can’t ignore its repetitive gameplay, awful vehicular control, and the inevitable complaints about the frame rate. Yet, this DC title is enjoyable. The combat is smooth and captivating; the villains are great, and the story flows nicely. What’s more, two-player cooperative action is the icing on the cake. Yes, it could be better, but hardcore fans won’t care.

Living in the shadow of something greater is a recurring theme with Gotham Knights. Like its motley cast of heroes, the game sometimes struggles to live up to the expectations set upon it. None of Gotham’s heroes were ever going to be just like Batman, and Gotham Knights was never going to be just like Rocksteady’s Arkham games. Once I could accept that, I could see the game for what it is: a multiplayer superhero game with a creative narrative that plays it safe with gameplay, sometimes to its detriment.

Batman has trained these heroes for this moment, but they aren't ready to rise to the occasion just yet with Gotham Knights.

Despite Gotham Knight's cooperative multiplayer and many customization options, vigilante justice can’t save this open-world action-RPG from mediocrity.

Gotham City might never have looked better, but Gotham Knights’ gameplay repetition and lack of length to the main narrative might deter all but the most hardcore Batman fans. Co-op adds a fun layer to all the crime fighting, and every character feels truly different from one another, even if the combat system takes some getting used to. Overall, there is a solid core here that hopefully can be built on in the future.

All in all, Gotham Knights has been a big disappointment. Every inch of this game is such a step back from Rocksteady's Batman Trilogy, without even giving anything valuable in exchange for it, that it is imposible to play it without leaving a sour taste in your mouth. If you are looking for a new coop game to play with some friends without thinking too much about it, or if you are really dying to play a new DC Comics game, then Gotham Knights might be what you are looking for. However, we advice to keep your expectations in check, because this game is more a Marvel's Avengers than a Batman: Arkham City.

There are some truly fun moments in Gotham Knights. Playing with a friend highlights the very best of what the developers set out to do, and I enjoyed both the story and getting to see Gotham’s protectors outside of Batman grab the spotlight. If the developers had built Gotham Knights around its strengths, it could have been an easy recommendation. As is, you spend so much time in its bland open world that only those who plan to explore it with friends should seriously consider it.

After playing Gotham Knights, I couldn’t shake the feeling that a lot of it had the air of an Arkham-verse fan game. While there is something there, you can almost reach out and touch the design-by-committee elements and witness the souls of some of the developers leaving their bodies. If you’re looking for another “Open World: The Game,” this one has you covered.

Gotham Knights is a consistently disappointing return to Batman’s troubled city and a distinct step backwards from the past decade-plus of Batman games. Even if running around Gotham in two-player co-op can be decent fun and each of the four playable crime fighters are well executed in their dialogue and distinctive moves, too many of the fundamentals fall short for me to recommend it. From the inconsistent frame rates, to the weak story, to one-note combat that rarely feels good, there was virtually always something going wrong to make sure I wasn’t experiencing the triumphant return with my friends at my side I had envisioned.

Even if it ran beautifully, Gotham Knights still feels pretty much unsalvageable. There’s a lot of game to be found in Gotham Knights, a lot of by-the-numbers repetition, and many meaningless tasks that make you think the project began as a live service game like Marvel’s Avengers. And simply shifted focus to become a co-op thing sometime during development. But then again, that’s adding justification to mechanics and progression systems in a game that doesn’t care to explain why you need to craft new gear all the time. There’s no “endgame” or persistent world to support the repetition either. The good news is that there’s quite a bit of story to dig into, and you do get to go head-to-head with several notable villains. But you’ll need to overcome a lot more than the death of Batman to see it through.

Gotham Knights acts as more of a cautionary tale than the logical next step for this storied universe. For a long time no one knew how to make a compelling Batman game, and then we got four of them in seven years. Taking what worked before while seeking to evolve it is admirable, but the obsession over loot is ill-conceived, cynical, and tasteless. It feels as though volume of content is given precedence over meaningful content, and for those that might enjoy the grind, the endgame's absence will be noticeable.

Those without a real attachment to the Bat family will feel indifferent to what's presented; most who adore Dick and Babs will simply be disappointed.