I purchased Batman Arkham Knight in 2015 on Steam during the launch date after having spent hundreds of hours playing Arkham City over the years. Arkham City sets the bar for every other open world game that would supersede it. After winning GOTY in 2011, it almost seems impossible that Arkham Knight would be able to carry on the legacy of its predecessor, but it did. And it did a lot more than that. Despite the performance issues that the PC version suffered from when it was first released on Steam over the summer, Rocksteady decided to pull the original version off the Steam store and did not put the game back up until a while after. The game has since run a lot smoother in terms of frame rates per second and other bugs and glitches.
Part of the anger and frustration coming from the PC community in regards to performance issues in Arkham Knight is justified, however a large part of it is as a result of the fact that there are many PC gamers who are still trying to play a graphically demanding game with low specs. You can't possible expect the game to run at even decent frame rates if you're still using CPUs and GPUs that are out of date. Yeah, that's one of the challenges to being a "PC elitist," you have to update your graphics card, CPU, RAM, etc, every once in a while. So it's not the fault of Rocksteady that the game isn't running optimally on your rigs.
With that aside, on with the review! The game is absolutely stunning. It's definitely one of the best looking, if not THE best looking game visually of not just 2015 but 2016 as I continue to revisit this masterpiece. Despite not being able to swim in the game, the waves on the sea of water surrounding the city look about as real as they can be. The lighting, shadows, reflections, textures, rain effects, etc, work together in an awesome blend to successfully capture the essence of Gotham City. And this isn't me just exaggerating. Here's my Steam profile for proof. http://steamcommunity.com/id/HighClassRebel. And as you can see, I've taken lots of gorgeous screenshots from the game with the graphics settings maxed out with little to no performance issues. Anyways the point isn't just the photo-realism of the graphics. It's more than that. It's the immersiveness of the overall gameplay experience.
It's the unique art direction in which as you glide around from one area of the map to the other, it actually feels like Gotham City. From the Art Deco style exhibited on the Vicki Vale building, the Gothic architecture of the Grand Avenue Station tower, to the Classical Greco-Roman statues on the various bridges across the city, Arkham Knight succeeds in creating the perfect rendition of Gotham City to date. Every corner of the city reminds the player that the game takes place during Halloween as the pavement is littered with jack-o'-lanterns and pumpkins, and the sides of buildings decorated with orange banners and balloons. Every billboard, advert, vending machine, abandoned vehicle, and hell even manikin gives off the illusion of Gotham being set during the late 20th century. The city feels alive, and it could very well be a real city in the same way that the Batmobile could easily be an actual vehicle in real life.
The character models for the most part are near perfect. The Arkham Knight looks and feels menacing, as rightly he should. The same goes for Deathstroke and Scarecrow. The amount of detail put in each of the character models shows how much time and effort was spent in the visuals/designs department in attempting to make the characters look as life-like as possible. Props to the Rocksteady team!
The storyline although not as polished as Arkham City remains cohesive and coherent. I definitely felt myself immersed in each of the characters and found them to be very enjoyable. The gameplay mechanics are solid as they've always been. The combat system is responsive as ever, including combat for the Batmobile, making to a truly fluid and fast-paced experience, unlike Sleeping Dogs. The gadgets works the same way they did in previous Batman games, with the gliding being 10 times more fun this time around as a result of the city being larger in not just land area but also altitude. There is just no reason for anyone to not buy this game, whether it be for the consoles or for the PC, unless of course your specs are not capable of running the game at a decent fps. It is THE best Batman game to date next to Arkham City and one of the best games period. I would consider GTA V, The Witcher 3, and Arkham Knight to be the top 3 games of all time, that is until a better game is released in the future. This game deserves a solid 10/10, truly a work of art crafted by the Rocksteady team that will continued to be admired and enjoyed by many and in many years to come.