Completed "Batman: Arkham Knight"
Perhaps no one will argue that among the games, it is Batman that works best with the original source. Preserving the smallest details of characters, world, mood. When realizing how good the game is, you must definitely take a look at the work with the original source and how boldly sometimes, in the finale, the developers take steps, killing (!) characters and prescribing their motivations and actions. The plot in this regard is quite pleasing, even if it holds up due to the source material, a couple of twists, staging and the Arkham Knight, whose identity was guessed by everyone who is more or less familiar with Batman. However, let's talk more about the game.
Batman is still just a great game that is fun to play, BUT it still works according to the same old schemes (same stealth, combat, detective, but with a couple of features) + cars that are literally forced use. The entire gameplay has become more interesting, but the game is a slave to its “mechanism”, simply becoming boring with these schemes. In this particular series, one gets the feeling that the developers are willing to work broadly, but are very wary of delving into the depths of the gameplay, simply afraid of breaking what they have. And yet it would be a sin to deny that the heightened staging, the sense of the scale of the action and rare interesting moments competently dilute the boring sensations.
I would like to say a few words about side quests. Even if they have a rare good formulation, they become boring with the one-sidedness of the tasks for completing each of them. Of course, completing them all can be interesting, but whatever one may say, it’s just milking content. If you have completed the mission in each side, then you already fully know what most of the subsequent ones will be. For the grand final, their presence and mandatory completion for the full ending can be called justified, but I would like more creativity in their development. The plot sometimes makes it clear that you should pay at least a little attention to them, but for me “not much” was exactly what happened.
And yet there were rather disappointing disappointments. Besides being forced to use the machine, Inigma was the first to disappoint. He has completely lost the ability to play with Batman, to try to make a fool out of him. He simply began to shove races and skill tasks into his side games, leaving thinking tasks somewhere in such optional depths of the game that the feeling of his progressive madness even regarding the old Inigma rocks. Scarecrow is also indecently small. This could be forgiven without problems, but the absence of creepy hallucinations? Seriously? It was because of them that people were waiting for him! Yes, Bats begins to see the Joker (it's surprising that Mark Hammill returned to his role after abandoning it), and we are given beautiful moments on a city-wide scale, but where the hell are the creepy trips? Only in the final. I won’t lie if this is the main disappointment for me.
4 out of 5
I thought for a long time whether it was worth giving such an overestimated rating, for me personally. There was resentment, there was fatigue from the gameplay, but this is the best live-action adaptation of the comic book with a simply magnificent ending. Yes, it was precisely due to the ending, respect for the original source and some very strong moments that I increased the score.