Spiderman, Combat, and Traversal in Video Games

I recently revisited the Insomniac developed PS4 Spiderman over the past few weeks, partially because I never played the DLC and partially because I watched Into the Spiderverse and Far From Home.  I really enjoyed the game when it first came out, using it as the impetus needed to finally buy a PS4. The game was exactly what it needed to be, mixing a fluid version of the Batman/Arkham style combat system with traversal that really makes the player feel like Spiderman. The writing and story are solid throughout, and though the game has a lot of side content, it never really overstays its welcome.

While the playing the DLC over the past few days I've been thinking about both these elements quite a bit, about how it has borrowed and in some places elevated the Arkham style combat, how fun and engaging the traversal is, the purpose of side content and even how much heavy lifting the animations do in the game to make the player feel alive.

Combat

We've all become familiar with the Arkham style of combat over the past few years, itself an update of the Assassin's Creed combat formula. In Assassin's Creed, it was slow and deliberate, focused almost entirely on blocking and countering. For the Arkham games, Rocksteady built a much stronger foundation using those earlier seeds. They took the simple attack and dodge button used by Ubisoft and layered on top of it specific moves to respond to certain types of enemies, and Batman's iconic gadgets.

At its base, it's a really simple control scheme. Square for attacks, Circle for dodging, a button for gadgets. Buttons can be mashed for quick results, or hit in certain sequences to perform combos, with the auto aim and animations doing the heavy lifting. Challenge is added through the use of special enemies that need to be attacked in a specific manner. Enemies with melee weapons have to be knocked off their feet, enemies with shields have to be jumped over, enemies with electric weapons attached from a range with gadgets. The only real weakness in the system is that it can cause Batman to whip around the screen from opponent to opponent in these Herculean lunges, which gives an unnatural feeling of fluidity to the stoic Batman.

Thus the system works perfectly for the agile Spiderman. Seeing him slide between a shielded opponent's legs, launch someone into the air to do a combo, or jump across the battlefield to kick someone in the face all fit Spiderman's tone and style. While some may deride Insomniac for lifting Batman's combat, they use it well and managed to polish some of the combat's weaknesses. Rather than try and reinvent the wheel they decided to polish an existing system to great effect. 

And to me, this is where things get interesting from a design standpoint. Designers, game or otherwise, are often challenged to come up with something new, something we haven't seen before. There's an enormous pressure to build, experiment, explore, even when something that already exists is perfectly valid. Insomniac could have spent a lot of time and effort to come up with an entirely new combat system from the ground up, but would that have really made the game any better? People aren't coming to a Spiderman game for a Dark Souls like system of precision and parrying, they're coming to feel like Spiderman. Using an existing system that players are used to helps lower that barrier of entry and get them whipping and punching and web-slinging like Spiderman in no time.

This is all the easier to justify because of how well the system suits this particular hero. The Infamous games have largely forgone melee, instead using a quasi shooter mechanic, where Cole fires bolts of electricity at people. That could have worked for Spiderman, replacing the electricity for webs, but it wouldn't have captured his agile style of jumps, whips and punches. When someone, perhaps Rocksteady, eventually makes a Superman open world game (it's bound to happen eventually) will they go with something similar? Does it make since for Superman to dodge, punch and counter in the same way as Spiderman and Batman, with or without the gadgets? 

These are all questions of design, and force us to consider what really is the best combat system for the hero we are trying to evoke. The Batman and now Spiderman method would probably work great for someone like Wolverine, but appear awkward or stilted for someone like Iron Man. I still can't help but think there are cooler refinements to be made with this combat system, as tired as some people may be getting from it, and hope to see studios experiment with it further in the future. There's no shame in settling on, and refining, a system that works. After all, no one complains when a game maps shooting a gun to the Right Trigger on a controller. We collectively decided that's the best place for it, the best way to implement that desired result. There's no reason why this combat system should be any different.

Traversal

Back to Spiderman, did you know that game has a fast travel system? I played it for hours, maybe even tens of hours before realizing you could take the subway to a different part of Manhattan.   This wasn't from bad UI or from a lack of tutorialization, it was simply because I was having too much fun moving around the city as the friendly neighborhood hero.

Similar to the combat, the traversal is pretty simple from a user perspective. The Righter Trigger shoots a web and Spidey swings. There's a jump button and a sort of air dodge you can do with circle, a couple of tricks you can perform, and some special launching abilities Spidey earns over time, but at its core the system is really just about swinging. And it feels so good. The momentum, the arc of the swing, how releasing it affects your altitude and speed. They really nailed what it feels like to swing like through the city, both at the street level and higher up thanks to a host of graphics and animation tricks. 

The traversal is a huge appeal to that game and something the fans demanded be as true to life as possible. It's no wonder then that I skip fast traveling in that game. After all I'm there to feel like Spiderman, and swinging through those neighborhoods definitely makes me feel like the titular hero. I had a similar experience when playing through the Arkham games, using the combination of grappling hook and gliding cape to get my away around Gotham. Arkham Knight did add the batmobile though, and the gliding never felt as good as Spidey's swing.

Again I'm left to wonder how other games would handle this. If you think about Superman for a moment, and his flight, would players really want to do this in an open world game for as long as they want to swing as Spiderman? A lot of the appeal from swinging comes from the movement in between buildings, the navigating of corners, the swooping changes in altitude at the touch of a button. None of that would really work for Superman. Sure, you could fly between buildings, zig zagging across Metropolis' blocks, but would you? It's far more likely the player would simply fly straight up, clear the roof tops, and then fly across the city in a straight line. It would be faster than flying through the city, but would it be fun?

Lego Marvel Super Heroes is another superhero game that allows you to traverse an open world. You can play as both Spiderman and Iron man in those games, as well as use vehicles. Now you might think that Spiderman is the most fun to play in that game when traversing the open world, swinging around like his PS4 counter part, but to me that's pretty far from the case. It's Iron Man who I enjoy playing the most as.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes Spiderman doesn't swing true like the PS4 version. The Lego webs simply connect to a spot in midair and propel Spiderman along. There are some nice pendulum effects and animation to go with it, but it doesn't match the robustness you can get from a dedicated, fully featured Spiderman game. Iron Man's movement is similarly stilted, he just flies across the map. But the reason I has so much fun with it is how he takes off. Iron Man flies by double tapping the A button. The first hit causes Iron Man to jump into the air, but the second hit engages his boosters, causing him to rocket into the sky and fly off. It's really satisfying at the end of a mission to leap into the air and zoom away as some little old lady thanks you for pulling a cat out of a tree. 

That certainty could be incorporated into a Superman game, but would it be enough? One of my favorite games of all time is Morrowind, a game that had very limited vast travel that was only accessible from a few specific points. When I revisited that game a couple of years ago, I had forgotten about this and was really frustrated by having to walk everywhere, something I originally had praised the game for. This is true of later games in the series like Skyrim. I rarely if ever walked any length of distance in Skyrim unless I had to. I mainly fast traveled around the map from point of interest to point of interest.

The difference is that walking around in an Elder Scrolls game is boring. It's like walking in real life in that it's slow and not much happens as the scenery slowly drifts by. Sure, occasionally you fight a dragon or run into a quest, but few of those moments are very memorable. While crimes occasionally pop up as Spiderman traverses the city, the act of traversal in engaging enough to do on its own. While few games are going to be able to have their player zipping around on web-lines, it does present design challenges even for games of the same genre. Would flying around metropolis as Superman actually be fun? How does the designer encourage that over simply flying up and over in the quickest method mathematically?

Animations 

The secret ingredient to making these systems work in Spiderman is the animations. Dan Floyd did a video on the animations in the game on his channel here. To me the true wonder isn't in how good the animations are, it's how many of them there are. The animations are wonderful, clearly the work of very talented people, but its how they're used that I find so impressive.

Returning to combat for a moment, there's only one doge button, Circle, and only one dodge move from a strictly mechanical perspective. The player hits circle, Spiderman moves out of the way in the direction the player directs. For this one act there are close to a dozen animations however. Sometimes he flips out of the way, sometimes he pirouettes with the grace of an acrobat. Sometimes he jumps, sometimes he slides, and he generally has multiple ways of doing all of these actions, all for the same button press, the same input on behalf of the player.

This gives the system the appearance that it is a lot deeper then it is, that somehow Spiderman has many doge moves, when in reality they are the same. This not only makes the character feel more alive, it makes the combat system a better fit the character. In the Batman Arkham games, Batman has a few blocking/counter animations that mostly involve him either catching the person's fist, or moving inches out of the way. This fits Batman's strong, stoic persona. In Spiderman however, he makes sweeping jumps, arcing acrobat moves, and tight flips to get out of the way. Same combat system, same player input, same mechanical result, but two wildly different feels for both the gameplay and the character, based solely on the animation used. It's a brilliant implementation of the design, not simply copying it, but changing it to adapt the character's needs.

Side Content

 The one area where both of these games, Spiderman and the Arkham series tend to fall short is the side content. For the record I love all of these games and completed most if not all of the side content in them. I especially have in Spiderman, where I one hundred percent-ed both the main game and the DLC. Each series has slightly different implementations of side quests, but they tend to fall into a few buckets. There are combat arenas where waves of enemies come at the heroes, various races or time trials, item/scavenger hunts, and challenges focused on the use of gadgets.

Each of these side activities are used multiple times, with slightly different variations, stamped across the map in a cheaper, easier way to pad out the game's run time. Adding more mainline story with dialogue, voice acting, and custom scenery assets is expensive. Spawning thirty bad guys in a room is cheap. As fun as some of these challenges can be, I think this is where these games stumble the most thematically. I can't help but wonder when playing Spiderman for instance, where Hammerhead found literally hundreds of henchmen to work for him, let alone the other bad guys in town.

I wish studios making these games instead focus on tighter, more story driven focused events for this side content, rather than stamping cloned activities all over the map. While more expensive, it would make for a better experience. The Witcher 3 had its fair share of formulaic content, but some of its best story telling is done in those side quests. Arkham Knight has a great side quest tracking down a serial killer. From a gameplay standpoint its little more than a scavenger hunt, looking for certain landmarks in the open world, but its done in a way that makes the player feel like Batman. While more expensive, it works better than the hundreds of Riddler trophies spread around the map.

One of the clever ways Spiderman ties all of this together is in the random crimes that pop up over the city. When traversing from one area to another, Spiderman will occasionally be alerted to nearby crime. This is usually a small, tightly focused combat encounter that comes in a few different flavors. While short, these encounters are genius in the way it solves a lot of these problems.

Like the combat arenas, they're cheap to make, mixing pre-existing art assets with a few spawned enemies. Unlike the other side quests though, they reinforce what it feels like to be the hero and encourages traversal at the same time. These quests don't pop up when using the fast travel system, but will emerge as Spidey swings around town from one point to another. It captures that feeling of the hero on control, and pads out the time between story missions. Compare that to the bleak, abandoned Gotham of the Arkham games, and you can compare how much more it captures the feeling of being a super hero.

All of these things, the animation tweaks to the combat system, the fleshed out traversal, the crimes in progress, they show that a lot of great material can come out of refining an existing design, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. As consumers, we tend to get sequel fatigue pretty quickly. We get tired of the same old same old, but as Spiderman shows, there's often much to be found in revisiting an old design and adding another layer of polish.

Missed Opportunities: Watch Dogs 2 Should Be Hacker Batman

Watch Dogs 2 is an open world game in which you play a young activist hacker trying to expose the corrupt dealings of mega corporations that are selling people's private data to get even richer. It's not exactly new territory, but Watch Dogs tries to liven things up with a young cast who values having a good time just as much as making the world a better place. The game has this juvenile, Rage Against the Machine, down with the system vibe punctuated by neon greens and fluorescent purples. While not really my aesthetic of choice, I can at least admire how much the developers leaned in to it. They really went for it, going past the bounds of the expected, past even tacky until they broke all the through to a pulpy hacker tale wrapped in a cloak of hashtags, spray paint and memes.

A  photographic summary of this game's style.

Throughout the game the player steals cars, hacks cameras, pilots drones and causes all kinds of mayhem in the name of sticking it to the man and pulling the wool off of people's eyes. Overall, it paints a picture of  the fun, carefree revolutions of the young who don't have to worry about logistics or the impact of the consequences of their actions. While not exactly realistic, it works for the game. It takes an average young black man and turns him into what amounts to a superhero all thanks to a cell phone and a few hundred lines of code.

The biggest issue I've had with the game so far comes not from its campy attitude or instance on packing a pop culture reference into nearly every line of dialogue, but from the combat. The mechanics are typical open world fair. You have guns, a stun gun for those wishing to go non-lethal, and a bare bones cover system to help when you're in a tight spot. Additionally, thanks to your hacker skills, you have additional options like sabotaging power boxes or making gas pipes explode. This is largely what the industry has come to expect from this style of open world game, from Game Theft Auto to Mafia III and even Infamous, battles often devolve into combat arenas full of goons with bad A.I. to slow you down from reaching your objective.

In Grand Theft Auto or Mafia III, the thought of gunning your way through mobs of enemies fits in with the overall themes of those games. In Grand Theft Auto you're a criminal, either currently or previously, so the thought of killing people should come as no shock. In Mafia III, you play a mafia underling turned special forces veteran who's out for revenge, closer in sensibilities to the Punisher rather than Batman. In Watch Dogs 2 however, you're supposed to be a good guy, not really an anti-hero. Your idea of braking the law is more stealing a car or breaking an entering and less cold blooded murder.

Watch Dogs 2's combat leave you little options. Sure, the game gives you a stun gun, and a variety of tools to hack your way into and out of situations, but even a slight misstep will result in your death. See, the guards in Watch Dogs 2 don't really make sense. Mixed in with the average pistol armed rent a cops are guys with military rifles and automatic shotguns, not to mention the guys in head to toe ballistic armor. And this isn't in super secret installations either, regular street thugs and paid by the hour security guards walk around with fully automatic shotguns. Even crazier, when seeing a trespasser, their opening move is to fire at will. See a suspicious person? Don't bother asking them to leave, just mow them down with a military grade weapon for no reason.

This encourages a lethal play style, of which the game is all to ready to push you toward. While it starts you off with a non-lethal stun gun, ever other weapon in the game that you can either buy or pick up is a fully lethal gun of some variety. The blood thirsty guards add to this by opening fire with little in the way of warning. A slight misstep in the game's limited stealth mechanics means two or three guards will begin opening fire with their guns while a fourth calls for reinforcements. This game is ready at any moment's notice to drop a dozen heavily armed goons on your for simply being seen in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's more than bad A.I. and bad level design, it undermines a lot of what the game is going for.

When I first started the game I thought I would go non-lethal. Between the aforementioned stun gun and the game's melee attacks, I figured I'd have a good time sneaking through the shadows, hacking terminals and being this "for the masses" hacktivist the game wanted to make me. Unfortunately, within two missions I was facing fully armed swat teams that were best taken out by the tried and true method of finding the biggest gun in the place and slinging lead like I was auditioning to be the next Rambo.

It's an even bigger shame when the game so clearly demonstrates that it's capable of so much more. In one mission, I was tasked with infiltrating this warehouse along the docks, getting an access code and then stealing a truck full of electronics. The place was patrolled by over a dozen guards armed with pistols, shot guns and rifles, and stealth wasn't getting it done. Instead, I solved the problem by remotely hacking my way between cameras in order to get line of site on the truck. Having already acquired the access code to the gate, I used an upgrade ability to remote pilot the truck through the docks and out of the warehouse. While the guards were running around trying to figure out what was happening, my character was standing smoothly across the street, using a tablet to drive the stolen truck to a perfect stop inches from where he was standing. And that's where the missed opportunity comes in, that's where the game missed its chance to be more than your average third person, open world, mass murder simulator. What the game should have done was make you Batman.

The Rocksteady Arkham games have become well known for their combat. It's become a colloquialism to say it has "Batman" combat. The Assassin Creed style, protagonist surrounded by bad guys with an attack, dodge and counter to help you jump from enemy to enemy and chain up large combos. That's not the part of Batman that Watch Dogs 2 needed. Watch Dogs 2 need the other part of what made those games so enjoyable.

This part.

The Rocksteady Arkham games were at their best when forcing you to think like the bat. You have a room full of six guys. Two with electric batons, two with shields and one with an automatic rifle. The combat encounters were not just battles, but puzzles. Get the gun guy first, swooping down from a gargoyle to tie him up. Then get rid of those annoying baton guys with a swish of the cape. Flip over the shield guys and hit them from behind. Take out the last guy with a reflexively thrown batarang. Those games gave you a host of different abilities and then forced you into situations in which you needed to use them effectivly in order to come out unscathed. Watch Dogs 2 feels like they started to go down this road, with electric panels placed around the environments that can shock enemies,  and abilities focused on luring opponents, but then never does anything interesting with them.

Back in the PS2/XBOX days, it was common to have a game in which the only way to solve a problem through combat was in giving the hero a gun and letting them kill as many folks as possible. And make no mistake, I love my fair share of running and gunning video games, but in the modern era, gamers expect something more. They expect the thematic elements to resonate with one another. Watch Dogs 2 either doesn't get this, or willfully disregards it in the name of  presenting the player with a false choice of non-lethal or lethal, while pushing them into a world of blood thirsty murders.

I think the game would have been far more powerful, and the engagements far more enjoyable if instead of presenting the player with killing fields full of a few stealth elements, they approached the game more like one of the Batman games by giving the player gadgets and choices that allowed them to control the battlefield in ways that didn't feel like one off magic tricks or electrifying gimmicks. At the very least, a different approach to the guard's A.I. would have made a non-leathal, or at least less lethal path more viable. Look at Hitman, where when caught trespassing guards ask you to leave before moving into combat. Even when moving into combat, they always attempt an arrest before going into murder mode. Both of these would have done a great deal to helping the guards in Watch Dogs 2 feel more like people and less like brainwashed drones who need a blood fix.

The story would have also benefited. The carefree attitude and pop culture obsessed nature of the characters starts off  making them endearing. It makes them seem like real people, young people, up against impossible odds. But after a few instances of walking into an innocent movie studio and gunning down a few dozen people, or killing the hundrth security guard that was just doing their job, it no longer feels so carefree. Instead it feels rather blind to the people they claim they are trying to save. It ends up with this dude-bro culture of refusing to acknowledge consequences, much like Ubisoft's other big open world hit, Far Cry 3. The whole thing comes off as tone deaf, as blind to its own message when it could have been so much more.

The thought of young hackers, of people trying their best to make the world better through their skills and ingenuity, rather than their marksmanship or willingness to kill as many as it takes is a message modern video games could benefit by exploring. The creators of Watch Dogs 2 had a real opportunity to take a young, black protagonist and make him someone that refused to kill even when met with lethal force, much in the same way as Batman. Through gadgets and cleverness, the protagonist of Watch Dogs 2 could have come across as an upcoming, amateur vigilante that was trying to save people, to make the world a better place. Instead, he comes across as a childish sociopath who goes on murder sprees in-between stealing cars and making youtube videos with his friends.

In the end, I was left wishing Ubisoft had made the protagonist of Watch Dogs 2 something a little more Nightwing, and a little less Jason Todd.

Batman: Arkham Knight and How You Only Get One Shot

The following article contains minor spoilers for Batman: Arkham Knight, mostly related to the early game and side missions.

Batman: Arkham Knight, the third game in Rocksteady's Arkham trilogy had a rough launch to say the least. While the game was generally reviewed positively by the press, consumers found the game at launch to be buggy and plagued with technical issues. This was most severe on the PC, where even high end machines struggled to run the game, leading to Warner Brothers to eventually pull the game from sale on PC until it could be fixed.

As a primarily PC gamer these days and a huge fan of Rocksteady's treatment of the dark crusader's franchise, I was devastated. I've been a big fan of the bat since I was a knee high tyke running around in my bat symbol underoos. Having been introduced to Batman through the amazing and still worth watching animated series from the 90's (which I've written about previously here and here) I spent most of my life suffering through lack luster adaptations of Bruce Wayne's story in both movies and video games. Thankfully Nolan came along with a darker, more grounded trilogy and helped launch a new interest among the popular culture.

Which is where Rocksteady came in. Working with publisher Warner Brothers, they released Arkham Asylum, a fresh yet traditional take on the Bat, weaving together decades of characters and story lines into something that felt familiar and new all at the same time. The genius came not only in how they handled the characters of Gotham, remixing characters and storylines as needed, but in the gameplay as well. They wisely eschewed the beat em up past of previous Batman games in favor of a stealthy, cerebral metroidvania that had players filling the role of Batman as he explored the infamous Arkham Asylum, solving puzzles, battling goons and catching the bad guys. The sequel, Arkham City, expanded the concept into a small, pseudo-open world that featured a sub-section of Gotham as a hub, linking areas together and allowing the player to brood on rooftops like their favorite hero does in all those movie posters. Both were great games and left players with a taste of an open world that wouldn't be fulfilled until the final third act of the trilogy.

Rocksteady had a proven track record, had made two great games in the franchise and had built up a trust and respect among fans. There was no reason to suspect the third game wouldn't be anything but amazing. Then the reviews hit, the game launched and word began to spread. Massive frame rate drops, technical hitches, bugs, crashes, etc. Everyone was left to wonder what the hell happened, meanwhile the narrative of a bad, buggy game took hold. Fans like myself who were so desperately waiting to get a hold of the game pushed it away, disappointed and heart broken at what happened. We moved on, to other games, to other franchises, wondering what the next great super hero game would be.

Except, thing is, Batman: Arkham Knight is a great game, fully worth its place as the end of the trilogy. I picked up the game during a Steam sale and have spent the better part of last weekend tearing through it. From the opening intro of a cop wandering into a diner only to get overwhelmed by Scarecrow's fear toxin, to soaring over the rooftops of Gotham, Arkham Knight puts the player right back in the boots of the Bat, beating up bad guys, catching crooks and rocketing through the streets in your bat mobile. The game isn't perfect of course. I wish the controls were a bit tighter and there's one too many "jump out of the bat mobile just so you can hit a switch" segments, but the overall game is a wonderful blend of open world mechanics and the polished, loving treatment of Batman we've come to expect from Rocksteady.

First, let me say the Joker in this is an absolute delight. I was initially skeptical of the narrative device of having the Joker accompany Batman through the game as a hallucination, but the pay off is certainly worth it. Mark Hamil's delivery and portrayal of a character he helped define for a generation is perfect, backed by strong writing and decades worth of chemistry with Kevin Conroy, the definitive voice of Batman. But it's more than just the voice acting or the dialogue. Rocksteady goes all the way with the gag. The Joker doesn't just appear in cut scenes, he lurks outside of buildings, waiting to get in a verbal jab or two at the Bat as he leaves. He's a constant stream of jokes, insults and verbal stabs, constantly trying to get under Batman's skin. Observant players will even notice him causally sitting on rooftops as they glide over the city. The inclusion of such a beloved, well known character, for so much of the game not only gives fans a chance to see more of him than they would in the passing role of a villain, it gives us a chance to delve deeper into the character's relation to Batman and the history the two have shared.

How can you not love this guy?

But it goes beyond that, beyond being able to finally drive the batmobile at high speed through the streets of Gotham in hot pursuit of the baddies. There are clever touches all throughout this game. The way the main story gives you an excuse to go do side missions, to not feel guilty about leaving someone in peril while you tick a few things off your checklist. The absolutely genius way it handles side missions, disguising them as tracking down the bad guys. Let's face it, the Azrael no hit challenges, racing against Firefly's fuel, tracking Penguin's vans, all of these would be simple markers in any other open world game. Here's a racing flag, time to do the race side missions. They always feel so tacked on, so video gamey in other games. Here they are worked intelligently and seamlessly into the world and the experience overall. From solving Riddler's challenges and freeing Catwoman to tracking down a serial killer, the game never stops letting you feel like Batman. As an added touch of pure brilliance, when you finish a chain of side missions, you get to take the bad guy to jail, where they stay locked up for the rest of the game. In most open world games you get an achievement, a little tick on a box that says completed. Here you actually get the sense of closure of hauling them off to the local PD station.

Oh, and the police station. The Gotham City Police Department is my favorite part of this game. The whole thing is amazing. All of the cops you can talk to with real names and personalities, the bowl of Halloween candy on the bad ass Sergent's desk, the evidence room where you can hear little snippets about villains you've defeated in previous games. All of it works together so damn well to make you feel like the Dark Knight. The way the cops treat you with a mix of reference and suspicion. The sheer bad ass action of walking a big shot criminal like Two Face or the Penguin past their own locked up goons. It's brilliant and it's also home to one of my most beloved moments in the game, that of the corrupt cop.

You see, in Arkham Knight, you will occasionally find goons in the open world that are highlighted in a bright green to signify they work for the Riddler. Isolate them and you can interrogate them to learn where Riddler's hidden his puzzles around the city. So how is one to react when casually strolling through the Gotham City police department and you see a cop outlined in bright green? The game also features elements of Batman losing his sanity, of battling against the Joker's crazy. You have to wonder if you're seeing things, if it's some kind of glitch. The cop's just hanging out, talking to his buddies. You can even go up and talk to him and he's just like everyone else. Hit the interrogate button however and Batman will slam him into the wall, accuse him of working for the Riddler, only for the guy to confess. It's a great moment, not only from a gameplay perspective of using past taught mechanics to let the player discover something on their own, but in making the player feel like Batman, like the world's greatest detective.

There's a ton of other things I could gush on about with this game. The camera framing is wonderful. The little touches of a rescued firefighter hooking a thumb toward the horizon, toward the ruins of Arkham City in the background as he talks about it. The lovely art and set design of the varied locations, from Penguin's hideouts to the Haunted House at the movie studio. The way Riddler writes notes around his traps showing how he built them and providing hints to the player. Bruce Wayne's voicemail at Wayne Tower. The variety in Gotham from the seedy, trash strewn under city to the glamour of Founder's Island. The paintings and billboards scattered around. The whole city feels alive and fresh, despite being abandoned and run down. It's a wonderfully constructed world with some truly amazing design decisions littered throughout, both in gameplay and presentation.

But how many will play it? How many will remember the messy stories of a botched launch, of technical failures and hard crashes. It reminds me of Assassin's Creed Unity. A game that looked gorgeous leading up to launch, that promised living, breathing crowds and fast paced action set during the French Revolution. But no one remembers that. Ask someone to tell you about Unity and the first thing that comes to mind is the horrifying screenshot of the eye ball man. And yet the game is also capable of true beauty, of wonder artistry.

No one loves the eye ball man.

 

 Look at how gorgeous this is. 

Hard to believe they came from the same game.

Is Arkham Knight going to suffer the same fate? In this era of constant game releases are people going to revisit the Dark Knight's final chapter? Or will they remember all the stories from the launch? Of even mega powerful machines struggling to run it? These days the game runs fine even on a medium powered gaming laptop. The bugs have all been patched, the technical issues resolved. But the crowds have moved on to newer games, to better releases.

In such a fast moving industry, it really does seem like you only get one shot. I'll spare you the beaten to death Miyamoto quote, but it's a lesson that could be learned by a few more publishers. To wait and let your title get the attention it deserves, the praise it so easily could earn, rather than being tarnished by the scarlet letter of a broken game.