Gotham Knights Critique - Shadow of the Bat

Thanks for being here! As always, I'd MASSIVELY appreciate if you liked the video and subscribed to the channel. The next critique will be on something completely different that I've wanted to talk about for a while, but before that there will be another Noobus Humanus and another session of Lore Dump. Subscribe to Lore Dump here: youtube.com/@LoreDump

Nearly three hours reviewing a game so mediocre that people forgot it existed five minutes after release is what I call dedication.

Bruce Wayne suicide bombing the court of owls is the absolute funniest way they could have ended this game

The Starbucks down the block from another Starbucks thing is actually quite realistic. In Vancouver there’s two kitty corner to each other at the intersection of Robson and Thurlow

What an absolute power play by Monty with releasing this on the 8th year anniversary of Arkham Knight

I remember laughing when I rode the bat cycle for the first time. They added those wind effects to the side of the screen as if you were speeding through the streets of Gotham, but at no point does that thing go past like 20 mph

Jason Todd's hoodie string will never not make me laugh

"...a complicated romantic relationship with Dick" Me too girl.

I wanted to pitch my ingame universe theory for why some of the riddler trophies are easy to come by. In essence, The Riddler doesn't do his own physical labor. He's not going to go schlep across Gotham making and setting up trophy traps. He has henchmen for that. And some henchmen probably just said, "He's not going to notice," and place all of the trophies in easy to reach brainlet places because they just can't be bothered to follow through. Additionally, it would make his frustration make more sense because he designed much harder puzzles and traps, just to have some henchmen say, "Screw this, I'm keeping the cash for the contractors and putting it on a single story building roof." Meanwhile, The Riddler is watching connections to Trophies disappear thinking Batman's getting past insanely deadly obstacles.

God, their Jason Todd looks so weird. Why does he look like a football star who walked out of a car accident, stg, he feels like corporate asked "What if Knuckles was a person?"

I immediately lost interest in the game when I saw damage numbers in the gameplay trailer. That told me everything I needed to know.

So, with the complaint about Cobblepot's sidequests: Anyone else now want a game where you play as a generic henchman for a supervillain? Maybe you could pick up themed tech from your boss, or stolen from other gangs, raising you from "Dude in a yellow and black jacket with a pipe" to "The second in command with his unique Bee Gun and bullet proof bee wings!" or something. Maybe it could be a directed story of promotions and betrayals, or something more open involving factions and choices... Man, it's a real shame I never do anything with my ideas...

I’m confused. Is the new hideout brighter than the bat cave or not?? I wish Alfred would have addressed this

Honestly the moment you said there are ‘eLeMeNtAl’ attacks in a game set in the Batman world I realised how godawful this game must be. Terrific work as always

Arkham Origins was written by freelancers hired from outside the company. I don't know if they were ever brought back but they did incredible work on Origins.

You know, there's a kernel of a great story setup in the Freeze stuff and it's a shame they didn't take it. Like, with Victor/Nora broken up because she couldn't forgive his other criminal behaviors and Victor just, staying in his pain, he could be a really cool dark reflection for Todd about being frozen in the worst moments of our suffering and choosing to stay there because we know it vs. taking the harder road to recovery. Or it could make a cool Dick & Barbara story, where the 2 of them talk about their relationship and how it fell apart, and setup for whatever it will look like next in this post Batman world. Like, there's some real meat on those bones they could tap, but they just don't and that's a shame.

i love how this game is so bad that monty found himself agreeing with the kinds of people who talk about the woke agenda, despite hating those people so much that he had to make absolutly clear he wasnt on the same team with them.

It might be interesting to have a game or story where Penguin really did just say "ah the hell with it" one day, served his time, and really did get out of the game, only to get pulled into the Batfam shenanigans because...well, you know people, Oswald, you know the people who know the people. Through one clandestine meeting after another he becomes sort of an anti-Jim Gordan, always suspected of playing his own game but never actually doing it. Doesn't have to last forever, of course, but for awhile he serves as a kind of crabby, reluctant uncle to the Batfamily.

2:02:10 as a long time external QA tester I can say that most of the developers do not care about our feedback. We are there to find issues, report them and get told "it's fine, no one will notice" and then get blamed when people notice after release.

There's nothing quite like listening to a video like this and agreeing with every aspect of the critique, especially having worked on Gotham Knights for its entire production. Also, there was a tiny fraction of staff who worked on Origins that also worked on GK.