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Hands-on with Batman: Arkham Knight – five things to get excited about

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It’s been a long, dark and unforgettable night. But all good things must come to an end.

Batman: Arkham Knight will be the third and final Batman: Arkham game to be developed by UK-based Rocksteady Studios. While Batman games will live on – Warner Bros. Games Montreal did last year’s prequel, Batman: Arkham Origins – Rocksteady is ready tackle something new. After they go out with a massive bang.

During a recent Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment preview event, a couple dozen journalists were given the game’s first hands-on demo in advance of its appearance at E3 (where it will share booth space with a custom-built, life-sized replica of the game’s Batmobile.) Given that it’s been three years since Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City, this was a big, big moment. And the game did not fail to make an impression.

Batman never kills. He just horribly maims, cripples and psychologically scars for life.

Rocksteady’s Dax Ginn introduced the PS4-based demo, which takes place in the game’s second chapter. With chaos enveloping Gotham and most of its citizenry evacuated, Batman is starting to realize what the Scarecrow is up to: the creepy straw man has seized Gotham’s Ace Chemicals factory to create vast quantities of a new fear toxin. And ol’ burlap-face has a new partner in crime, a lieutenant of sorts who calls himself the Arkham Knight.

“The Arkham Knight is also the commander of a vast, varied and highly sophisticated military force,” said Ginn. “We’re talking infantry. We’re talking tank divisions. We’re talking airborne drones. This guy has got everything he needs to bring war to Gotham.”

The Arkham Knight has used this firepower to destroy a bridge leading to the factory, holding Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham City Police Department at bay. But Batman simply hops into the Batmobile and blasts over a ramp and into the compound, determined to rescue the surviving factory workers and figure out who this Arkham Knight guy is, and what his presence means for Gotham.

Here are my five big takeaways from our hands-on time with Batman: Arkham Knight.

The Batmobile freakin’ transforms

An earlier demo of Batman: Arkham Knight gave us a first look at the fast, powerful, wall-driving Batmobile that Rocksteady designed for the game. But that wasn’t even its final form: any time you’re in control of the Batmobile (and more on that in a sec), holding down the left trigger immediately transforms it into battle mode, morphing the Dark Knight’s ride into a nimble tank. A vulcan machinegun turret pops out, missile launchers are at the ready, the car’s shape subtly shifts and the lights in the tires glow red instead of blue. With the trigger held, the Batmobile suddenly becomes capable of strafing side to side (complete with a dash maneuver), making it much more effective at battling the Arkham Knight’s drones and tanks in open, arena-like areas. Plus, it looks incredibly badass.

Releasing the trigger pops the Batmobile back into pursuit mode, and although it takes a little while to train your brain to go immediately from one control scheme to the other, the results are impressive. Use your afterburners to rocket over a ramp in pursuit mode, then land and immediately shift into battle mode, whipping around foes and peppering them with bullets. Or, um, “less-than-lethal” riot suppression rounds. Because Batman.

 

Gets approximately 100 feet to the gallon. Mileage shmileage.

The game looks ah-mazing

With Arkham Knight marking the franchise’s debut on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Rocksteady haven’t been content to just expand the size of Gotham City (though Batman’s gritty playground is five times the size of Arkham City’s sprawling urban prison.) The amount of detail in the game world is astonishing, from the intricately modeled interiors of the decrepit Ace Chemicals factory to the vast draw distances when overlooking the expanses of Gotham.

Even the rain spattering against Batman’s scarred and worn armour looks more real, and the animation – already one of the Arkham franchise’s strong suits – is somehow even more fluid, right down to the seamless transitions between gameplay and cutscenes, or the way Batman leaps in and out of the Batmobile with lithe, confident grace.

 

Red Bull gives him wings.

The Arkham Knight is a new – and intriguing – villain

How many ways can the Joker be repackaged for Arkham games? Unless that’s the clown prince of crime under the Arkham Knight’s mask (and I really don’t think it is), this wholly original villain, who wears a suit of Iron Man-like armour that sort of resembles Batman’s own costume, could be the Caped Crusader’s greatest threat. He’s smart – a little cocky, but smart – and he has even more high-tech playthings than Batman himself.

More alarmingly, he’s inside the Dark Knight’s head. During their first face-to-face encounter in the game, the Arkham Knight taunts the Bat: “Always defending the weak and the helpless,” he growls. “That’s what I like about you. Predictable.”

He’s got a point. Batman’s strict moral code can sometimes be his undoing. “We know your move before you do. We know how you think!” scoffs the Arkham Knight. What happens when an enemy can mentally outmaneuver the World’s Greatest Detective?

 

The Arkham Knight is biting Batman’s style. And Tony Stark’s tech. Even if they don’t share a universe.

The Batmobile can be remotely controlled

Batman’s first in-person encounter with Arkham Knight, on opposite sides of a wall of thick glass, ends with Batman remotely controlling the Batmobile and using it to attack his foes from behind. With a tap of a shoulder button, Batman can take control of the Batmobile at any time, and many of the game’s environmental puzzles will be designed around the Caped Crusader using his car as a tool and an ally as much as a mode of transportation.

For instance, as I explored the chemical factory looking for the surviving workers being held hostage by the Arkham Knight’s forces, I came across a broken elevator. Batman himself has no problem navigating vertical spaces, but I had to get a rescued worker from the sub-basement back to the ground level somehow.

The solution? I got into the elevator with the worker then took control of the Batmobile idling outside the building, firing its grapple cannon through a window and latching it onto the elevator’s cable. By backing up the car, I was able to raise the elevator with the worker and myself – err, Batman – inside it. I can’t wait to see the different ways Rocksteady will use this sort of man/machine cooperation in the game.

 

Chicks dig the car. And the suit. And the muscles. And the money.

It’s Batman, evolved

While the look and flavour of the game is pure Arkham, everything feels like it’s been turned up to 11. One example: After battling several of the Arkham Knight’s drones outside the Ace Chemicals factory, I entered the building by ejecting from the Batmobile – the fastest, easiest and coolest way to immediately gain some altitude – and glide-smashing through a window, transitioning immediately into a new “fear takedown” move that allows the Dark Knight to K.O. three strong thugs in quick succession. More goons poured into the room, and the fight was on: I used Batman’s armoured gauntlets to block sword strikes, smashed a foe’s face into an electrical box and pummeled the rest of the thugs without breaking much of a sweat.

From double-grapple maneuvers to more fluid gliding, from batarangs that circle and scan an entire area to batarangs you can fling (in slo-mo!) while diving, from the Batmobile’s two-person containment unit (handy for hostage rescue or prisoner transport) to using the Batmobile’s grapple cannon to rip up asphalt and create impromptu ramps, Rocksteady is giving players tons of new toys to play with while remaining faithful to the core feel and flow of the game.

 

Fighter pilots eject for survival. Batman ejects for fun.

And now the bad news: Rocksteady has announced that Batman: Arkham Knight won’t be coming out until 2015, so that they can take the time they need to make sure their final entry in the Arkham saga is as good as it can possibly be. It’s a bit of a bummer, but it gives us just one more thing to look forward to next year. And Batman is nothing if not a perfectionist.

 


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