Arkham Knight

Well, it TAKES place on Halloween after all.

Marvelous and rich finale towards the Arkham Batman games, Arkham Knight is the first next generation entry and for the first time, you will be able to control the Batmobile and perform neat tricks with it.

After Arkham City's conclusion and Joker's death, Scarecrow has returned to let Gotham be imprisoned by fear and he is determined to suffer Batman and end his legend. Working together with the mysterious Arkham Knight, a militarized villain, they plot together with the other notorious rogues including Two-Face, The Penguin and The Riddler in order to finally put down the Bat.

With a huge city to explore comprised of 3 main islands, the adventure has never been bigger. The excellent gameplay variety includes stealth, combat, detective work and now also road action. The majority of Batman's gadgets return alongside newer ones, and the cast is rich, huge and it contains the perfect excuse to bring Joker back, deepening his relationship with the Bat even further.

I very much enjoyed Alfred's company, Riddler's usual ridiculous amount of obsessive riddles to be solved, doing the Most Wanted side quests and seeing the plot twist unfold as well as seeing the complete ending in this long night.

The Batmobile felt extreme and polarizing at first compared to Batman's golden rule of not killing, but it actually is a necessity against the drone threats and at best it serves as collatoral damage as designed such by Lucius Fox.

As the largest entry, there is of course a lot of stuff to do. Some of the new Most Wanted intrigued me more than others. Man-Bat's intro spooked the shit out of me as I traveled on a random rooftop. And several of Joker's hallucinations as well actually!

Professor Pyg's debut is also in here, and he's the most interesting and modern rogue villain as a psychopath if you ask me, with an obsession of about beauty and he is also leader of the Circus of Strange.

Joker's unique role and perfect excuse for returning instead of being actually alive made him even better and more complete than before, and it's great that Mark Hamill also returned for this!  The way the clown and bat confront each other at the climax is also twisted.

Arkham Knight is a great closure for the series, but considering that Batman is more popular than ever arguably, I am sure that he will return when speaking of video games, it's just that the story ought to be approached differently then.

Happy Halloween!

Rating: 9.2