Gotham Knights review – Batman’s dead but the ghost of Arkham lives on

metro.co.uk:

Batman’s former sidekicks are drafted in to protect Gotham City, in a co-op action role-player that has a lot to live up to.

It’s been seven years since Batman: Arkham Knight and while Gotham Knights isn’t set in the same continuity, the circumstances are eerily similar. Batman is seemingly killed at the end of Arkham Knight but his death is also the catalyst, by entirely different means, for the plot of Gotham Knights. As a result, instead of the Caped Crusader you spend your time playing as one of four members of the extended ‘Bat-Family’, namely Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin, and Red Hood.

It then falls to the dynamic quartet to investigate the mysteries that Batman was chasing in his final days, and which ultimately led to his downfall. Many of the same characters from the Arkham series also make an appearance in Gotham Knights, including Ra’s al Ghul, Mr Freeze, and Harley Quinn – the latter of which sends you on a wild goose chase around the city, deciphering her clues.

Although the storytelling does have several highlights, if you don’t know your Batman lore going into the game the initial set-up can be extremely confusing – especially as most of the Bat-Family have never been in a movie before. Bizarrely, there’s absolutely no explanation for who any of them are (Nightwing and Red Hood are both ex-Robins) until relatively late in the game or what key plot elements such as a Lazarus Pit are.

Once you find your feet though, things do start to make sense and the characters begin explaining the deep lore surrounding the events of the game and what has happened previously. This doesn’t happen until about 10 hours in though, which seems like a weird move for a game that has an original story and must surely realise most people