![]() ![]() It's a mesmerising sequence deeply rooted in Batman's own tortured psyche, and as stylish and cathartic a triple-A game's ending sequence has been since Gordon Freeman found a suped up Gravity Gun at the conclusion of Half-Life 2. Penguin? Boom! Two-Face? Bam! Anyone dumb enough to get into this mad man's way gets pumped full of led. And in the end, during the game's final act, he just about does in a glorious dream sequence where Batman thinks he is Joker and runs around with a shotgun murdering the rogues gallery of super villains that have plagued Gotham City for so long. Regular Joker could be stopped by bullets and batarangs, but this new mental Joker is a part of Bruce Wayne that's been there for a long time, just waiting to break out. The funny thing is that Joker is much more menacing as a representation of Batman's id. What nobody expected was that Joker would return as a figment of Batman's imagination and provide a far greater and much more interesting role than he'd previously played in the series. Or maybe people thought Hamill would return, but only for a cameo. The popular theory was that Ra's al Ghul would dip his corpse in a Lazarus pit (the rejuvenating, resurrecting liquid that's kept al Ghul alive for centuries) and he'd simply come right back into the fray, possibly with a new voice actor in tow (Troy Baker occupied the role in the third-party spin-off Arkham Origins). Mark Hamill, who had voiced the character for roughly two decades, said Arkham City would be his last turn as the Joker. Arkham City killed the clown prince of crime at its conclusion, much to the chagrin of many fans. As it turns out, he never really went away because Arkham Knight plainly states what has been the crux of so much Batman fiction: Joker is part of Batman. Joker is back! And he's better than ever. But hey, it's been nine months, so I think we can finally discuss it. Yet its best qualities were seldom publicly discussed due to the fact that its greatest trick revolved around a major spoiler in the first act that Warner Brothers spent years keeping under wraps. Only this time it's smarter, more imaginative, and all around a much smoother ride. The second entry in the series, Arkham City, added an open-world and this latest (and supposedly final) entry finally put the player behind the wheel of the Batmobile, but by and large Arkham Knight is the same game that wowed us back in 2009 with Arkham Asylum. Silly, sneaky, and sadistic, it's only fitting that a game about a Batman with a batmobile would be batsh*t crazy.Īrkham Knight is a strange game in a lot of ways one made all the stranger by the fact that it was Rocksteady's third stab at a series that hasn't altered its DNA in any significant way. This makes no sense, of course, but it's never anything less than hilarious as adrenaline-pumping goons are thwarted by the stairs going still beneath their feet. There's a lot to be said of Rocksteady's swansong to the caped crusader, but allow me to sum up this monolithic epic with one in-game gesture: Arkham Knight is the only game that lets you incapacitate bank robbers by hacking into computer terminals to deactivate escalators. It was a sad state of affairs that Warner Brothers was rightfully taken to task for, yet this conversation - and some nitpicks about the new batmobile - overshadowed the fact that Rocksteady delivered Batman's finest video game adventure to date. Just last year the caped crusader received a thrashing when Rocksteady released the finale of its dark knight series, Batman: Arkham Knight, with a botched PC port. ![]() That's not unusual for the brooding vigilante, who holds the heavy burden of fan expectations on his armoured shoulders. ![]() There's a new Batman film out this weekend and it's certainly taking a beating by critics. ![]()
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