Gotham Knights

[Maf]

I don’t know the deal on the voice actress but I agree it’s not great. She doesn’t sound terrible or anything, but not a lot of personality there

 

Aside from that though this little demo has actually increased my want to play this game. This looks fun. Obviously this is right at the beginning so I understand why the combat looks very basic, but I can see how that would develop

 

Looks significantly different from Arkham combat as well. There’s no counter button (by the looks) and the combos look basic but more traditional hack and slash style.
 

Although I hope when more skills/moves unlock it has that same free flow as the Arkham games have. 

 

But I like the look, I like the vibe. I love video game Gotham’s. They’re just fun places to be. 
 

I thought the last video with Red Hood teleporting everywhere made the game look dumb but seeing an opening mission, the way it progresses, and things. I like this, it looks good 

[DANGERMAN]

 

if I buy this at all it will be on PC

[one-armed dwarf]

One of the rocksteady designers is giving out on twitter about the series S, I think DF have said in the past that the memory bandwidth of the S is the thing which can really cap out tech possibilities with games (not CPU or GPU, like people originally thought). I won't pretend to understand why that is but they've talked about that in their videos on it I think

 

 

imo, I really do still think that if this is a dealbreaker for people (30 instead of 60) they need to put their money where their mouth is and invest in a mid-end PC setup. Doesn't need to be top end RTX fuckoff899898 or whatever, just something which can scale pretty well. Rather than cross fingers for a performance mode all the time, which will get harder to achieve later into the gen presumably

[DisturbedSwan]

Good find, as predicted it seems the Series S is holding the generation back somewhat, even if current-gen only games are a bit thin on the ground at the moment. In a few years time I think it will hold Xbox exclusives and 3P games back graphically more and more.

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't know if the series S is the reason the game is running at 30, that actually doesn't make sense tbh but the fact he's out there giving out about the series S is going to become a news story I guess.

 

Moreso tho the part where people are harassing devs and saying they will boycott the game cause it doesn't run at 60 or whatever, I think that shit is weird and if it means so much to these people then they shouldn't have got a console imo 🤷‍♂️

(fwiw, I run some games at 30 on pc and turn down settings a lot on stem deck, it's not an elitist point I'm making more just that people are too demanding of developers imo)

 

For whatever reason '60fps or else' feels like a bit of a dogma online all of a sudden, maybe it's just me

[DANGERMAN]

@one-armed dwarf there's any number of reasons why people might choose buying a console over a pc, I don't think it's as simple as "if they wanted 60 they should have bought a PC", especially as we're about 2 years in to this gen and 60fps has been the norm so far

 

It's also worth noting, while I did say I'd be more likely to get this on pc, the last Batman game was straight up broken for months and months, I'm not sure they ever got it working properly on a slower HDD

 

also fwiw on Steam Deck I'm at 45 lowest, otherwise I just don't play it. We'll see if that changes, but I really try to avoid 30fps if I can

[one-armed dwarf]

I get that, but my point is that I think the demanding that developers provide 60 all the time on all kinds of hardware is a ridiculous demand to be making, and if it's that important to them that people feel this way then it's something they should consider. Just barking at devs to provide 60 just feels like entitlement to me imo. There's just going to be these kinds of constraints from time to time, either hardware or budget or business or whatever. These systems are closed platforms, it's the disadvantage of them

 

We are 2 yrs into this gen, but also this gen has gotten to a very slow start due to covid, I think it's an unusual gen so far to be fair

 

edit to be clear this isn't directed at anyone on here, it's directed at people who go around saying things like 60fps and/or performance modes needs to be mandated to developers making games. 

 

Another point I saw also is that this could have to do with the ray tracing in the game, which apparently can't be turned off. Will be interesting to see if that is the case on pc, and if they forego the work of rasterised lighting (which is surely going to happen at some point in the future, but seems a tad soon right now)

[AndyKurosaki]

I’ve seen a fair few people raging about this, “pre-order cancelled” etc etc.

 

Personally, I’m not arsed. I’ve pre-ordered with Shopto, and still intend to get this. After suffering through Saints Row, I highly doubt this will be worse than that. And I’ve never given a fuck about the whole 30/60/ ray tracing/ fuck knows what else thing. Half the time when people ramble on about that shit, I’ve no idea what they’re on about.

[Maf]

Apparently this is quite bad for PC in terms of power needed for 1080p. I think my GPU can do it but I can’t remember what CPU I have. 
 

It doesn’t mention ray tracing at all either, just high settings.

 

Also comments are saying this is all red flags for a poorly optimised game so maybe best waiting for the DF breakdown before deciding whether PC or go with easy 30fps on console. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Those are extremely high CPU requirements. My CPU is below recommended (9700k)

 

GPU also quite high for 1080p. Batman does have a bad history with PC

 

edit you really should know what parts you have tbh, stuff like that is so expensive to just be like 'I dunno lol', that CPU is like a PS5 in itself probably

[Maf]

Mine’s a Ryzen 9 5900x 

 

I always know it’s something like that but I always forget what

 

I also have no idea how it relates to intel ones. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah, your CPU sounds a bit shit tbh. I'm feeling generous, I'll swap yours with mine

 

Good thing I asked huh

[Maf]

How can I swap. You assume I know what bit in the PC is the CPU and that I would know how to remove it. 
 

I’m guessing their saying Ryzen 5 and mine’s a Ryzen 9 so by the law of bigger-number-better I should be good. 

[DANGERMAN]

either this is exaggerated, which does happen from time to time, or certainly used to quite a bit, or high settings are insane. Which is possible I suppose, but from what we've seen of the game so far it doesn't look like 1080p/60 should be a struggle

 

Given the fuss over it being 30fps on console, if the PC market is going to struggle to run it well, this might be a bit of a bomb. I mean it's Batman (kind of) in the run up to christmas, so it won't completely fail, but I've not heard a lot of excitement for this, and you don't play as Batman

 

doom mongering aside, I might still get this eventually, it's really not tempted me yet

[AndyKurosaki]

My PS5 version is on the way. I’m optimistic about it. It could turn out to be a dud, true. But hell, it won’t be anywhere near as disappointing as Saints Row. So I’ll be optimistic. For now 😄

[DisturbedSwan]

Reviews:

 

OpenCritic

 

Metacritic

 

 

[Maf]

Oof. That Metacritic score is below 70 now.

 

I will probably still play this before the end of the year, because I like what they’re going for, and I want to play as Batgirl. But expectations firmly adjusted. 

[Maf]

IGN have a nice technical breakdown here

 

 

Twitter was right it’s just a badly optimised game - but on any platform. The person in the video says it isn’t a GPU or CPU issue on any platform it’s just badly made. Consoles can’t maintain 30fps, even when they do the frame pacing is bad, and even on a 3090 and big CPU the game can’t maintain 60fps at 4K. 
 

Maybe they can patch it but sounds like console might just be the easiest way to go for now. It’s kind of fucked no matter what you do/

[mmmark]