Batman Arkham Knight

[JudgeDredd]

Anyone buying in?

I know it's early - but I'm interested in impressions

[tgb]

I'm not interested in getting it myself, but I've read in a few places that there are frame rate issues, and in general it's a pretty crappy port.  Common wisdom seems to be to wait for a few patches.

[undercovergeek]

its broken

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/23/arkham-knight-pc-framerate/

[Jarhead0331]

I love the word "kerfuffle"...

I bought it. I'll install tonight and see what happens.

[JudgeDredd]

its broken

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/23/arkham-knight-pc-framerate/

oooh. There could be lots of reasons for that. But that wasn't enjoyable to watch.

I will get it eventually to go with my other Batman games - but I kind of made myself a lame promise I wouldn't buy it until I played the others.

The problem with that promise is pCars and The Witcher III are stealing my time.

[undercovergeek]

its broken

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/23/arkham-knight-pc-framerate/

oooh. There could be lots of reasons for that. But that wasn't enjoyable to watch.

I will get it eventually to go with my other Batman games - but I kind of made myself a lame promise I wouldn't buy it until I played the others.

The problem with that promise is pCars and The Witcher III are stealing my time.

And exploding my men seems quite high on the list

[JudgeDredd]

Oh yes - I forgot that. 

I think you may have it at least in damage to the enemy though!

[JasonPratt]

I prebought it about a month ago.

I preloaded it yesterday.

And this afternoon.

It's apparently still installing. After preloading. Or something. "Busy writing to disk."

In theory I'll hold out a week or so to get initial patching out of the way. Historically the Arkham series hasn't ported to PC very well, but I don't have any options other than buying an Xbone or a PS4. The first two games ended up sufficiently stable; I played them through on their PC ports last year. Haven't even tried Origins, despite deep sale discounts, due to its terrible reputation. (I mean on PC; I've played it at least twice on PS3, plus once for the Mr. Freeze origin story sequel DLC, and it's perfectly fine, possibly even my favorite of the three games by a slight edge.)

[Jarhead0331]

I NEVER preload anymore. It takes forever in the first place and then, once the game unlocks, I still end up waiting forever for it to get ready for action. I have no idea what the hell it is doing while I wait, sometimes over an hour for it to "unlock". It seems to just add an extra step while providing no discernible advantage.

[Huw the Poo]

Decrypting?

[JasonPratt]

Some of the complaints I've seen on Steam probably come from not realizing the game has finished preloading and is now doing... whatever. It's possible the game is preloading but not actually installing. Whatever it is, it took no less than 30 minutes after it finished downloading. If possible, find a Blu or DVD or whatever hard media it might come on, is my recommendation.

Initial impressions:

1.) Spent a good hour messing around with the gfx options. I have a boss computer but I really didn't get a steady 30ps minimum framerate until I deactivated quite a few things, despite my Physx(tm) being set to one of my SLI GPUs, and not the main one either, and went down to a 900 resolution (if I recall correctly). On the other hand, the game takes place in the rain, and the gameplay looks a LOT like the prelude fight with the Arkham City security goons with which Rocksteady promoted ArkCity. This is kind of a good thing?

I will add that it's possible I'm running a bit handicapped as I usually don't upgrade my NVIDIA drivers with "3D" code, thinking that this is for 3D monitors; some recent comments I read indicate otherwise. Unfortunately I apparently can't reinstall my drivers, so I won't be able to fully upgrade those until the next release.

As other people have noted, the gfx options are only partially found in any one place, be that the in-game options, or NVIDIA's optimization screen or even in an ini file: a number of options like reflections are found there and can be turned off (or on) manually. Why these aren't graphics options in game is insane.

Early code seemed locked at 30fps, but at least one very small hotfix has already been released (not much more than 300Kb! -- and then around a 10 Meg patch), which I suspect changes the ini file to deactivate the cap or at least set it to 120fps or higher. It may also set the graphics options to all their lowest settings (aside from 720 p resolution) -- at least my game started that way! Testing the video performance at the lowest 720p settings yielded framerates around 120.


2.) Facial models are dead. Previous games used a lot of facial animations, but this game doesn't. It's hugely distracting, although the worst I've seen is on Harley Quinn during her prelude DLC mission. Her face literally never moves even when she's in a dialogue cut scene. It's like all her nerves have been severed.


3.) Also, there's some kind of game-killing bug before the second fight in that small prelude mission, where the tutorial stops you from moving her for a brief scene and then when it comes back she can't be walked around any more. Setting the joker box (per the tutorial) moves the mission along, but doesn't unlock her to move, and she gets shot every time. On the other hand, it's... inadvertently funny?... that she seems to get her gear from, well, under her skirt. ;)

Her voice actress hasn't been Sorkin now since the first Arkham game, although one of the usual Diniverse animation crew (the one who does Barbara Gordan I think) stepped up in fine fashion for the second and third (prequel) games. Whoever is doing her voicework now, for the DLC mission anyway, is JUST TERRIBLE! Painfully bad. Beyond caricature. (I can't decide if it helps or hurts that the writers seem to have decided she should think she's an anime loli, complete with pseudo kung fu language when she fights.)


3.) To the actual story and gameplay so far. The game allows you to play with any suits already unlocked, from the beginning, rather than making you wait for a New Game Plus. Since I bought the Season Pass, a version of the Batman Beyond suit was already unlocked, and looks swass as hell.  (Though a little low tech compared to some other versions of the suit, but that's okay -- I suspect the game is setting up for a transition to Beyond.) Since his facial animations are almost as bad as Harley's, I almost kept him in this suit which (very logically) covers the bottom of his face with black cloth (through which his jaw is still slightly visible on closeup btw.)

The standard suit starts out as a slight upgrade from the Arkham City suit, and already looks worn (though not degraded) when the game starts. Another reason I went back to this standard one, is so that it makes some kind of difference when (according to promotional footage) he upgrades later to a more armored and blacker suit.


4.) The city looks great, possibly better than previously (possibly due to the rain and wet-shiny effects, which may be why the devs hid the ability to turn that off). The game map looks small, maybe smaller than Arkham City per se, but I suspect it unlocks later.


5.) Kevin Conroy is back in fine form as Batman. "If you're lying to me, I'll break the other one." "...wh-what other owWAAH!" {crack}  I wish the producers would settle on someone to play Gordon's voice; the previous ones have all been fine, this one is clearly going for that guy from Breaking Bad (might even be him), but something seems off with his delivery. I can't tell for sure yet if he's the narrator, which is weird (and not helped by the subtitles calling the narrator "the narrator"). I keep thinking, they should have hired Peter Cullen: if I'm going to be oddly distracted by the voice, and if this is being sold as the last Arkham game (with Batman anyway, tacitly thus as Conroy's last outing at least in a game), then I'd rather be distracted by my computer being set on fire by the sheer awesome of Optimus Prime being Commissioner Gordon. Oh well.


6.) At least some of the dev team and writers are on the ball. When a wounded policeman asks Batman what he's doing staring down at the street after an armored car attacks them and Batman whisks him to safety, he growls: "Evening the odds." He's calling the Batmobile. The visual UI cue for this reads: "Even the odds." 


7.) I don't want to spoil too much of the plot [LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED PRIOR GAMES UP THROUGH AT LEAST ARKHAM CITY!!] -- I assume everyone knows from basic promotional material by now that the game starts with Scarecrow's "City of Fear" plan being teased back in ArkCity. The opening few minutes are just great, as someone (presumably Gordon? -- the "narrator" anyway) cremates the body of the Joker, which the player is expected to interact doing (without hints about what's expected), and then we step into the shoes of a beat cop taking a coffee break in Pauli's Diner (near another store named "Dini's" something -- that's maybe a little overkill on the honoring of Paul Dini as writer for the games and for the DCAU Batman series), which is wonderfully decorated like in the 50s. With Halloween approaching. Soon the city is evacuating due to a terror threat, leaving only the cops (who are somehow overworked once 6.5 million people are mostly gone??) and the gangs who don't seem too worried about the Scarecrow's threat. The Penguin (who looks a lot older for only being nine months after Arkham City -- and Harley doesn't seem at all pregnant btw, in her prelude mission) has teamed up with Two Face. Ivy is somehow connected to the threat, since the Penguin is actually working with Scarecrow and asked Harley to break Ivy out of Iron Heights (where supervillains are being kept while Arkham City is being renovated) specifically to help the Scarecrow, which makes a ton of sense. (This is mentioned in the broken prelude mission, or the first 20% of it anyway before the game breaking bug -- the mission itself is to free Ivy.) The stated goal in Harley's DLC for what's happening in the main game is specifically to kill Batman, so this is all a plot to draw him out and overwhelm him with a supervillain invasion. (The game itself calls it a supervillain invasion somewhere in its written descriptions for who various characters are and what's up with them since ArkCity.)

This leads me to expect that the developers are going to pull out all the stops and bring back pretty much everyone from prior games for a grand finale. At the end of which, according to "the narrator", "This is how it happened. This is how the Batman died." (More likely he's going to retire, even though if anything he looks younger each game as time goes on, but whatever.)

[JasonPratt]

I will add that as much as I've been complaining about the dreadful lack of facial animations, some minor characters do well enough -- Barbara Gordon for one -- and now Batman sees a projected b/w video of her coming up from his arm when he's talking to her, not merely a radio signal.

This at first thought seemed stupid since it's the very reverse of stealthy; but on a closer look, the programmers/artists took the time to show little hints that it's really just being projected onto his eyes. So we, the camera, are seeing it as he's seeing it, and ALSO seeing what's really happening, at the same time.

Also, I'm sure my framerate would have been improved even more if I had turned off not only dynamic spotlights (what?) and dynamic rain (which is pretty dynamic anyway) and dynamic paper (for when people walk around, they don't just walk on 'paper' floor decals now, some of the decals peel off and flump away), but also dynamic vapor.

But the 3D dynamic vapor looks seriously cool. When people run through it, the vapor boils around and follows in their wake depending on their mass. This also happens when the Batmobile is burning rubber (or whatever it's doing), although usually the player can't see that due to how the camera works. But the performance test shows that off. 

[Jarhead0331]

It's pretty unplayable for me right now. It's frustrating because when I'm on the ground, I get acceptable frame rates. It is mostly when I'm gliding or grappling through sky that the fps starts to chug. It needs to be patched for sure.

[Arctic Blast]

Mine apparently decided it needed to reinstall itself and started over again from 0%. Woo. F*cking woo. 

[JudgeDredd]

That is a HUGE post Jason. Thanks.  O0

Harley Quinn pulling her kit out her skirt (which is incredibly short anyway) is funny! I only really played the first one through to (near) the end...but I thought HQ's voice in that was superb.

As for no facial animations - she's probably had Botox. All the kids are doing it! 

I'll wait. As I said, I have the other games to complete....so it's going to be a while before I get to this one.