While there is a story here that makes me wonder where the heck all this is going, I was less optimistic about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League when I stopped playing than when I started. Here’s hoping it wins me back when it releases on February 2nd.
For me Arkham Knight was also not a super great game mechanics wise and some odd tonal story takes, I was wondering why the nation wouldn't send the army to just nuke such a place. But what did make it an outstanding experience was the whole atmosphere. The city looked and felt exactly like when I visited a Batman real life set. It oozed "Batman" from every possible angle any minute of my playtime. Voice acting, set pieces, everything was screaming, this is exactly as much Batman as it can get. Now, we are left with the okay-ish mechanics and seemingly none of the heart what sold the experience. But I will wait for the release to give Suicide Squad a chance before dismantling it into obscurity.
Its interesting to hear that you didnt find the mechanics satisfactory. I've always felt that Knight had the best iteration of both combat and predator mechanics (the ability to consistently freeflow onto enemies lying on the ground without dropping your combo is neat, and so is the fear multi-takedown and disruptor shenanigans). Knight's primary failing in my opinion is that it made all of these good gameplay upgrades.....and then made 75% of the game batmobile tank sections which were all shit.
I actually really enjoyed the game, but with the mechanics I felt there were situations were the controls were overloaded and my character did often things he shouldn't. I think the DLC with the funfair?, showed it the most. Some of the invisible snap points were mapped poorly. I don't remember all the details by this point, but it was slightly janky. When the mechanics did work as intended it was great.
I love the controls in Knight, when I was playing I knew all the quick shortcuts for the gadgets, was properly countering three at a time including holding direction towards each enemy when counting and everything it was bliss. Are you sure you just weren't a little unfamiliar with them? Because I remember then being meticulous.
God I can't believe they shoved the batmobile in there and put such a focus on it, it really detracted from the rest of the game.
I don’t know if it detracted from the game but that tank definitely didn’t add much of anything. The sections that used it were very boring and I never once felt challenged to play differently with it. I feel that way but I also think the tank fit in to the theme and world just fine. Nothing felt cooler than rolling into the police underground and parking it before heading inside.
I still think the game is a masterpiece and has the best 3rd person combat in a game I’ve played. Mad max is a close second though. Knight was a perfection of the Arkham combat system.
It definitely detracted, there's a boss fight against Deathstroke (takes over the militia after Arkham Knight is taken care of in the story) but instead of an amazing fight you get chased around in the batmobile, it's a shit joke.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the Batmobile itself, just how much of a focus was on it. I didn't even dislike the tank combat, other than repetition. The first scene and arriving at GCHQ are extremely cool, they just put way too much of the batmobile stuff in.
My other disappointment is that they insisted Arkham Knight was a new character, but I'd already figured out who it was before the game released, so the "reveal" of Todd in game was more like a reveal of their lie. Outside of that and too much batmobile that game is absolutely phenomenal.
Funnily enough Mad Max had much better vehicular combat. If you want a similar (melee) combat system to these two that's also very well done, Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor (the first one, not Shadow of War) is fantastic for it. The second one kinda fumbles expanding on it in my opinion (it didn't do so much expand on it as split it up into play styles, so you had less stuff available to you at any moment), but the first game's combat is fantastic.
I completely forgot about that boss fight (for good reason apparently). So that’s a good point.
And yeah, Warner really had some people cranking out amazing combat through that one singular system. I played both Middle Earth games and you’re spot on. It’s cool to see how the same system is taken in different directions in each one. The current final evolution of it is in the newer Spider-Man games which have added quite a bit to it. That’s another strong recommendation because I see so much of what the Arkham series started being brought back around in Spider-Man. Even the perch takedown system is there in a way.