Gotham Knights has a great premise for a co-op action-adventure through Gotham City - Batman's dead and it's up to the extended Batfamily to pick up the crime-fighting mantle. But it doesn't take long for the misguided live-service style RPG design, bland repetition, clunky combat, and poor performance, to make you yearn for an actual Arkham series co-op spin-off.

A snippet.

As a setup for a co-op-filled crime-fighting adventure into the rain, neon, steam, and smoke-filled streets of Gotham at night - it’s pretty easy to be swept up in the premise of Gotham Knights. Take your pick of the four aforementioned proteges listed above, team up with another player, and take-down syndicates and streetcorner thugs using combat inspired by the popular Batman Arkham series of games.

Structurally, Gotham Knights is sound - with no more Batcave, the Belfry serves as the operations hub to visit before and after each night venturing into the open-world Gotham. Here you’ll meet familiar faces or take on main missions and various side missions that evolve, progress, and change over time.

It’s a shame then, that Gotham Knights is aggressively mediocre and outright bad in just about every way imaginable. From the clunky, slow, and button-mash combat that feels more like a Ninja Turtles arcade game (and a bad one at that) than an extension of the Arkham series, to the grapple-filled traversal that is imprecise and unpredictable. Being able to glide or even fast-travel to different districts doesn’t unlock for several hours and requires completing repetitive tasks so that you can move about in a way that isn’t annoying-grapple-only or on a slow-as-hell but cool-looking cycle.

Our Full Gotham Knights Review