Batman: Arkham Knight may have gotten off to a rough start when it launched in 2015 but it seems to be faring better than its spiritual successor. Batman: Arkham Knight was released for PC and consoles nearly a decade ago and despite it too being a game that was pulled from a major online retailer shortly after launch due to an incredibly buggy and unoptimized state it eventually reached a point where PC owners could enjoy it. Now fast forward back to the present time and while Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League may not have launched in a similar state, two weeks in it still hasn’t managed to gain enough momentum to overtake its predecessor. A glance at the current Steam charts shows somewhat surprising, and at least for Rocksteady Studios, depressing figures.
According to Steam (1, 2), not only has the nearly ten-year-old game recently had more online players than Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, it’s all-time peak is essentially double. Ironically enough the latter’s release coincides with a renewed interest in the former’s as can be seen in the bottom chart. Now that last part shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given that the developers have said the new game does take place after the events of Batman: Arkham Knight and that there are easter eggs, or traces, of the events from that game to be found throughout Gotham and sequel games often trigger nostalgic revisits of their predecessors.
Unfortunately though, at least for now, it seems that Rocksteady’s latest offering, which has been criticized as being a game-as-a-service (GAAS) despite the developer stating that the only purchasable offerings are optional cosmetic items, appears to be off to a slow start.
The End of An Era
Batman: Arkham Knight marked the end of an era on several levels. It was the ending for the award-winning Arkham Trilogy and featured one of the last voiceovers from the legendary Kevin Conroy who passed in 2022, alongside Mark Hammil as The Joker. It also marked the end of multi-GPU support for the franchise, which up until then had been something PC gamers had enjoyed the benefits of, and led to a very rocky start since many couldn’t enjoy a 60 FPS experience with the game even at 1080p back in 2015. After many patches, and eventually powerful enough GPUs and other PC hardware becoming available, the game has managed to age well and attract new players.
Discussion (4 replies)
Join Discussion →It's definitely not a spiritual successor. If you've seen the game this is not surprising at all. Boring repetitive focused on a singular shooting mechanic. And to add insult to injury it disrespects the characters. In other words it shows all the symptoms of a game made for "modern audiences". Just like the saints row reboot.
Yep, never played SSKTJL and am not likely going to. They did try panning it off as a kind of sequel for the "Gotham-verse" but I think we all had our doubts about that. I admit I never got too far into BMAK but have always wanted to get back to it. I think I maybe was about 25% before I moved on to something else but always felt like I should get back to it.
I did, however, recently revisit Arkham City a few months back when I did a little 3D gaming on my old 2080 Ti/ASUS 1440p 3D 27", and that was fun. On a technical level that game is still very impressive for the things it supports. Even played it for a bit on my laptop that has 2x 980m GPUs in SLI. This game, for me, is the one that is probably the best of anything so far for DC, although I know a lot of folks feel that way about Asylum.
I gave up on the third arkham game due to the stupid steaklth missions with the car, I hate those kinds of missions and it makes no sence to do them with a car.
a CAR A CAR... It's the BATMOBILE IT CAN DO ANYTHING! ;)