A Not So Full Review — Batman: Arkham Knight [PC]

Batman: Arkham Knight

We Tried To Sit Down And Review Batman: Arkham Knight but sadly the PC version has made that impossibility. Here’s what I have to say on the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight

I received my copy of Batman: Arkham Knight when I bought my new GTX 960 SCC 4GB edition. I had never played the previous three Arkham games or any spin-offs and was quite looking forward to diving in to such a praised franchise from Rocksteady Games to review it without having the others to compare it to. Though after spending a day downloading the game… it crashed on startup.

I’m not the only one who has been burned by the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight. Nearly the whole community has had troubles to the point that it isn’t even available to buy on PC. While it is unfortunate I feel like it’s a step in the right direction in the gaming community. Thankfully Steam has implemented a refund policy and people have not been afraid to use it in the wake of the horrible launch here for Batman: Arkham Knight. Seeing how much money is being lost the developers have pulled the game completely in a scramble to fix the game. It feels liberating to know that the next time we get a launch like Battlefield 4, where the game is buggy and nearly broken, if we rock the boat hard enough to pull our money back and scare the developers into fixing it.

Over the past few days I’ve seen a few articles with unnamed developers saying “You can’t ship it if it doesn’t work or the quality isn’t right.” It’s usually an empty promise, but at least it feels more genuine in the wake of the Batman: Arkham Knight launch on PC.

As for when I will be able to bring you an honest review for Arkham Knight; that is up in the air. Warner Bros. have put out several notices that they are working hard with AMD and NVidia to fix the issues of Batman: Arkham Knight though. As soon as I am able to launch the game without it crashing almost instantly on startup, I will be digging right in. Even if they haven’t fixed all the problems by then the community deserves to know that Batman: Arkham Knight isn’t any good or if the game is very good minus a few graphical hiccups.

Since I can’t review the game I would like to take a small amount of time to review a few other things.

Firstly Steam refunds. Ten out of ten. It took the competition and national laws for Valve to finally implement some sort of way for people who primarily get their games through digital means, which is the majority of us, to not get completely burned by things like this or games that are just bad overall. It’s just unfortunate that it had to happen to such an anticipated title like Batman: Arkham Knight in this case.

Secondly is Warner Bros. response to the problem. I am split and on whether I like or dislike it. It’s very mixed on the positives and negatives, though it is nice that they care enough to rectify the Arkham Knight situation and not just run away with all the money. Even if it is because we now have a way to fight things like that via Steam refund or they genuinely care I am still looking forward to when I get to play Batman: Arkham Knight.

If you have any thoughts on the subject feel free to leave a comment below and stay tuned for a full review of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC once all of the issues get sorted out and fixed for us all.