Its been a while since I last played Arkham Knight, mostly because I find the racetracks to be dull, but luckily they still release actual story content from time to time and this time we get 2 episodes: Catwoman's Revenge and Flip of Coin for Robin. I just completed these two stories and figured I'd do a two for one review. Ready? Go!
Catwoman's Revenge picks up after the events of the main game where *spoiler alert* we find Selina getting revenge on Riddler while he's in jail for all the stuff he did to her durin
g the main story. I know that's a very short summary but this is a very, very short adventure. I'm talking like 15 mins if you know what you are doing and it definitely feels the designers knew this because they try to pad the game length but adding things to the combat. No, I don't mean adding a new mechanic, I mean they decided to bring back the electric platforms and robots and combine them into a stage; I hope you are really, really good at the combat because if you aren't you'll have some frustrations for sure. I am pretty good at the combat and even I had to have multiple restarts because she would attack an enemy off screen and it would be standing a platform and the animation would be so long that I'd be electrocuted before I finished, with no way to break out of the animation. Oh did I mention they added lasers? Yeah, so you have to fight on a electrified platform (that increase the amount of electric platforms and reduces the amount of normal ones to the point where you have like 4 squares of movement) against robots while dodging lasers. What's your reward for all that? Nothing. Sure Selina comes out on top but all you really did was solve a basic puzzle and fight, there was no real meat to this story. Again, it is a pretty breezy experience but it ultimately doesn't have a good enough pay off to warrant a second play-through, hell it barely warranted the first one. Don't expect to do anything after the story either, no collectibles to be found in this adventure.
In Robin's first DLC solo since Arkham City, you're tasked with recapturing Two-Face. Once again, not much going on here in terms of story as its pretty straightforward too. The beginning of the game has you taking enemies out ala predator mode, followed by a second half that is pretty much a straight up fight. There was one part that I found pretty nice where Tim has to devise a way to take out 3 armed guards covered by turrets but other than that there aren't any really memorable moments. I know it's picking up from where the main game left off but the relationship between Tim and Barbara didn't feel right to me in the game and that hasn't changed here. Throughout their dialogue I never got a sense of chemistry between the two and the voice acting here really seems phoned in. Not to mention that once again in the final confrontation you don't really do anything; it's just 2 set pieces, a qte and that's it. Oh and like in Catwoman, don't expect to collect anything or find anything else to do because once you are done, you're done.
Overall I have to say I am disappointed with the quality of both DLC's as I feel like they could have been so much more. I know it would be a lot to ask of the design team to create a fully fleshed out story seeing as they don't have access to all those assets like before, but I know they can do better than this. It took a total of 40 mins to complete both of these stories and that is just way too short. I thought after "A Matter of Family" that they would keep it up the quality but Rocksteady really dropped the ball on this one. I can only hope that a "Season of Villainy" will quench my Batman thirst, otherwise I fear that Arkham Knight will have been a giant wasted opportunity.
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