Here's my review of the game UP to end game. (after credits roll) I'll have separate impressions on end game once I put some time into it today.
Let's start with the easiest thing to complement the game on - visuals. There is some odd screenshots/videos floating about where the game looks muted or flat. Anyone in this thread who has played it can back it up that the game looks fantastic. Lots of detail in character's, nice sky box(albeit oddly fast moving clouds?), long draw distances, better water in the ocean that Spiderman 2 which tended to look like jello, and more. There's some issues on PS5 with shadows on small hair strands on character's faces. Particle effects are bright and vibrant. Facial animation is also great in regards to the visuals. Basically, 0 issues with the visuals, and some of the best out there. Is it better looking than the last Arkham game? In some areas sure, and in some areas no. Both have different approaches, and I would bet that it's different leads who were in charge of this. This game has a day night cycle and various weather effects too. Metropolis is also a much brighter city overall with various parts looking different than others, and Gotham is super consistent same same throughout. Character models are hit and miss compared to Arkham. In cut scenes they go toe to toe. In game though it seems they were able to pump out more detail in Batman because you have 4 players and fast movement with far more enemies on screen at once to take into account than Batman. It's dealers choice though --- both look great.
Next up is sound. While the voice acting and sound effects are all well done, the actual soundtrack is extremely forgettable. There is NO good music in this game. Whoever was in charge of the soundtrack took no liberty to have fun with it. If you told me they paid $5 for a license of garbage tracks from someone I'd believe you.
0 performance issues on PS5. 60FPS and never noticed a drop if there was one. Seemed to be 1440P upscaled to 4K? I had 1 bug where the game after a mission locked to single digit fps and caused me to reboot the game. Obviously launch issues existed with game auto completing for first time players, game brought down for maintenance to fix it, etc. That seems to all be fixed.
Online functionality is well implemented. Easy to get into games with friends, drop in drop out, had no lag issues. Friends come in as THEIR version of a character, and join you on the activity you're doing. No complaints here.
Character customization is a bit of a miss. What's here for clothes, hair, and gun attachments, etc is nice, but very limited. Plenty to unlock, but most of it is just color swaps. I'm surprised more costumes weren't included in the base game when compared to even Gotham Knights which had plenty more. My guess, and everyone else's... WB came in with the "make it all DLC" stick. Not sure when their store updates, but it would be a shame if all future cosmetics are behind a paywall because there just isn't enough here, and I've unlocked it all except Twitch drop skins.
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Now let's dive deep into the real meat and potatoes here. The various gameplay elements and the story, of which story is easiest to discuss.
Story has hit and miss writing. It made me laugh a few times, and the delivery of lines from every single person is on point to the character they are portraying. Boomerang is clearly the standout and was given the best material. The story itself is self contained, easy to digest, fairly predictable if you've followed the game at all, or even made assumptions. It's not going out to be serious or have some crazy twists. There isn't much of a difference here between this and Spiderman 2. It's all predictable comic book affair. My biggest gripe is the ending, and in general the final boss fight. They basically recycled an earlier fight with an extra element to it. Super lazy shit and it needed to be something standout. I played the whole game on hard mode and this was a cake walk when other parts of the game were not. A certain character death was flat, and should've been redone to be more epic. I get what they were going for, but they didn't stick the landing at all. Overall, it's more of a story of "moments" rather than the whole package. Mileage will vary obviously here, but it was serviceable.
Gameplay has a lot to tackle here, because this is clearly where the developers went and spent those 8 years or whatever, and focused delays on.
First up skill trees. There's good amounts of choice here, but I imagine there's a "min max" version to each character. Sometimes you pick between 2 options as you level, or 3. Each is geared towards different play styles. Defensive, offensive, certain weapon focuses, more damages under X criteria, etc. Once you hit max level with a character a "paragon board" of sorts opens where you can boost specific stats and it combines ALL character levels past 30 into it. I saw things like more % overall health to all characters, shields, damage with certain weapons, and more. They've created just enough carrot here and variety to try to build your own version of a character this way.
In addition to the skill trees we have the customization aspects of your load outs. You'll by the end of the game get access to several elemental afflictions you can cause like shock, freeze, burn, etc that you can be infused into items. Weapons themselves have various perks that get rolled on them, and legendary/notorious/infamy items have unique ones with often "buff at the cost of nerf" kind of choices to make. An example could be this weapon does no damage to grunts, but does 300% more to these types of enemies instead. Legendary weapons also level up as you use them. Allowing you to spend points to buff things like accuracy, mag clip, etc. Melee weapons, grenades, charms, movement mods, etc all lead to a strong level of depth here. This is all VERY well done.
Moment to moment gunplay and traversal IMO various in fun per character. Deadshot for example is the basic bitch of the group. He's the easiest to pilot, has access to snipers, AR, and pistol, and is ... boring AF. My opinion. Then you have someone like Captain Boomerang who is teleporting all over the place, gets shotguns and snipers as well as smgs, allowing you to cause chaos all over the screen. Harley movement always felt "slow" compared to the rest of the pack, but online leaderboards show she's actually the most successful character. Gunplay feels slick though. It is awesome to teleport as Boomer to chuck a nade, jump into a shotty blast, come down sliding into a SMG tear, then rip enemies shields, before launching one of your super abilities. It all flows and feels so damn good. They nailed it.
However, gunplay is only as good as what you fight. While the enemy variety was fine to reach the end credits, I worry about end game. None of these enemies are particularly smart or require thought in the open world. Where the thought comes into play is when you are doing the missions. Often there is a modifier of some kind causing you to have to engage in specific ways. "enemies only take damage from grenades" "enemies only take damage from critical hits, and other hits heal" etc. The second one I just mentioned is great because you have to focus on headshots/weak spots to be efficient. I listed before the enemy types, but unless it's a behemoth, tank, or sniper, you'll likely just mow it down instantly. The COOL thing I got last night near end game is now upon completing a certain set of tasks, a hit squad is sent after me to kill me. These enemies once killed lead to BIG DICK loot, and seemed more aggressive than the usual bunch at least in their approach.
This leads to the issue at hand mentioned above which is mission variety. It isn't as obnoxious as Gotham Knights in doing the same tasks SO many times, or an Ubisoft open world game where they have 20+ of the same thing, but I think I did 5 of each mission type at least. The opening 5ish hours have no repetition then it starts to cycle them. Missions can include getting data shards from killing enemies to add to a bus, extract civilians in time to a bus, clearing out shield generators, taking out giant cannons via weak spots, etc. There isn't enough variety, and unless end game super spices up more activities or adding substantial spins to these, it won't be a game you revisit except when a new season hits to see the new story chunk/fight a boss. When you play a game like Destiny you have a LOT you can do, but I look back at Destiny 1.0 launch or Destiny 2 1.0 launch, and it was barebones to say the least. The saving grace of that franchise was raids. This game doesn't have raids, and I would argue without Raids that Destiny would've never got far to begin with. You look at Destiny 2 now and after many years there is content shooting out the gills from it, but that was years and years of work to get there. The way this game is set up is it looks like they planned with the idea of 3 years of content based off of what happens in the ending of this game if you break it down into one season a quarter per year.
Which leads to everyone's concern who is enjoying the game --- was it successful enough and can it remain successful enough to see its whole content roadmap through? I doubt it, and so I'll just enjoy it until it runs its course. I could be totally wrong here and maybe sales are through the roof, or the end game is so superb it draws in a long lasting hardcore community to keep the game afloat. Who knows? Time will tell.
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Lastly where does this game stack up to counterparts? I find it better than Gotham knights. I find it MUCH better than Avengers. I would say it's not on the level of Diablo 4 or Destiny 2. I won't even get into PoE which is leagues ahead of most all seasonal content games.
I give it a 8/10. If you want to go in to have fun solo or with a friend/s until end game which would be about 17-20 hours, then you should come out enjoying it. Is this a must play in Q1 2024? Nope. Not with games like Prince of Persia, Yakuza, Persona , Tekken, and FF7 Rebirth all here to play. (FF7 to come) But if you find yourself curious beyond February, or we hit the usual summer drought, the game is on sale, a buddy wants to play with you, go for it. Overall it's a fun game, but for many this could be a 6-7/10 experience depending on the character you lock yourself to, if the story/writing does anything for you, and how easily you see behind the curtain of "oh I'm doing this activity again, but only a small change?"