Astral Rag
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The Arkham Knight Re-Release Isn’t Going Down Well
By Alec Meer on October 29th, 2015 at 10:26 am.
Last night’s re-release of the troubled PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight [official site] tries to fix two things: one is the misbehaving technology, and the other is the reputation. The game was pulled off Steam in June after a torrent of complaints, refund requests and negative customer reviews. No doubt its makers had hoped the Steam reviews would turn positive come this much-anticipated update, but it seems the opposite is happening – the new version has new problems, and the negative reviews are pouring in once again.
A question mark had long hung over what would happen about the thousands of original negative Steam reviews once the game was restored to sale, and now we know: they’re still there, and the game’s reception is currently labelled ‘mixed’ on Steam (with 9,600 negative and 8,400 positive at the time of writing). Initially, Steam stuck a big yellow button on any reviews posted prior to yesterday declaring that they referred to a ‘Pre-Release’ version of the game. Um, no.
Mercifully that misleading label has now been removed, which means ol’ Bats is back to being adorned with thousands of negative reviews. And, unfortunately for publisher Warner and developer Rocksteady, quite a few of those are brand new. There is a steady stream of new positive reviews too, but right now the balance appears to be more towards the nays.
While there is very probably some degree of kicking a man when he’s down going on, Arkham Knight’s re-release is most certainly not in the robust shape it should have been after all this time. As I wrote yesterday, there’s some sort of issue with paging which means the official advice is to restart the game if it stutters under Windows 7, while Windows 10 players are advised to have at least 12GB of RAM. No other game, to the best of my knowledge, has that requirement. On top of that, there’s no official SLI or Crossfire support, and people without ridiculous systems are reporting all sorts of other issues too, including crashes and low frame-rates. This does seem poor form after three theoretical months of fixing – especially when the new release has made a point of putting a ton of paid DLC up for sale. Shouldn’t the base game have been sorted out before being nickel’n’dimed?
At this point, it’s almost impossible to separate out the righteous grievances from the purely vengeful – all in the negative mix together are people with noses still out of joint about the initial borked release and the long wait, people who got fed up with all the Batmobile busywork, people who are annoyed that many of the most desirable paid Batmobile DLC skins only work in the racing mini-games and not the main game, and people who have decided that Warner offering free copies of all previous Arkham games as an apology is insulting. There’s a lot of anger in the reviews, even by Steam’s oft-shouty standards, and for my money at least a portion of it is driven more by offended principle than fact.
That said, the new version of Arkham Knight is not exactly a revelatory experience on my PC. I’ve got a Windows 10 system running a GTX 970, a 4GHz i7 and 8GB RAM, and oh boy, the stuttering is no fun. I wouldn’t actually call it deal-breaking, but it is extremely distracting, and the new graphical options sadly haven’t reinstated enough eye-pleasing goodness to take the sting away. I’m not about to go out and drop £30-odd on upgrading as I will see quite literally zero benefit from it in anything else I use my PC for, and frankly I’m finding this particular game increasingly tedious anyway.
In any case, 12GB (and the restart advice in Windows 7) simply doesn’t seem like a reasonable ask: no other game needs it, the stuttering/paging issue doesn’t exist in the console versions of the game, and those boxes certainly don’t have 12GB. (However, it must be said that Xbone and PS4 use RAM in a very different way to PCs, especially as they don’t have a honking great version of Windows chewing up a portion of it).
We’ll have to see how the dust settles in a few days, as more and more folk get their hands on the game and whether the game receives more updates. Even if the storm of negativity continues, I can’t imagine Warner pulling the game for a second time – surely they’d just decide to call it a write-off were that the case?
More positively, Arkham Knight is now $10 cheaper than it was at first launch. I would argue that it needs some rapid patching to justify charging even $50, however.
http://steamcommunity.com/games/208650/announcements/detail/128710596358664118
So, as compensation for a shit launch we're getting
- Games we already own
- A couple of new challenge maps
- TF2 hats!
Although free challenge maps is always welcome as long as they're freeflow combat/predator and not Batmobile.
16 GB is not really a big deal, but this game is definitely not enough to warrant such an upgrade. No environments or systems in the game are grand or complex enough to require 12 GB to run smoothly if designed by somewhat competent programmers. It is a console open world game, and as best I can tell, it keeps any remotely complex areas sectioned off from the rest of the environment, as in the previous games. What a bunch of idiots.
It takes balls to suggest 12 GB for this turd when no other game on the market asks for that. What's sadder is some are actually defending this... one idiot on the Steam forums said 8GB has been obsolete/low end for a while now and that he has 16GB back in 2011.
Say what? Oh my god. I thought it was a nothing gift before, but now ...Those "free copies" are not even giftable BTW
There are still Batman fans who don't already own those games? I mean they've been on sale for pennies numerous times, those "free copies" are not even giftable BTW, that small fact alone should tell you everything you need to know about those hacks.
Are you kidding me? The fuck am i supposed to do with copies of games i already have then?
Announcement on Refunds
31 October - Yorick
We are very sorry that many of our customers continue to be unhappy with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight. We worked hard to get the game to live up to the standard you deserve but understand that many of you are still experiencing issues.
Until the end of 2015, we will be offering a full refund on Batman: Arkham Knight PC, regardless of how long you have played the product. You can also return the Season Pass along with the main game (but not separately). For those of you that hold onto the game, we are going to continue to address the issues that we can fix and talk to you about the issues that we cannot fix.
Thank you,
Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment
EDIT BY VALVE: For users still running into playtime based refund rejections, we are looking into what is causing those. Please wait to re-submit your refund until we have this resolved. Thank you.
Console-tards meanwhile, enjoyed the conclusion of the Arkham Buttman series in all it's glory.
Shame, I was waiting so long for this. Is there any chance if my PC runs Arkham City well I can run this without game breaking issues? I am ok with minor glitches, and am willing to quit and restart if framerate slows down after a few hours of play. I don't play games for too long at a time anymore anyways, just short bursts, typically over weekends.
Arkham City requirements and Arkham Knight reqs have nothing to do with each other. I ran City like a dream and Knight ran such crap I had to buy a whole new computer.Is there any chance if my PC runs Arkham City well I can run this without game breaking issues?
Gameplay may be best in series, leaving aside the sad fact of too much Batmobile. Don't write it off just because they did such a shitty job so far porting to PC.I thought: 'AA and AC were great. Surely they know what they're doing? Right? RIGHT?!?!' Fortunately I had enough sense to back off.
Arkham City requirements and Arkham Knight reqs have nothing to do with each other. I ran City like a dream and Knight ran such crap I had to buy a whole new computer.
Gameplay may be best in series, leaving aside the sad fact of too much Batmobile. Don't write it off just because they did such a shitty job so far porting to PC.