I’m Excited To Finally Play Gotham Knights On Game Pass

Gotham Knights key art

One of the most interesting – and divisive – superhero games is headed to Xbox Game Pass next week: Gotham Knights. This isn’t strictly new news, Xbox revealed the second half of its September Game Pass games on its blog a couple of weeks ago, but I think it’s worth talking about, because I’m deeply fascinated by Gotham Knights, despite never having played it.

Gotham Knights looks a hell of a lot like Rocksteady’s Arkham series on the surface, but by all accounts it’s very much not those games. The Arkham games were good, possibly some of the best superhero games ever made prior to 2018’s Spider-Man, which very clearly took the mantle. Gotham Knights, by many accounts, is not even in the running.

On its face, it sounds like a game I would love. The extended Bat-Family, especially the Robins, are some of my favorite characters in all of DC’s universe, second only maybe to the Green Lanterns. It’s an open world game, lots of punchy superhero goodness, and some incredible villains, ranging from Mr. Freeze and Penguin to the Court of Owls — the best Batman villain group by a wide margin.

So far, that ticks a lot of boxes for me. So what’s the problem? Why is it divisive? Well let’s take a look at the reviews for it on Metacritic, specifically the Xbox Series X reviews, since that’s where I’ll be playing it. Overall, the game has a metascore of 64/100, which denotes “mixed or average” reviews. I’d personally argue that 64 is a little higher than average, but who am I to argue with Metacritic?

Individual scores from critics vary wildly. At the top of the scale we have a 90, a few mid- to low-80s, and a bunch of flat 80s, while at the bottom we have a bunch of 60s, 50s, 40s, and even a 25. Most critics seem to compare it – unfavorably, mind you – to the Arkham series, which given its visual aesthetic, cast of characters, and vibe, is a totally fair comparison to make.

But Gotham Knights isn’t an Arkham game. It isn’t made by the same developer, it doesn’t feature the same version of the characters, and isn’t even in the same world — it’s its own, totally standalone thing. And that’s why I’m so excited to play it.

Don’t get me wrong, I utterly adore the Arkham games. I’ve played through them all multiple times and look forward to playing through them again on Switch when they somehow come to that next month. But it always felt like the series was held back by the strict necessity of being A Batman Game. Within the Arkham universe, it feels like characters and storylines are limited in their execution, paralyzed in fear under the dark shadow of the world’s greatest detective. There’s a right way to do things, and those games follow that way very closely.

I don’t know if Gotham Knights will be good when I play it. I hope it is, but I have prepared my body and my soul for it to be kinda bad. But what I do know is that it will at least be different. It may be messy, unfocused, and even straight up terrible, but it will be different from the Arkham games. And that’s what I look forward to the most when Gotham Knights becomes available on Xbox Game Pass on October 3, 2023.