KOCHI: To understand this game, consider this scenario. I imagine I am a non-playable character in Gotham Knights. A resident of Gotham city, I’ve just done my grocery shopping and I am walking back home in the evening. I avoid a road where a bank robbery is currently underway. I’m about to cross another road and Robin hurtles down the street. “Do you have a license for that Batcycle?”, I yell after him. I catch my breath on the nearby alleyway. But a freak shows up and kidnaps me. I am now one of five people who have time bombs at our wrists. Redhood comes to rescue us, but because he has the deftness of the Hulk, there’s now 30 seconds left before my wrists explode. Redhood finally comes to my aid with five seconds to spare. He asks me, “How would you describe Gotham Knights in 2 words?”. I say “Dark-mode Spider-man”. A resounding boom. Cut to black.
In Gotham Knights, we swing around the city at night like Spider-man, stopping crimes and finding clues that would help us make Gotham great again. First things first, we do not play as Batman. This is good. I do not want to play a rehashed version of a tired old reticent superhero with a dark past. No. In Gotham Knights, we can choose one of four different vigilantes that haunt the nights. As the ever-impatient combat-hungry savage myself, I defaulted to the burly Redhood. But: there is also the stealthy Robin, Nightwing, who jumps around a lot, and Batgirl, the team’s designated hacker.
The gameplay involves a combination of combat, traversal, and investigation. For combat, there is the regular nightly-scheduled crime-fighting. To fight crime, we must first explore town by zooming on the Batcycle, or swing from building to building using grappling hooks. Each sequence has certain objectives, and bonuses. These unlock skills and cosmetic upgrades. In addition to crime-fighting, the main missions involve collecting clues and solving puzzles to progress in the story.
Constantly yawning through superhero movies, I find myself being surprised by how well the universe lends itself into videogames. I loved Guardians of the Galaxy. I sometimes show off my PlayStation Spider-Man game trophies to house guests. I made friends because I owned an “Injustice 2” CD. As the first campaign-mode DC game I’ve played, there’s nothing that I don’t like about Gotham Knights so far; and I haven’t even played the co-operative mode, which is the supposedly the game’s key selling point! The game is currently available for the Xbox, PC and PlayStation.