This article was originally published in late 2016, but since today is Batman Day, whatever that means, here we've retrieved it from our archives. Enjoy.

Batman: Arkham Origins

Andy: Origins isn’t a terrible game, but it’s clear throughout that it wasn’t developed by Rocksteady. The new sections of the city are pretty uninspiring, particularly the industrial district and that tediously long bridge you have to travel back and forth across. And there’s no feeling of flow as you navigate the world either. I constantly find myself with nothing to grapple or land on, halting my momentum, which never happens in the other games.

Samuel: The city suffered from feeling anonymous. It may be my imagination, too, but I swear there was something off about the timing of counters compared to Rocksteady's Batman games—the same muscle memory felt like it didn't serve me well in Origins' combat. Having said that, I loved the crime scene investigations they added to Origins, which I (think) Arkham Knight ended up borrowing when you had to track down Oracle after she'd been kidnapped. They were probably the best bits of detective work in the series, and I did enjoy the one in Black Mask's penthouse. 

Andy: I noticed the weird timing of the combat too when I reviewed it for PC Gamer. I looked into it at the time, and apparently WB Montreal had to recreate the combat system from scratch for some reason. Which may explain why it feels a bit like a bad cover version of a great song.

Samuel: It's definitely a thing. I rinsed the challenge rooms in Arkham City and can still get a high score in every single one when I pick them up now—they feel irritatingly different. One thing I did like about Origins was the way the Cold, Cold Heart DLC adapted the classic Batman Animated Series episode 'Heart of Ice'. While WB Montreal's game mostly lacked the big hitter villains, I still felt like it was a worthy contribution to the games' own Batman canon. Troy Baker was an impressive Joker, and I enjoyed the fiery young version of Bruce Wayne, too, who knocks out an early villain in one punch instead of the whole thing turning into a boss battle.

Andy: I do like the younger, angrier Batman we get to play as in Origins. Kevin Conroy’s version of the character always sounds totally in control of his emotions. A mature, level-headed veteran of the crime-fightin’ business. But in this game he’s shouty and short-tempered, frequently arguing with Alfred, which is a nice way of making a familiar character feel different.

Tom S: There are some decent isolated bits of Origins, probably enough to make it worth playing for Batman fans—the tower converted into the Joker’s theme park, for example. However there is a sense that Origins is scraping around for new ideas. They expanded Gotham city and added… a warehouse district. The glue grenades and the non-lethal lightning fists feel like the sort of upgrades you might see on a cheap Batman toy rather than anything the Dark Knight would actually use. If you’ve completed every sidequest in Arkham Knight, crave more Bats, and don’t mind putting up with slightly-wrong combat then play this I guess?

Phil: I haven't played Origins yet, but, based on your recommendation there, Tom, I'm… well, still not sure if I'll bother.

Samuel: It shows you can take the basic elements of a great game and make a comparably weaker product out of it, which is largely how I felt about what I played of Wolfenstein: The New Order's Old Blood expansion.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Andy: The batmobile really is a piece of shit. Those sections where you’re forced to fight dozens of identical drones with overly-telegraphed attacks is utterly mind-numbing. But when you’re doing what Batman does best, namely skulking around in the shadows and terrifying goons, Knight is a really, really good Arkham game, if a little too familiar at times.

Phil: The Batmobile churn really hurts Knight. There are some cool ideas here, like the military outposts—the best of which are mini-puzzles, challenging you to work out which of Batman's ever-growing toolset is key to clearing away the specific configuration of guards. That stuff is great, as are about half of the sidequests, the main mission design and so much of the writing. Best of all is the dual combat encounters, which turn the fluid dance of Batman's combat into a brutal duet. But then you're back in the Batmobile, side-dodging away from predictable fire patterns, or circling round a tiny bit of the city, trying to endure the incredibly dumb stealth sections.

Samuel: I didn't like the tank combat sections, particularly the stealth parts—but driving that thing around the city feels great. It's a gorgeously animated, hefty piece of machinery. It completes the Batman fantasy, in my opinion. In the post-game, with the city cleared of robot tanks, just bombing around and taking out clumps of criminals feels like the beginning of a Batman comic in motion. I've softened to Knight over time. The titular villain isn't particularly good, and they recast the Scarecrow in a way that made him sound way too similar to Hugo Strange in Arkham City, meaning the main narrative lacked a bit of City's menace and direction.

Andy: Yeah, the Arkham Knight himself is an incredibly lame villain. Troy Baker does his best with the script, but he isn’t intimidating at all. He sounds like a Californian surfer. Whenever he showed up, taunting me from his big dumb tank, I just felt annoyed. “Not this asshole again.” But I did love the section where Batman and Robin team up, even though it was criminally short-lived. The double-takedowns were really well animated and fun to pull off, and I think they tossed that idea out far too quickly.

Samuel: Totally with you on the Robin bits—phenomenal, especially The Joker singing to Batman while Robin sneaks around the stage in the background. I think Telltale's Batman game shows you can miss the mark with adapting the Dark Knight for a game and miss the most exciting parts of his universe and lore. The interactions between Batman and Robin, Oracle or Nightwing demonstrate a total understanding of why all the individual pieces of his world are so exciting. Those co-op moves with his allies are the perfect extension of those character relationships. The sidequests are more of a mixed bag. Chasing after Firefly in the Batmobile was just poor filler, but Man-Bat offered quite a spectacle, while Two-Face's heists were a nice remix of the game's existing stealth elements.

Phil: I don't know Batlore, but I liked the freaky pig-dude. He was messed up.

Samuel: By far my favourite sidequest in the game. The way they used the music and lights to point you towards where another body had been found. Doing those autopsies was disturbing, and even as someone who's read a bunch of comics featuring Professor Pyg, his reveal was a total surprise. Rocksteady isn't afraid of deep cuts in Batman lore. While it was only a momentary bit of narrative, the Hush sidequest had a neat and clever resolution, too.

Tom S: Arkham Knight has some of the best individual moments of the whole series—including the spectacular Robin co-op level and the levels that let you seamlessly infiltrate a couple of blimps in mid-air. Sadly it is a more inconsistent game overall. Everyone rightly hates the interminable tank sections (which get ridiculous towards the end of the game), and the PC version’s terrible launch didn’t help matters. It’s definitely worth playing if you enjoyed City, but it’s not the best Arkham game.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Andy: The later games refined the brutal, rhythmic combat to something approaching perfection, and improved on almost everything else in some way, but I’ll always prefer Asylum’s focus on a single, wonderfully fleshed-out location over the sprawling open-world bloat of the sequels.

Samuel: I get that this focus (and the brilliant, memorable Scarecrow sequences) makes Asylum a popular choice, but it's a flawed game compared to the others in my opinion. This becomes apparent in the final third of the story where it feels like you're fighting versions of the Bane boss fight over and over again with those giant titan guys. The final fight with The Joker is kind of bad. The Killer Croc section drags on well past its welcome, too. There are no good boss battles in Asylum—nothing remotely close to the clever, Metal Gear-ish scrap with Mister Freeze in City.

City's paced so it keeps building in energy to its final act, and constantly showing you new parts of the world. Cutting out repetition and throwing in new ideas was essential for the series to grow, in my opinion, and while bigger doesn't always equal better, the escalation in ambition between the games is staggering. Few knew who Rocksteady were when Asylum was released. Now they're world beaters. To go from making the BioShock-y corridors of Arkham Asylum to building the Blade Runner-esque nighttime sprawl of Knight in just six years is absurdly impressive.

Phil: I think I might prefer City, but that's largely because I've never liked Metroidvania design. This is a very, very good version of it, but ultimately it's still a lot of back-and-forth between the same few areas. (You could argue the same for open-world Arkham, albeit on a bigger scale, but I think the way you traverse the larger space makes all the difference.) There are some incredibly accomplished setpieces here, and I love the simplicity of the combat before the extra gadgets of the later games. But Samuel's right about its pacing problems. Even some of its best sections—the weird, fourth-wall breaking Scarecrow vignettes—are lessened by the rubbish searchlight-based stealth puzzles that follow.

Samuel: For the time, it was a real surprise that someone had made a Batman game that good—the last decent effort dates back to the SNES. Its counter-focused melee combat system was deservedly influential, on the surface lacking the frantic speed and necessary button presses of something like Devil May Cry, but gradually growing in complexity as they weave more of the Dark Knight's tools into your arsenal. I've made this observation before on PCG, so apologies, but I remember feeling like Rocksteady had almost used this sequence from Batman Begins as their starting point for Batman's melee and stealth abilities in the Arkham games.

Andy: I’ve always been a fan of fiction that takes place in one location, so that’s why I think Asylum is still my favourite. Rocksteady absolutely stuffed that place with history and detail, and I like that the more time you spend there, the more familiar it becomes. I finished City and Knight and by the end of both I didn’t feel like I connected with the setting as much. I also like how lean Asylum is compared to the sequels, with simpler combat and fewer sidequests. It feels more elegant and streamlined than the busy open-world games. And there aren’t as many distractions being constantly thrown at you, which makes for a better-paced, more focused story overall.

Tom S: I liked the bit when you hit Bane with the Batmobile. That was some excellent Batman.

Batman: Arkham City

Andy: For me, City is when the Arkham series really started to feel like a Batman simulator. Being able to freely run, glide, and grapple around the rooftops of Gotham is brilliantly empowering, although I do find the constant chatter of bad guys in your ear massively annoying.

Samuel: When City was released, I remember thinking, 'this is all I've ever wanted from a Batman game'. Like you say, Andy, being able to glide around and grapple felt fantastic, both of which were elements of limited usage in Asylum. I loved the upgrades and momentum tweaks they made to the gliding—getting around that city felt phenomenal. It's also a very complete-feeling vision of Batman's universe, which I appreciate. Everyone from Mister Freeze to Calendar Man to Hush makes an appearance, complete with a not-embarrassing version of Robin. The Mad Hatter sidequest is brilliantly trippy. Rocksteady just get why Batman is so cool. Hugo Strange is a tremendous and very specific choice of (the apparent) main villain, too, offering a menacing tonal contrast to the Joker in Asylum.

Phil: I love any open-world game with good traversal. I even love Prototype, which I know is a bit rubbish. Arkham City isn't rubbish, and, as Andy and Sam have already mentioned, its grappling hook/glide combo is top notch. It makes for a stronger core Batman fantasy than in Asylum—now you're hunting high above the thugs, free to engage or ignore them. In some ways it's a baggier game—that's inevitable given the structure—but it still holds true to everything that made Asylum great, and offers, to my mind, a better roster of villains and a more interesting story. 

Tom S: The Mr. Freeze fight is ace, and an example of how Arkham City evolved beyond the ideas introduced in Arkham Asylum. The open world and the traversal have since become an integral part of the Batman fantasy for me—I can’t go back to Asylum—but City also has better storytelling (when it’s not just shouting exposition at you through loudspeakers). It’s the most complete and well-paced game of the series, with a brave and interesting ending. Some of the boss fights are absolute pants, though.

Samuel: Whereas I felt like the Riddles were a little exhausting in Knight, in City they were spot-on as neat visual or logic puzzles I could solve while travelling between parts of the story. The combat was significantly improved over Asylum, too, and mastering Batman's sets of tools in the challenge rooms—like Mr Freeze's ice bomb—meant that I ended up playing the post-game content for a lot longer than the story.

Shoutout to Rocksteady's artists, too, who created the most gorgeous, fan service-y alternate costumes for the Arkham games. I'm sure The Batman Incorporated skin in City was included just for me. While I think City is the most consistent of the four games, they've all got individually interesting elements, and Origins aside, I consider them all wonderful in their own way.

Every so often we get a reminder of the Bad Old Days. A wobbly port like Arkham Knight or, more recently, No Man s Sky, that reminds us PC gaming was once the seven-toed forgotten child of formats, scuttling around in the crawlspace of our hobby, screaming for the love so cruelly denied to it.

Sometimes we need to revisit those dark times, lest we forget how handsome, well-adjusted and lucky we are now. That s not to suggest things are perfect you re right to look red-faced, Mortal Kombat X but consider it a lesson in humility. A way of reminding us how things used to be much, much worse.

Three years. That s how long Ninja Theory had to make a PC port of lush, post-apocalyptic Andy Serkis chimp em up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. It was released on consoles in 2010 but didn t arrive on PC until 2013, in a state that s since become the metric for measuring lazy PC conversions: low res assets, capped at 30fps, no VSync option in the settings, enforced motion blur. There are certainly far worse conversions on this list, but Enslaved is bad in a specifically disappointing, you could have been so much more kinda way.

The PC port of Arkham Knight is like a warning a hitching, stuttering bat-symbol burned into the back of our retinas. A caution that should we ever become complacent, the forces of darkness will rise again, and we ll end up with past-generation half-ports of games we ve waited years to adore. Running Arkham Knight on Windows 10 with less than 12GB of RAM is like trying to fight the Dark Knight after an evening spent watching street fights on YouTube. It simply won t work.

Even if it s (kind of) fixed now, Arkham Knight forever stained with the ignominy of being pulled from Steam. A sad end to a great series.

We asked for this. I mean, we literally asked for it. In fact, we begged From Software for a PC port of Dark Souls. The result was like a Faustian pact from an Amicus horror film. Yes, we got what we asked, but in a way that was so twisted and hopeless as to be barely recognisable. PC hero Durante patched terrible audio and resolution issues in the vanilla version of the game, but we re still allowed to marvel at how badly it missed the mark. On the bright side, From Software's ports of Dark Souls 2 and 3 have been fantastic in comparison, and Dark Souls inspired a skilled modding community to tinker for years, even altering its 30 fps cap.

Most games on this list get kicked for being shitty versions of console games. Spider-Man 2 wasn t even that. It was literally a different game. Instead of the Teyarch-developed movie tie-in, Texas studio Fizz Factor (Fizz Factor!) made a game more suitable for children. Or, to be more accurate, nobody ever.

The open, web-swinging console game was replaced with automated heroism: you simply clicked on enemies and buildings to interact to them. A point-and-click Spider-man should be amazing, but this was one step removed from holding the right mouse button to have a stumbling pubescent relationship with Mary Jane Watson. Worst of all, the differences weren t made abundantly clear during development, so anyone who bought the PC version expecting a crisp console conversion got burned. The most significant creative misstep since Tobey Maguire s evil dance in Spider-Man 3 (which was so bad, it warped the very concept of time to make this joke work).

The PC port of Saint s Row 2 is so bad it s passed into legend. If someone had set out to make something this disastrous, they d deserve some kind of terrible, shitty medal. But they didn t, so they deserve nothing. Saint s Row developer Volition had little to do with the port. Instead, it was done by CD Projekt Localisation Team (part of the same parent company as CD Projekt Red). The game was developed with a specific Xbox 360 CPU clock speed of 3.2Ghz in mind. The further away you get from that, higher or lower, the worse the game runs. That s right: PC owners were essentially being punished for having better machines. (And worse ones too, but I m skipping over that inconvenient truth.) Even if you re playing on a machine with RAM to spare, Saint s Row 2 ignores it, like a vegan refusing to eat his way out of a cage of chops.

The PC port of Street Fighter 2 could be a whole feature on its own. It looks handsome enough, but everything else is an abomination. There s the music, which sounds like a doomed robot armpit farting the funeral march on a sinking cruise vessel; the jumping, which displays the same swaggering disregard for gravity normally reserved for Dragon Ball Z games; and the backgrounds, which features onlookers frozen in time, staring helplessly, trapped like temporal sweetcorn in this eternal turd of a port. Forget locked frame rates or shoddy netcode: everything about Street Fighter on PC is wrong.

If you hate yourself, you can even play it here. The only thing it has in its favour is at least it s not Street Fighter 1.

Even people who ve completed Dark Souls using a Rock Band guitar/dance mat/USB toaster can t handle the controls in the PC version of Resi 4. They re terrible. Whoever did the key binding can only have read stories about PC gaming painted onto the walls of prehistoric caves. It doesn t support mouse aiming, and the key choices for the actions resemble a puzzle at the end of an Indiana Jones movie. Hold Left Shift to use your knife. Right Shift for your gun. Enter to attack. Shift and right Control to reload. Shift and rat-a-tat-tat on Number Lock to use a herb. (Only the last one is a joke, tragically.)

Worst of all, if you tweaked your key bindings it wouldn t tell you when quick-time events happened, making it a test of memory, reactions and your infinite patience as a noble PC gamer.

Years later, the Resident Evil 4 HD port fixed most of these issues and is now our favorite way to play the game. Aww, happy endings.

Splinter Cell may be known first and foremost as an Xbox series, but Sam Fisher was an experienced PC spy, too. Pandora tomorrow had some issues, but the series mostly made the jump from console to PC unscathed in its early years. That changed with the console port of 2006's Double Agent, the first released on Xbox 360. Steam reviews tell a pretty consistent story, criticizing constant crashing, poor controller support, and game-breaking bugs. Most damning: the lighting didn't work properly for some players. In a stealth game. Where hiding in shadows is, well, literally the point. Might as well give up the whole superspy thing and go cry into a mai tai on a well-lit beach, Sam.

Apparently lighting problems afflicted the older Splinter Cell games, too, depending on the hardware, but in Double Agent it was the most egregious of many, many issues adding up to a woeful port.

Devil May Cry 3 is part of the Holy Trinity of Dogshit Capcom Ports, alongside Resi 4 and Onimusha 3 (although the ports were actually handled by a company called SourceNext and published by Ubisoft). It automatically defaults to windowed mode, and you need to switch the axis on your controller because it defaults to the right-hand stick. Or, you could just try it that way, like an 8-year-old playing Micro Machines on the SEGA Genesis. Like almost every game on this list, most of these problems can be fixed by imaginative Googling and fan patches, but in order to avoid framerate issues you actually have delete music and menu sounds yourself. How did it come to this?

It s no surprise that a game designed to embrace all the idiosyncrasies of the PS2 was hit-and-miss on PC. Even Sony developers struggled to comprehend the PS2 s arcane infrastructure, so what hope did we have? MGS 2 worked fine on some systems, but on others you could expect flickering textures, disappearing shadows, missing effects, frequent crashes and flaky audio. It used the new analogue buttons on the PS2 Dualshock, but didn t bother to adjust this for keyboard controls; if a section required pressure sensitive actions, you were bollocksed. It s also a mighty 7GB install, when similar games at the time weighed in at around 1.5-2GB. As unwieldy and overblown as MGS 4.

PC gamers have it easy these days. Properly optimised, there s every reason the PC version of a game should be the best. Terrible ports can be blamed on the conversion, not the hardware. But it wasn t always like this. Back in the late 80s, PC hardware couldn t always keep up with consoles, which is why our gaming forefathers ended up struggling through monstrous conversions like Mega Man. Oh, the humanity.

This was released the same year id released Commander Keen which was itself born out of an attempt to port Mario 3 so we can t blame it all on feeble hardware.

Batman: Arkham Knight was a decent game, but on PC it was an abominable port. It was so bad that publisher Warner Bros. was compelled to remove it from sale weeks after its release, offering refunds to anyone unfortunate enough to buy in early. Nowadays it runs a lot better, but it's fair to say the whole situation was quite traumatic. As of December it was still being patched up, following its October re-release.

Whether that trauma has anything to do with the Mac and Linux versions of Arkham Knight being canceled, I don't know. The cancellation was announced on Steam today in as blunt a manner as possible.

"We are very sorry to confirm that Batman: Arkham Knight will no longer be coming to Mac and Linux," the post reads. "If you have pre-ordered Batman: Arkham Knight for Mac or Linux, please apply for a refund via Steam."

Despite the game still being a bit rough around the edges on PC, Warner Bros. started selling DLC for it back in December. It's a shame the launch was so poor, because beneath the technical shortcomings there's an okay game, hampered somewhat by annoying Batmobile sequences. In his review, Andy Kelly wrote that it's "an entertaining superhero power fantasy, let down by awful Batmobile combat, a laughable villain, and serious performance issues."

On the topic of bad ports, this recent Durante rundown of the disastrous Tales of Symphonia release is well worth ten minutes.

Nothing will stop the tide of content, not even performance issues and the abandonment of SLI support. Provided that Warner Bros' many rounds of fixes have knocked your copy of Batman: Arkham Knight into playable shape, its December DLC, Season of Infamy: Most Wanted, might appeal. It's available to buy now, and included in the Arkham Knight season pass.

Season of Infamy introduces four new storylines featuring iconic Batman villains: Ra s Al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, and the Mad Hatter. The latter mission features heavily in the trailer and is by far the most interesting to me: the hallucinatory Scarecrow segments of Arkham Asylum were among its most memorable, and it's clear Rocksteady is hoping to recapture the same trippy horror. Mr. Freeze is a compelling returning character, being about the only Batman villain to sometimes behave like a human. I can only hope these missions are more substantial than the lacklustre Harley Quinn pre-order bonus.

Joining this identity parade are a handful of new skins for Bats and his ride and the fifth Crime Fighter Challenge Pack, which focuses on Freeflow Combat and Invisible Predator training. Happy crime-fighting.

After Warner Bros. announced that it had given up all hope of ever supporting multi-GPU systems properly, I wasn't expecting it to patch the rest of Batman: Arkham Knight with great enthusiasm. But the devs are still chipping away, as a set of new patch notes indicates.

There's a fair bit of fluff, but the interesting bits include:

• Restored heavier rain during the opening section of the game
• Fixed missing rain effects on a few remaining player character skins
• Miscellaneous gameplay fixes and stability improvements 
• Made frame times more consistent for 60Hz monitors running at 30fps with VSync enabled
• Minor performance optimizations for certain combinations of hardware
• Fixed graphical corruption that may occur after Alt-Tabbing
• Added new Classic Harley Quinn skin for use in AR Challenges & the Harley Quinn Story Pack
• Added Arkham Knight as a playable character for AR Challenges & the Red Hood Story Pack

The restoration of the rain effects is a victory—it was one of the most noticeable deficiencies when compared to console screenshots. Overall, however, performance results seem to be mixed, with some in the comments reporting stable framerates and others desktop crashes.

Even after being pulled from Steam for several months and a number of patches, Arkham Knight still runs poorly on a lot systems. But Rocksteady are, at least, still releasing patches to try and fix it—and a new one has gone live today.

Here are a few highlights.

 Fixed some Multi-Monitor specific bugs  Fixed an issue causing the game process to occasionally remain running in the background for a period of time  Improved VRAM management to reduce framerate hitches  Fixed an issue causing certain types of lights & shadows to render incorrectly Fixed a progression blocker that could occur in Stagg Airships when leaving the predator room after only knocking out one of the guards

It's been a long, sad ride for Arkham Knight, but hopefully with a few more patches we'll see smoother performance across a wider range of systems. Anyone with a multi-GPU setup is out of luck, though.

Full patch notes here.

Batman: Arkham Knight returned to Steam last month, following a lengthy absence caused by its disastrously poor PC port. But even though it was "fixed," it still wasn't where it should have been: Warner copped to some lingering technical problems in the re-release announcement, and said it was "still working with our GPU partners to add full support for SLI and Crossfire." Today, however, it said that plans to support multiple GPUs have been scrapped.

"We ve been working with our development and graphics driver partners over the last few months to investigate utilizing multi-GPU support within Batman: Arkham Knight. The result was that even the best case estimates for performance improvements turned out to be relatively small given the high risk of creating new issues for all players," Warner rep "wb.elder.pliny" wrote on Steam. "As a result we ve had to make the difficult decision to stop work on further multi-GPU support. We are disappointed that this was not practical and apologize to those who have been waiting for this feature."

This isn't necessarily a devastating letdown. SLI and Crossfire support is hit-or-mess and sometimes wonky, and performance boosts are often relatively marginal. (As Wes said in our graphics card roundup, "We'll always advocate the best single-GPU solution for gaming when possible.") But Warner said a month ago that multiple-GPU support was in the works, and as far as I know never hinted that it wouldn't be able to make it happen. More to the point, it should be able to make it happen, and the fact that the payoff isn't worth the effort is something that should have come to light long before the game was released, not long after.

Then again, if Warner did the things it was supposed to do before it shoved Arkham Knight out the door, it wouldn't have had to halt sales for five months, apologize, make excuses, and then offer refunds to any Steam owner who'd laid hands on the thing. Which, by the way, is an offer you can take advantage of right up to the end of 2015—just in case you were wondering.

Warner Bros. has announced it will offer refunds to all owners of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. In an unprecedented move by a major publisher, the publisher will refund anyone who has owned the game on Steam at any point in the game's troubled history.

"We are very sorry that many of our customers continue to be unhappy with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight," a note on the game's Steam page reads. "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."

Warner re-released Batman: Arkham Knight last week, after suspending sales in June due to complaints about the poor quality of the port. As Andy Kelly reported last week, the update made some improvements but failed to fix all of the game's many problems.

Gotham is under attack, again. But while Batman is, as always, on the case, the cracks are starting to show. There s a weariness in the world s greatest detective this time around, as years on the job, and the pressure to find a successor, begin to take their toll. Arkham Knight is as much about a tired, aging Bruce Wayne s struggle with himself as it is about stopping a super-villain holding his city hostage.

And it s a weariness I felt myself. The production values are richer than ever, the city is bigger than before, and there s more stuff to do in it, but after three Arkham games, it feels like another trip around the block. Rocksteady are fundamentally quite good at making Batman games, though, so there s enough great stuff in here—among, admittedly, a lot of not-so-great stuff—that I made it to the end and had a mostly good time.

The villain this time is Scarecrow, who s threatening to flood Gotham with his fear toxin. A pretty by-the-numbers evil plot as far as they go, but it s enough motivation for Bruce to pull on the cowl and go swooping into the night. Other famous heels make an appearance—Two-Face, Penguin, Firefly—but it s the Arkham Knight, a new character, who takes centre stage. Hell, they even named the game after him.

This enigmatic character commands a private army, wears a curiously Batman-shaped helmet that obscures his face, and seems to know an awful lot about the Dark Knight. Discovering his identity is the game s central mystery, even though fans of the comics will figure it out long before Batman does. So between this mysterious new rival and Scarecrow s toxin—not to mention dozens of other crimes that need his attention around the city—it s another busy night for the Caped Crusader. It s a good thing he has the Batmobile to help him this time… right?

Well, no. It certainly looks cool, but the Batmobile is a failure on every level. For one, Gotham just isn t big enough to warrant its existence. Why navigate a giant, unwieldy car through twisting streets and alleyways when you can glide to your destination in a fraction of the time? It s not even that fun to drive, with weightless, slippy handling. I only ever used it when the game told me to, which is pretty damning.

And the game forces you to use it far too often. A mystifyingly large percentage of Arkham Knight is dedicated to ponderous, boring vehicle combat, in which you use the Batmobile s battle mode to blow up waves of conveniently unmanned tanks and flying drones. Their attacks are so obviously telegraphed, with big white lines telling you where they re aiming—flashing red to indicate that they re about to fire—that these sections present no meaningful challenge whatsoever.

I didn t mind them at first. They were a nice change of pace. But there are so many of them that fatigue quickly sets in. And when you start having to use stealth to take out certain heavily-armoured drones—sneaking up behind them and firing at an exposed weak spot—you wonder what was going through the developers heads when they designed this stuff. I ve never felt less like Batman, and groaned whenever the Arkham Knight sent yet another wave of his dumb drones in for me to halfheartedly destroy.

Stupid car aside, this is a very decent Arkham game. The predator sections, which have always been the highlight of the series for me, are more fun than ever. Hanging in the rafters and picking off enemies as they quake in fear is as brilliantly satisfying as it s always been—and now there are even more ways to mess with them. Hacking remote-control drones to turn on their allies and replicating the Knight s voice to order his men around are just a few of the new ways to creatively clear a room of bad guys. Batman's utility belt is fat with gadgets—some new, some old—to experiment with.

Playing with these and the environment, discovering interesting ways to clear the room, is easily the best part of the game. It s here that Rocksteady s systemic design really shines, and Batman s graceful, precise movement makes swinging and skulking around its complex, detailed environments a pleasure. And when stealth isn t an option, the big-scale fist-fights are great fun too, thanks to the series trademark counter-based, rhythmic combat. The moment-to-moment play is tight and well-designed, which only highlights just how poor the Batmobile stuff is.

Being an open-world game, there s a lot to do outside of the main story—which, as you might expect, varies wildly in quality. There are some superb self-contained stories like hunting down a sadistic serial killer and stopping Two-Face from cleaning out Gotham s banks. But there s also a lot of pretty generic filler, including destroying watchtowers and clearing each of the city s three islands of the Arkham Knight s forces. It s in the story where best moments and set-pieces are found.

It s a shame the Arkham Knight is such a comically bad villain. He s horribly miscast, sounding less like an intimidating, mysterious nemesis, and more like a dumb surfer. He spends the whole game barking into your radio about how Gotham is his city now, and how you ll never stop him, as you effortlessly destroy every single wave of useless, dopey drones he throws at you. And when you finally get the chance to fight him, about ten hours into the story, it s a stealth tank battle. I still don t know why they named the entire game after such a weak pantomime villain.

In terms of pacing and writing quality, this is probably the least successful entry in the series so far. But I did like seeing weakness in Batman, and rare cracks in his armour. The villains plans are as ludicrously far-fetched as ever, but there are some surprisingly human, poignant moments in there—particularly between Batman and Barbara Gordon—that just about make up for the otherwise hoary, predictable comic book story. Sadly, though, despite Scarecrow being the main villain, the toxin-induced hallucination sequences have none of Asylum s fourth wall-shattering brilliance.

But here s the rub. As a game, Arkham Knight is good. You ll probably enjoy it, especially if you love Batman. But as a product, it s a mess. Even after several patches and the embarrassment of being pulled from Steam shortly after it went on sale, it s still running horribly for a lot of people. A significant number of players are suffering low frame-rates and hitching—even with powerful machines that are well above the recommended specs—and that can t be ignored.

With 16GB of RAM and a GTX 970, I was able to play in 1080p at a reliable 60 frames per second with most settings maxed. Except for some stuttering when the screen got really busy, I was able to enjoy the game. But because the experience varies so wildly between systems, it s not a game I can comfortably recommend to everyone. And the inconsistent reports about its performance mean I can t even give you a vague idea of what kind of setup will be able to run it properly.

I m glad this is Rocksteady s last Batman game, because as much as I love the series, it s on the brink of losing its magic. Rocksteady have done everything they possibly could with Batman—except for, perhaps, justice to the Batmobile—and this is the right time for Bruce to hang up the cowl. Ultimately, despite the feeble villain and the frustrating amount of forced Batmobile combat, the feeling of being Batman in Arkham Knight is still as wonderfully empowering as it s been since Asylum. But none of that matters if you can t run the damn thing.

After being pulled from Steam in June, the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is back on sale. But despite a number of patches, it seems there are still a few problems. Hitching and low frame-rates are still plaguing some players—especially those with SLI/CrossFire setups, and anyone running Windows 10 with less than 12GB of RAM.

I seem to be one of the lucky ones, though. I ve just finished reviewing it for PC Gamer (review coming soon) and I had no problems, bar a few sporadic frame-rate drops when the screen got really busy. This was on a PC with a 4GB GTX 970, an i7-950 CPU clocked at 3.0GHz, 16GB of RAM, and Windows 10.

I played 25 hours at 1080p with everything but the NVIDIA GameWorks settings maxed out, and it maintained a steady 60fps throughout. Compared to my first attempt to play the game when it was first released, it s a massive improvement. But everyone s setup is different, and others are finding the game unplayable.

I tested the game on another PC, this time running a 2GB HD 7890, an i5-3570K CPU clocked at 3.40GHz, 16GB of RAM, and Windows 10. The significantly weaker GPU meant I had to knock most of the settings down and disable a few of the fancier effects to maintain 60fps, but when I did, it still looked decent and ran smoothly.

But then I pulled one of the RAM sticks out, reducing my total to 8GB, and suddenly the game was marred by constant hitching and frame-rate drops. Before it was playable—even on that ancient 2GB GPU—but now it was stuttering like mad: whether I was gliding around the city or driving the Batmobile.

So if you re running Windows 10 and have less than 12GB of RAM, you might want to avoid the game for now. The developers said as much in this Steam announcement. They also said Windows 7 machines may suffer the same performance dip, but that restarting the game would fix it. Not ideal, but at least (temporarily) fixable.

It s a shame, really. Batmobile aside, Arkham Knight s an enjoyable end to the Arkham series, and the port is distracting from that. After the embarrassment and expense of having to pull the game from Steam, I was expecting more. It was fine for me, but other people haven t been so lucky. Forums and subreddits are ablaze with angry, disappointed players, and the game s reputation is suffering once again.

I've got an HD 7750 and I m getting 20-30 FPS at the lowest settings, as opposed to the 9-17 I was getting before the patch. says one Reddit user. I have an i7-6700K, GTX 980 Ti (6 GB), 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, and a new SSD, and I can play at 1440p/60 FPS with everything maxed except the GameWorks settings. says another. So it seems the performance varies wildly between machines: often the signature of a badly optimised port. But with so many different reports, it s difficult to pinpoint exactly what kind of hardware configuration will work best for the game.

Hopefully further patches are the on the way, especially for people who use SLI/CrossFire. The controversy surrounding this release has been pretty severe, and shows no signs of fading. What about you? What are your specs, and how does the game run on your PC? Let us know in the comments.