Batman: Arkham Knight

Batman: Arkham Knight is an impressive game on almost every level, with non-stop variety and great action.

Arkham Knight is another slick and enjoyable Batman adventure, though what it brings to the series' table is not always for the best.

The gameplay is good, and very often great, but we knew that already. It's a known quantity. As a Batman story, this is something else. It dares to tackle not just the surface details of the character, but explores his psyche. It portrays him as, frankly, kind of a dick and also as a man of unflinching honour. The Batman of Arkham Knight is a complex, contradictory figure, a hero with real depth and dimension, and we get to wear the iconic cowl for one last mind-boggling night of mayhem. Miss out on that? You must be joking.

An entertaining superhero power fantasy, let down by awful Batmobile combat, a laughable villain, and serious performance issues.

Arkham Knight is Batman perfected

An ambitious and successful end to Rocksteady's trilogy, with a standard-setting open world you must experience. A superior main story and less Batmobile combat would've made a huge difference.

Outside of a couple of irritations, this is one of the most enjoyable Batman stories I've experienced

Arkham Knight triumphs as a richly empowering comic book fantasy that sees its hero fail almost as much as he succeeds, making him the most believable, the most occasionally unlikeable, and ultimately the most heroic he's ever been.

As an open-world game,"Arkham Knight," on consoles at least, makes fabulous use of the Unreal 3 graphics engine, rendering Gotham in romantically grungy detail. This is the first Batman game that I've played that feels adequate to the comic book's legacy.

If the game itself were as much of a mess as the port, I'd happily ignore the whole thing but Rocksteady are still capable of spectacle and style. Given the choice of one big budget collectathon series a year, and that's often all I can find time for, I'd pick Arkham almost every time.