Not only can you cape-glide much faster thanks to an upgradable grapnel, but we’ve also got the rocket-powered, transforming Batmobile, which is to the streets of Gotham City as the Kool-Aid Man is to brick walls. Play With the new moderately large open world comes improved transportation. (The animation you get from countering them when they try to run you down is hilarious.) Notably, we don’t return to the Batcave in Arkham Knight, which is fine by me considering how much time was spent there in the past two Arkham games. The city has been evacuated again, which conveniently makes it impossible to accidentally or intentionally beat up innocents, but the streets are far livelier than in past games thanks to vastly increased populations of criminals, both on foot and engaging in high-speed pursuits with Gotham Police cars. All of which are beautifully detailed, and the lighting effects reflecting off wet streets and capes highlight impressive texture detail.

We’re now free to explore three islands of the dark and intermittently stormy Gotham City, which is given character and color by its many bright neon lights and noticeable landmarks like the Chinatown district, Wayne Tower, and Ace Chemicals. Here and there a few cheesy, wooden lines pop up, mostly in the side quests, but the same is true of nearly any game of this size.

Plus, several strong performances gave it personality: the unsettling monotone voice of John Noble makes this the eeriest version of the Scarecrow yet, Mark Hamill returns for some excellent, darkly hilarious posthumous Joker lines and reenactments of some of the most famous scenes from the comics, and of course the definitive Kevin Conroy stars as Batman. While the mystery of the identity of the Arkham Knight (a militarized anti-Batman who serves as co-antagonist along with the Scarecrow) fizzles out, there are other surprises to fall back on that kept me engaged in the twisting story. The plot does stray a little too far into the supernatural for my tastes - in that I generally find the Dark Knight at his finest when the threats he faces are at least remotely grounded in reality - but in doing so it drives wedges between allies and delves into Batman’s psyche in an interesting way. Roughly 12 hours’ worth of story missions do a great job of playing up the long history between Batman, the three Robins, and Jim and Barbara Gordon.

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