Batman: Arkham Knight’s latest DLC episodes don’t add much to the game

Batman: Arkham Knight is in many ways the spitting image of perennial Bat-foe Two-Face’s iconic coin. Beautiful and shimmery on the one side thanks to tight mechanics and gorgeous visuals, while the underside hides a scarred collection of pricy DLC that doesn’t exactly do the final Rocksteady dark knight game any favours.

This month sees an additional two Arkham Episodes released, that focuses on fan-favourite burglar Catwoman and the boy wonder, Robin. Neither episode sets any new benchmarks for the middling story content released so far.

What A Flip Of A Coin and Catwoman’s Revenge do add to Batman: Arkham Knight however, are some great new environments. While Robin has to track down Two-Face in a massively cylindrical garbage dump that is being used to launder money from various bank heists, Catwoman finds herself exploring a toy factory on top of a secret Riddler hideout.

And once again, you can easily clock your way through in around half an hour, barring an absurdly difficult sequence in each episode. For Catwoman, it’s a brawler section from hell that has her taking on dozens of Riddler robots on an electrified floor that also has several lasers criss-crossing around it. For Robin, it’s a stealth sequence where the odds are firmly stacked against you.

And ordinarily, those sequences would flow far more organically, if you were playing as the Batman. But you’re not, and with a severly limited arsenal, the challenge of each of these sections is absurdly high. Still, practice makes perfect and you’ll eventually overcome them and never touch these episodes again.

And beyond some playful banter between the heroes, thugs and Riddler’s wonderfully broken AI system, there’s not much here to digest. Especially when compared to the proper game’s meaty campaign. And that’s pretty much every Arkham episode summed up perfectly so far, as the DLC has consistently failed to add anything of value to an otherwise damned good game.

Last Updated: November 26, 2015