Holy Season Pass, Batman!
As I’ve said before, Batman: Arkham Knight‘s Season Pass is probably the one of the worst pass prospects in gaming right now. Besides an alright Batgirl DLC, there’s a heap of mediocre challenge missions, sub-30 minute “DLCs,” and skins. For $40, people probably expected more — perhaps a quality Cold, Cold Heart add-on — or something, anything to justify the price.
Alas, the Catwoman and Robin add-ons that dropped this week are just like the Harley and Red Hood DLCs — disappointing.
At some point there was probably a kernel of a good idea with the Catwoman’s Revenge DLC, but ultimately, it feels rushed like the others. There’s almost nothing interesting about the premise: Catwoman, one day after the events of Knight, wants to steal money from The Riddler, who is in jail. We get it, Catwoman likes to steal things, and there is no added depth for either character, nor is there any satisfying conclusion, mostly because the core villain isn’t actually present outside of an interlude under the guise of a “prison phone call.” It took me about 10 minutes, all told, across two challenge maps (one Predator, one combat), with one very short 30-second puzzle involved.
Flip of a Coin is slightly better, but not by much. In this episode, Robin takes on Two-Face at some point following the retirement of Batman, with the help of Oracle by way of remote assistance. There’s a slightly interesting dynamic afoot during the DLC, where Oracle assures Tim Drake (whom she is dating) that he can not only measure up to Batman’s legacy, but end up coming out of it better than Bruce did. The [albeit mostly played out] duality of Two-Face is also shown quite well with a location that’s half destroyed, and half pristine. But again, like every other episode before it, the sheer brevity of the adventure halts any meaningful discussion or character advancement.
Players will basically auto-pilot their way through two small Predator maps and two combat rooms for about 20 minutes, all of which operate in the exact same manner as Knight. Unlike Catwoman, Tim feels exactly like Batman gameplay-wise, minus the bullet shield gadget from Arkham City, which is only used briefly during a very staged encounter. To add insult to injury, the final boss fight with Two-Face isn’t a fight at all, but a quick one-button QTE. There also isn’t even an ending tying together Tim and Bruce’s relationship or narrative — it boots out immediately after the QTE.
If this is the last Arkham game from Rocksteady, the poor Season Pass definitely assists in tainting its legacy. There’s almost nothing here of worth nearly five months later, and certainly nothing even close to justifying the $40 cost.
