Batman: Arkham Knight Season Pass Review

©Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Inc. ©Rocksteady Studios

Available on: Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4
Players: 1

While Arkham Knight was a complete adventure, Rocksteady still decided to provide some extra content for those who wanted more out of the finale. Interestingly, depending on what you're looking for in the content, this may be an amazing deal or it may be a terrible one. If you're strictly interested in story content, you may be disappointed. I'll lay out everything the Season Pass comes with.

To begin with, it comes with 30 skins spread between Batman, the Batmobile and a handful of other characters. This is the least compelling reason to purchase the pass (a small handful of these are available free normally anyway), though it's a nice bonus, especially considering the steep price tag to purchase them separate. They don't really add anything beyond look, and some of them aren't even fully functional (for example, some of the Batmobile skins can only be applied to races).

©Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Inc. ©Rocksteady Studios

The bulk of the fun, to me at least, comes in the form of 45 brand new challenge maps (and 6 new AR missions) which are spread across various styles (stealth, race, normal combat, Batmobile combat, etc.). Covering different themes and scenarios within the Arkham universe and within the DC comics themselves, these offer a lot of really fun challenges and extra content to the game as a whole. Considering the amazing quality of the challenge maps in the base game, adding almost 50 more at this quality helps to add a lot of value. This is by far the bulk of the entertainment within the Season Pass.

There a few independent story missions you acquire from the Season Pass. There's the Harley Quinn story, which involves her trying to free Poison Ivy shortly before the events of Arkham Knight. This was actually quite fun, mainly because all of her takedowns and combat involve loud noises. This means you can stealth all you want, but when you need to take down an enemy you will always attract attention. There are a couple other quirks to her play style that make her the most interesting new character from the pass. Next up is the Red Hood story, which is also before the events of the main game. His style is actually very similar to Batman, with the addition of guns as his gadgets. His mission wasn't too enticing, with it being a standard combat and stealth section. The Batgirl story is one of the longest of the DLC, but also the one with the most missed opportunities. It takes place before Arkham Asylum (the original game), with her and Robin trying to capture the Joker. This is the only one with collectibles as well, since you get to explore a small area freely as you tackle a very small handful of missions. Batgirl plays very similar to Batman. Her missed opportunity is in her technical prowess. They could have made some really fun tech sequences to show off her genius, but this was bastardized by some repetitive and simple hacking. The actual missions she has to accomplish offer some mildly fun scenarios, but ultimately leaves you wanting more. On the bright side, her story is the most interesting of the story DLC. The cool thing is that each of these characters are playable in almost every challenge map as well, giving you some fun options for exploring more ways of tackling the various challenges.

©Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Inc. ©Rocksteady Studios

Following those prequel stories, there is a trio of post-game content revolving around Robin, Nightwing and Catwoman. Each of these is painfully short, considering how fun each of these characters is to play. They revolve around pacifying Two-Face, Penguin and Riddler respectively. I emphasize that they are each extremely fun due to the unique nature of each character, but so short that it's almost frustrating (maybe 30 minutes each). The final story pack actually provides some extra side-quests within the main story (rather than having to load up a separate level). These side-quests help give closure to most of the remaining villains that haven't been addressed via the main game or the rest of the content. Namely, Killer Croc, Mr. Freeze, R'as Al Ghul and the Mad Hatter. These are all fun, though each mission suffers from the same short length problem as the post-game trio.

If you're purchasing it specifically for story content, here's where you might be slightly disappointed. It's not necessarily that the content is boring, it's that it is all extremely short. Across all the story content in the pass, I spent about 6 hours completing everything at 100%. Depending on your skill this may range from 4-10 hours realistically. The price of buying the story content on its own is only a dollar or so cheaper than the $29.99 price tag asked for the Season Pass. At that point, you may as well buy the Season Pass. It's unfortunate that the pricing structure isn't a little more balanced. Despite the short length of each story pack, the entertainment value is definitely high, even if there isn't really much innovation.

©Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Inc. ©Rocksteady Studios

That being said, as a whole the Season Pass offers a lot of content, with a decent amount of it being high-quality. If you're looking just for story content though, you'll likely be disappointed. That should, ultimately, be your deciding factor on whether you get it or not. Make the decision, and take the plunge, if you so choose.

NOTE: I played this game in its entirety on the PC using an Xbox One controller. Having played it after the big updates, I ran into no technical problems. As it currently stands, your experience should be similar across all three platforms.
 
Graphics: AMAZING
Sound: AMAZING
Gameplay: GREAT
Value: GREAT
 
OVERALL: GREAT
 
- Teepu