Batman: Arkham Knight on Switch is 'Disastrously Poor' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 January 2024 / 4,155 Views
Publisher Warner Bros. Games released Batman: Arkham Trilogy for the Nintendo Switch on December 1 and Batman: Arkham Knight in the collection is called a "disastrously poor' by Digital Foundry's Oliver Mackenzie.
"There are a lot of problems here but performance is by far its biggest flaw," said Mackenzie (via Eurogamer). "In broad strokes, we're looking at sub-30fps frame-rates with near-constant drops, especially during open-world traversal. Readouts in the 20-25fps region are common as we glide above the city, with frame-rates stabilising somewhat once we're on the ground."
He added, "It gets worse too. When you enter the Batmobile and engage in a high-speed chase, the game takes an even bigger frame-rate tumble, with a wildly inconsistent frame-time readout. Arkham Knight is legitimately quite challenging to play here with all of the constant stuttering. It's hard to express how poor the game actually feels to control - even a locked 20fps, for instance, would feel worlds better than this. I suspect the game's streaming systems are causing serious issues here."
He did say some sections of the game do run more acceptably as "on-foot gameplay can sometimes hit and hold 30fps for extended periods, and indoor areas tend to run a bit better as well, though these can suffer from substantial frame-rate issues at times."
There are obvious cutbacks in the cutscenes and characters as the models are more basic that lack the details of the PS4 and Xbox One versions.
"Obviously, the Switch version looks much worse in these comparisons - but critically I think it just no longer looks much like Arkham Knight," said Mackenzie. "The moody, mechanical world of Gotham loses a lot of its character when most of the lighting detail is stripped out and textures and materials are harshly decimated."
The older titles in the collection, Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, run better on the Switch than the newer Arkham Knight, however, they don't run perfectly.
"In terms of basic visual settings then, neither one of these seventh-gen conversions is in especially bad shape - but performance is unusually poor, with Arkham Asylum faring especially badly. The game often drops below its 30fps target, hanging in the mid-20s for extended periods with some frame-time inconsistencies that seem unrelated to overall performance.
"Arkham Asylum just doesn't feel good to play in this form, and I don't understand why this title is running so poorly considering its 2009 vintage and its cramped indoor setting. Weirdly though, in portable mode Asylum seems to run substantially better, though it still drops frames.
"Arkham City also has issues. This title suffers from frame-rate dips too from time to time, especially in broad views of Gotham City or during combat sequences, with one-off dropped frames or frame-time wobbles. The experience is more consistent overall than Arkham Asylum, and decent stretches of the game do run at 30fps with portable mode feeling about the same.
"Unfortunately, two almost passing ports out of three don't allow for even the smallest of recommendations."
Batman: Arkham Trilogy is available now for the Nintendo Switch.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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It is already hard to port down to Switch, but some devs make a special effort to make it even worse.
Yeah, I think we all knew this might happen. Its just too much for the Switch to handle. They should have just waited until the Switch 2 to release this collection.
Oh god it's the original PC launch all over again!
Hahaha it was to be expected
This is horrible. Arkham Knight shouldn't be on Switch, and the first two games should've been better optimized.
You shouldn't always do something just because you can.
WB sucks over all media: Movies, TV, Games. They're looking for new media where they can suck at as we speak.
I tried it on PS4 and it looked and ran like shit.
I remember this being the buzz around the console versions when it first came out for PS4 and X1, so I figured that if it ran like chapped ass on those consoles, it would crawl like chapped ass on Switch. WB didn't exactly win any confidence after MK1 either.
