As announced and on time, Warner Bros. have introduced the new 4 player co-op Heroic Assault content featuring interstellar villain Starro, and with it also a surprise 2 player co-op supercharged villain Showdown mode for action roleplaying game Gotham Knights.

Looks about what you'd expect but immediately the writing jars.

Save your master and you will be rewarded.

Says Starro, who movie goers would recognise from The Suicide Squad.

To a manbat under his control.

His mind control is absolute.

Truly he wouldn't even need to issue a verbal command to any of his minions but we understand the story's need for dialog.

But slaves aren't offered rewards. They just do.

Making this a classic example of writers mindlessly recycling dialog without giving any thought to whether it makes any sense in this context.

Ugh.

By our estimation this game is much better than some prominent gaming sites would have you believe, but ultimately lost its grip on us.

For our tastes, any long-term joy in the game was dependant on being able to complete each character's skill tree - a question the developers dodged pre release.

To answer that question (FYI in the affirmative) we had to subject ourselves to New Game Plus - a feature we despise in all games.

Both for being an interminably boring repetition and also for diminishing the illusion of our being the character who experienced that story and world.

Ugh.

On top of that there's things like Nightwing's and Batgirl's traversal trials, which are stupidly difficult and non-immersive.

The fantasy here is supposed to be that you're a superhero, not a rat running or in this case flying inane mazes.

Ugh.

Meaning that the most recent dozens of hours of our time spent with the game, was no fun at all.

That makes us want to take time off, not dive back in for more.

Plus very disappointed in the game's fashion for Robin and not completely in love with combat.

Haven't uninstalled it yet so we 'll probably take a look but unless the experience is seriously mind blowing, can't see this being the long-term muliplayer superho game we'd hoped for.

Gotham Knights is available now on PC, Xbox X|S and PlayStation 5.

Also heavily discounted in Black Friday sales which are almost over but if you're quick you can pick it up for about half price from a range of vendors.

Worth that price for a once and done, but beyond that will be a matter of your tastes.

[ Main Image: Gotham Knights - Heroic Assault trailer. Credit: Warner Bros. via YouTube. ]

References

DC Games Support (November 29, 2022). Gotham Knights PC Patch Notes | 11/29/2022.

Gotham Knights (November 30, 2022). Gotham Knights - Official Heroic Assault Trailer. YouTube.

Wikipedia. Starro. (viewed November 30, 2022)