It’s now been six months since Warner Bros. pushed the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight out the door long before it was ready, before pulling it from Steam for four months so it could be fixed.
Of course, it wasn’t fixed, and even when it reappeared in October, it was still rife with performance issues, as we noted in our Batman: Arkham Knight PC port review. It was playable, true, but very poorly optimised. And so the patches continue. We’re almost at the end of 2015, and it’s still being fixed.
The latest patch arrived yesterday, and probably won’t please people who are still struggling to play the thing at 1080p with a stable frame rate. The previous patch promised to improve that side of things, which it may have done a little bit, but not to the point where the game was stable.
Here’s what’s changed:
- Fixed some issues with stars being awarded or lost incorrectly in specific AR Challenges
- Improved target prioritization during combat
- Restored heavier rain during the opening section of the game
- Fixed missing rain effects on a few remaining player character skins
- Miscellaneous gameplay fixes and stability improvements
- Fixes to some keyboard and mouse prompts after being rebound
- Made frame times more consistent for 60hz monitors running at 30fps with VSync enabled
- Previously equipped gadgets can be selected with keyboard and mouse again after restarting an AR Challenge
- Fixed the default key binding for Harley’s Snare gadget
- Batgirl’s Remote Hacking Device can now be properly selected with keyboard & mouse in AR Challenges
- Minor performance optimizations for certain combinations of hardware
- Fixed keyboard & mouse controls that did not function in DLC AR Challenges when no previous save data existed
- Quick Photo Mode can now be triggered with keyboard and mouse controls when using the Batmobile
- Special Combo Takedowns can now be performed with Quickfire Gadget binds if they were rebound
- Fixed graphical corruption that may occur after Alt-Tabbing
- Improvements and corrections to some localized text
- Added new Classic Harley Quinn skin for use in AR Challenges & the Harley Quinn Story Pack
- Added Arkham Knight as a playable character for AR Challenges & the Red Hood Story Pack
- Added support for December DLC content
I wouldn’t be surprised to see more patches appear next year, but I don’t expect them to solve all the issues. If four months of intensive repairs wasn’t enough, then I suspect that the port is simply beyond saving. At least people can play it now, I guess? But really that’s not good enough.