Batman: Arkham Knight is available on Steam again, but it doesn't appear to be the triumphant return PC gamers have been hoping for. Sales were halted back in June after the PC release proved to be "a disaster," and the fact it has taken four full months for its return speaks volumes about how serious the issues with the port were. Yet amazingly, the game remains in pretty rough shape according to reports today. Multiple comments on Steam claim that Arkham Knight still runs very poorly, and Warner itself acknowledged in today's patch notes that not everything is actually fixed yet.
"We are still working with our GPU partners to add full support for SLI and Crossfire. In addition, we are working with these partners to address stability issues on certain cards related to the latest drivers," a Warner rep wrote. "After extensive testing, a hard drive paging issue with some GPUs on Windows 7 may occur after extended gameplay sessions. If you encounter this, simply re-launching the game will resolve the issue. For Windows 10 users, we’ve found that having at least 12GB of system RAM on a PC allows the game to operate without paging and provides a smoother gameplay experience."
The good news, such as it is, is that anyone who owns Arkham Knight or purchases it by November 16 will get free copies of Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY, Batman: Arkham City GOTY, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate. Warner said it hopes to have the freebies out to everyone by December. Arkham Knight also now supports "all add-on content that has been released thus far for console," so you can throw more money at that if you'd like, although it's all still full-price.
I haven't tried it myself but PC World spent some time with the re-release and declared that it's better, but still not very good. "While I was able to maintain 90 frames per second while moving slowly, flying for long periods of time or jumping in the Batmobile still put a damper on performance, with it dropping as low as 45-50 frames per second at times. That’s a hefty drop, and while the game seems more optimized than it did in June I still wouldn’t say it’s great," the site wrote, describing 1080p gameplay on a GeForce GTX 980 Ti, one of the most powerful video cards on the market. "It runs, though. Far better than it used to."
So that's what waiting four months gets you: No SLI or Crossfire, wonky driver support, and technical problems with Windows 7 and Windows 10. We'll have our own port impressions up tomorrow, followed by a full review.
