The Nintendo Switch port of Batman Arkham Knight reportedly suffers from abysmal frame rates, making the game nearly unplayable and forcing a fate onto players that not even Batman would wish on his worst enemies.
The game is riddled with issues such as “poor performance and game-breaking glitches,” says Digital Foundry’s Oliver Mackenzie. These are issues that are quite honestly unbecoming of a game that consumers are expected to pay $60 for. Yes, the game comes in a bundle and includes three complete titles and the DLC that comes with them. But there are better options available. You can grab Arkham Knight and its predecessors on Steam for starters. And all three will cost around the same price at $60. But you can also buy them individually for $19.99. And you can play them on the Steam Deck.
Already this is a more tempting, not to mention consumer-friendly, option. Not only will the games look better visually, but they’ll run better too. So it begs the question of how the game was released in this state. As Wccftech points out, the game deserves better.
The Arkham Knight Switch port can tank to zero frames per second
It’s worth noting that this doesn’t happen 100% of the time. But in some footage shared by Mackenzie, you can see the frames drop to zero during some initial testing. He says he’ll do more testing on Arkham Knight and the other two games sometime this week. But it’s already not looking good.
Visual quality also takes a bit of a dive. However, most players on Switch are usually willing to forgive some decrease in visual quality if the game performs well. To which Arkham Knight does not. Hopefully, this is something that can be patched and fixed quickly for those who bought the bundle. Which was released on December 1.
Some other Switch ports don’t have these issues
When you compare the state of this game to another high-profile port that came to Switch, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, it showcases that the Switch is capable of running games from that era. The Witcher 3 is even considered a more ambitious title. And while the graphics are noticeably lower resolution, the performance is quite incredible considering the size and the scope of The Witcher 3’s world and all its mechanics.
You can see a larger breakdown of how it performs on the Switch in an older video from none other than Digital Foundry when the port was launched back in 2019. Digital Foundry said it was potentially the biggest technical showcase of the Switch at the time and praised it for its untouchable portable play.
The Batman Arkham Trilogy port for Switch was supposed to land back in the middle of October. But the release was delayed so the best possible version of the game could be delivered to players. It seems like that didn’t quite happen. Maybe the port needed a little more time in the oven to finish baking.
2023-12-05 15:07:15