PSA: Batman Arkham Knight
This is a quick PSA, as today marks the release of Batman: Arkham Knight. The game is the latest in a long line to be marred by poor technical releases.
The game comes locked natively at 30 frames per second, even on the highest set ups. This looks like a deliberate effort to keep the PC version of the game in lockstep with the console version.
However, there are reports of users only being able to run the game at 15 frames per second. The game frequently crashes to desktop, suggesting that the build of the game itself is unstable. There are a suite of reported other performance issues, but the discussion is centred around the locked framerate.
There are also reports that Warner Brothers were keeping review copies close to their chest; only providing them to larger outlets, or only providing the console versions otherwise. There is at least an implication that they knew the PC version was, at the very least, unfinished. It is a shame to see yet another poorly optimised game come out of major studios.
Thanks to a complete backlash on the internet, with the game been given (at the time of writing) an average of 2.4 of metacritic, coupled with a trending global hashtag on Twitter #BatmanArkhamKnight. There are also reports of nVidia selling graphics cards with Arkham Knight packaged in, so chances are there will be some contention there in teh coming days.
Fortunately thanks to the new Steam refund policy most people will be able to redeem the price of the game as store credit. For anyone else who owns it, they will need to wait for a post-release patch unfortunately. Or, as was the case with Dark Souls, wait for the modding community to come in and fix the game’s issues, that said I cannot find any reference to the tools being released for the game.
EDIT: Rocksteady staff have announced that they are aware of the performance issues on PC. However there is no date as yet in terms of a proposed fix.