Latest Gaming Technology, Batman: Arkham Knight is a mess on PC, surprisingly solid on consoles 2015

Batman: Arkham Knight, the final game in Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy, was released this week to massive critical acclaim. Our sister site IGN gave it a 9.2 out of 10, and it currently has a Metacritic score of 90 out of 100 — big praise. And while the console versions of the game are performing surprisingly well, the PC release seems to be something out of one of Scarecrow’s waking nightmares.
      

As you can see in the video above, Arkham Knight looks absolutely stunning on the PS4. However, it’s not perfect. During open world gameplay and some cinematic moments, screen tearing is occasionally an issue. Most notably, it shows up during the introduction of the Batmobile. It doesn’t really impact gameplay, though, so it’s a relatively minor complaint.
The folks over at Digital Foundry have done some preliminary analysis on the PS4 version, and it seems that the game typically stays pegged at the 30fps cap. Sadly, moving at full speed through the city causes quick dips in frame rate. Batman looks absolutely gorgeous at a full 1080p resolution, but considering that the frame rate cap is already something of a compromise for fidelity, it would be nice if the engine could at least stay locked at 30fps,.That said, this game looks stunning on the PS4, and the performance issues are relatively insignificant. Considering just how much of the city they’re rendering at once, this might just be the single most impressive game on the current-gen consoles. The Witcher 3 is a big, beautiful game as well, but it doesn’t offer the same sense of speed and grandiosity. If you’re in search of a visual showpiece, Arkham Knight is just that.

Over on the PC, however, the situation is much worse. Not only have widespread reports of performance issues popped up, but it’s actually lacking some graphical effects seen on the console versions. Yikes.
By default, the game is capped to 30fps on PC, but editing a simple .ini file removes the cap. Sadly, the game is incredibly poorly optimized, so even relatively beefy setups can’t keep up. Even running on hardware that is more powerful than the PS4 and Xbox One, the game runs poorly.


In fact, the PC version has caused such a backlash that Warner Bros. has decided to suspend sales for the time being. Hell, some distribution outlets are even offering up Batman-specific refunds. What a trainwreck.
While it’s true that the PC version of Arkham Knight was put in the hands of Iron Galaxy, it’s not at all fair to blame them for the issues. Warner Bros. was well aware of the state of the PC version, and they refused to delay it. The blame should be heaped on Warner Bros., not Iron Galaxy. (Iron Galaxy was also responsible for the Arkham Origins port — a buggy mess that performed far worse on AMD cards than on NV hardware. - Ed).


It seems that most (if not all) reviewers were sent PS4 copies, so that’s clearly the version that Warner Bros. is most comfortable with. So far, the Xbox One version seems to be running fine, but firm details regarding overall performance are still hard to come by. It’s safe to say that it’s in much better shape than the PC version, though.