‘Batman: Arkham Knight’ Patched Again On PC, Still Not Working Properly


To say Batman: Arkham Knight has been an abysmal attempt at PC porting since its June release would be an understatement. Having been pulled from digital storefronts due to its broken state, then subsequently re-released months later in a state not markedly better, Warner Bros. and developer Rocksteady have been trying to fix the issues that have plagued the PC version since its release.

However, each patch for Batman: Arkham Knight hasn’t done much to alleviate the issues with the game. Warner Bros. released a new Batman: Arkham Knight patch a few days ago to address issues, as detailed by VG247, still plaguing the game, yet many of the “fixes” have not panned out well for players still hopeful Arkham Knight can be a great game on PC. Despite knowing about the PC port’s problems for “months” before release, according to a Kotaku source, Warner Bros. doubled down on the console versions, and they certainly have benefited, with the game being up for an award in the upcoming “The Game Awards” show, despite one of the versions being virtually unplayable. Issues such as framerate hitches, texture degradation versus the console versions, resolution issues, sporadic freezing, and audio hitches plagued the PC fanbase, proving that developers just don’t give as much attention to PC ports (as, again, evidenced by reports of issues being known months before).

Well, now the game has the full attention of the developer, and patches have been coming since the game’s re-release a few weeks back. However, Batman: Arkham Knight still doesn’t seem the better for it. The patch, released a few days back, specifically targets VRAM optimization, as well as numerous framerate issues across the board, yet according to Digital Foundry’s analysis, Batman: Arkham Knight on PC is still broken.

“Based on fresh tests with the new update, there are marginal improvements to the title, but the underlying issues remain much the same. There are a couple of fundamental problems we have with the PC version of the game — first and foremost, Arkham Knight’s performance issues when paired with graphics cards with 2GB of onboard graphics memory. The game’s built-in VRAM allocation meter strongly recommends that you drop down to low quality textures in order to eliminate hitching and stuttering on 2GB cards — a state of affairs that just isn’t good enough.”

AMD users are still getting the short-end of the stick, with performance suffering worse than their Nvidia counterparts. While locking the framerate at 30 may help give you more of a “console-like” experience, PC users don’t invest in extremely powerful hardware to get the same level performance as a console, essentially a low-end PC. Even using top-of-the-line components, DigitalFoundry still could not eke out a perfectly locked 1080p60. Even using a powerful GTX 970 graphics card, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and an Intel Core i7 6700K, the game still cannot lock Batman: Arkham Knight at a full 1080p60. Stuttering is still common, even with the GPU being well utilized. The performance is directly affected by VRAM, as Digital Foundry notes dropping textures down from high to normal quality sees a small, but measurable, improvement.

Issues like this plague PC ports constantly, with many developers focusing specifically on the console versions of games over the PC versions, resulting in sub-par PC performance. This is seen extensively in Arkham Knight, with even this patch not bringing the game to the level of quality expected by the fanbase. Maybe with subsequent patches performance can get better, but even Warner Bros. has admitted there are things that might not ever be fixed in Batman: Arkham Knight.

[Images via Warner Bros.]

Share this article: ‘Batman: Arkham Knight’ Patched Again On PC, Still Not Working Properly
More from Inquisitr