Secondly, background streaming - yes, the dreaded Batmobile sections in particular - also inflicts a degree of stutter, and that's possibly down to streaming issues baked into the core Unreal Engine 3 technology. Returning to Arkham Knight and running the PC port across a range of hardware, there are several issues to tackle here.įirst of all, unless you like tearing a lot there's a double-buffer v-sync to contend with that can easily send frame-rates crashing down from 60fps to 30fps in a blink of the eye. Running the game unlocked on powerful hardware easily sees the game regularly operate well north of 60fps - but average frame-rates are not the issue, it's all about the highly intrusive stutter that brings performance crashing down. Even before we attempt to drag the PC version kicking and screaming to 60fps, what we have here is a fascinating 'what if' - a vision of what Arkham Knight running on the enhanced consoles could potentially deliver.īut it's the performance issue that is our biggest challenge here - matching the consoles' 30fps target is no real problem. While some of the core effects like depth of field or the game's signature rain don't scale to higher pixel-counts so effectively, the high frequency detail, the stunning character modelling and the sheer atmosphere of Rocksteady's open world Gotham is simply phenomenal when pushed to the next level. Through that process of elimination, the PC version is all we have to work with when the next best alternative is the 1080p30 PS4 experience running under boost mode on PS4 Pro.Īnd what's clear from running the PC game at higher resolutions is that Rocksteady's original assets not only hold up at 4K, they look absolutely beautiful.

Publisher Warner Bros has already taken a swing at remastering the PS360 era Arkham titles for the current generation of consoles with limited success, while Arkham Knight itself has received no support for the enhanced Sony and Microsoft machines. The last point is the easiest to answer - it's about preservation, the idea of running one of the greatest games of this generation not just on the games machine of today but on the hardware of tomorrow. This is a challenge for Nvidia's new top-tier RTX hardware that's very, very different from the usual benchmarks and gameplay tests - is it actually possible to run the deeply flawed PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight at 4K resolution at a smooth, locked 60fps? Three years on from its highly controversial launch, has the quality of the port improved at all? Can the latest mainstream PC technology attain the consistent performance level that has traditionally eluded this most baffling of ports? And perhaps more to the point - why return to Arkham Knight at all?

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