Do not buy the game yet until issues fixed

While Warner Brothers and Rocksteady Studios are busy counting all them console sales for the much awaited game, PC Gamers felt like they were robbed and shot dead at a back alley due to Batman: Arkham Knight’s poor PC performance and other issues. These includes frame drops, an unforgiving locked frame rate at 30 FPS, pre-order woes, and just the bad combination at launch day. Ultimately becoming the latest AAA titleto face the wrath of the #PCMasterRace both in major social media and content delivery platform such as Steam.

Batman-Arkham-Knight-PC-Port-(3)

To further elaborate, and while the  locked frame rate could be unlocked via .ini files, it isn’t helping that much. Even uncapping it would severely display frame drops even with a decent card as reported by Steam Users. While it’s an Nvidia Gameworks title, the performance issues are apparent for both AMD & Nvidia. Adding fuel to the fire are the pre-order woes of gamers who bought a card from Nvidia that contains a free copy of the game, expecting that they will receive the Harley Quinn Story Pack DLC – only knowing later on that they will receive the base game without the said DLC.

Batman Arkham Knight PC Port (1)

Batman Arkham Knight PC Port (2)

Another thing worth noting is that we’ve seen the game running at 60 FPS via Nvidia’s demo at Youtube, which is kind of shady since the retail version does not reflect it what so ever. Adding to that, it seems that Rocksteady Studios, the developer of Batman: Arkham Knight, is blaming it on an outsourced developer for the PC. Warner Brothers and Rocksteady Studios also released an statement about the mishaps of the PC Port, stating that…

We are aware that there are performance issues for some users playing Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. WB Games is working diligently with our development teams, NVIDIA and AMD, to identify and fix the issues as quickly as possible.

In addition, the statement which could be viewed HERE has been accompanied by a guide on how to run the game best on a given minimum and recommended settings, one that is enough to boil some of our PC Gaming brethren’s blood in dismay, considering that some of the most recent demanding titles (Witcher 3) could run gracefully with the minimum specs provided by WB & Rocksteady.

Minimum Hardware Specs:

  • OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-750, 2.67 GHz | AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4 GHz
  • Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2 GB Memory Minimum) | AMD Radeon HD 7950 (3 GB Memory Minimum)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection required
  • Hard Drive: 45 GB available space

Recommended Hardware Specs:

  • OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
  • Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 – 3 GB Memory Recommended
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Hard Drive: 55 GB available space

Ultra System Hardware Requirements:

  • OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
  • Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
  • Graphics Memory: 4 GB

For example, Rocksteady wants us to tone everything down within the Batman: Arkman Knight’s settings to an abysmal low, and I mean LOW EVERYTHING with a capable graphics card, CPU, and memory configuration. That’s just plain stupid for a seasoned PC Gamer that knows the nooks and cranny of his Gaming PC’s capabilities. Totally unacceptable, and is already a hint on how badly the game has been ported. Rocking a GTX 970 wont help you either, and that card my friends could run Witcher 3 at Ultra Settings without even dipping below 30 FPS.  Note to WB – follow CDPR’s footsteps and make sure your developer(s) is going to release a fully working game at launch for all gaming platforms.

Will a patch alleviate these issues? Probably, probably not, as experience told us otherwise, especially looking at Ubisoft’s attempt to fix its relations with PC Gamers since Assassin’s Creed: Unity’s flaws they have yet to bear good fruit, even after its 5th patch. That said, it might take a while for WB & Rocksteady Studios to fix all the things they broke since launch. If you’re planning to buy the game for the PC, just don’t. Spend your hard earned cash on something else, and wait for the publisher & developer(s) to fix what they really shouldn’t break first hand.

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