Just hours after the launch of Batman: Arkham Knight, reports of major issues with the PC version began piling up.
Batman: Arkham Knight was highly anticipated and the launch stirred a lot of hype, but it clearly wasn't ready for release just yet. Many players who have already tried out the game are now complaining of several issues — and they're not just minor glitches. These issues range from optimization to severe stutter or crashes, as well as frame rate drops and audio glitches.
The first red flag arose when Rocksteady updated the minimum PC requirements just hours before the launch of the game, noting that some issues might occur with AMD cards.
"There are some known issues with the performance of Batman: Arkham Knight for PC owners using AMD graphics cards," notes the announcement on Steam Community forums. "We are working closely with AMD to rectify these issues as quick as possible and will provide updates here as they become available."
The minimum PC requirements previously mentioned only "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2 GB Memory Minimum" in terms of graphics. The rectification now highlights that AMD users will need Radeon HD 7950 with a minimum of 3GB.
Changing the minimum requirements so close to the game's launch made some users suspicious, and things are apparently more severe than they had thought. As it turns out, gamers are experiencing issues with Batman: Arkham Knight regardless of whether they're using an NVIDIA or AMD card.
Steam Community's forums are full of bad reviews and reports, as are NeoGAF forums and reddit.
"Broken at launch, no SLI support, horrible motion blur, generally poor performance. DO NOT BUY!!" reads one report on Steam Community forums.
Numerous other users have listed a slew of performance issues marring the experience, including problems with the frame rate. The game is locked at 30fps by default, but even uncapped (using the .ini files), it still drops even lower than 30fps — although in many cases, the gaming rigs exceed the minimum system requirements.
The game apparently stutters frequently even at the lowest settings. Players are also experiencing sound and freezing problems, among other issues. Some have complained of insufficient graphical settings, cumbersome navigation through the menu, no off option for motion blur, a number of bugs and glitches.
"This is one of the worst PC ports i have ever seen. It's basically the ps4 version shoveled onto pc like the massive pile of crap it is," a frustrated customer wrote in a review.
"It's locked to 30 fps and still runs like crap. It has constant stuttering and the most bare bones options menu i have ever seen in a modern title. Gameworks destroys my framerate on a 970 and it's even worse for amd users. The game looks awful and the mothionblur effect, which can't be turned off, is nauseating. Stay away from this game," themule1216 continued. "If you pre-purchased it, take advantage of the new return policy."
The bad reports keep on coming. It seems that Batman: Arkham Knight is delivering a bad experience overall —marred by frame drops, freezing, stuttering, bugs, glitches and whatnot. Considering the severity of these issues and how widespread they seem to be, a patch couldn't come sooner.
