Few Brits can claim to have left more of a mark on Batman in the past decade than that of Christopher Nolan. From 2005’s Batman Begins to 2015’s Batman: Arkham Knight, it’s impossible not to see Nolan’s brooding handiwork in everything Batman as the man who fearlessly moulded America’s Caped Crusader into Hollywood’s Dark Knight. In just ten of the 458 minutes it takes to watch Christian Bale rise, fall, and pick himself up out of a well, you can zip through the visual highlights of Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy without a single clown in sight minus the one that constructed Rocksteady Studios’ race tracks.
If you’ve played last month’s 1989 Batmobile tracks, then you pretty much know the formula for Arkham Knight‘s Tumbler DLC pack. Putting you behind the wheel of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight‘s monstrous black steed, the pack sees you roar through two tracks themed after Nolan’s classic trilogy, each with a set number of laps: one at the easiest or three at the hardest. At a few minutes a pop, neither of them are long-term distractions despite their feeble attempts at pomp and circumstance.
The two tracks make a peculiar effort at replicating a mishmash of all three of Nolan’s Batman flicks all in two, the first adapting the rooftop police chase from Batman Begins and the second evoking the ruins of Gotham’s city hall from The Dark Knight Rises. Somehow both share the incongruous addition of the Batcave running right through the Gotham freeway while GCPD helicopters take potshots at you. Without the thrill of pursuers, the tracks seem devoid of any of the drama they’re reenacting despite the war drums of Hans Zimmer’s classic score beating in the distance.
They are, however, the most challenging of the four tracks Rocksteady’s put out. Given the Tumbler’s sheer girth, maneuvering the beast around the rubble-laiden tracks is a painstaking chore and the tight corners you navigate feel deliberately trollish in design. Though the Tumbler’s easily the fastest in car in Batman’s garage, it’s easily the most fickle. Driving it backwards while pressed up against a ravine was a bizarre experience I won’t forget. Performing a jump in it is a blast. It’s a shame those last just under half-a-second. At least it handles downtown Gotham nicely enough, minus a working tank mode, ironically.
At face value, Arkham Knight‘s The Tumbler DLC is another notch in the utility belt of disappointments that’s been the game’s season pass thus far. Unless this month’s Nightwing DLC is the sucker punch that Arkham Knight desperately needs, this is the sad state of affairs that Arkham Knight deserves. Should Rocksteady have sought to remaster EA’s original Batman Begins or make The Dark Knight tie-in game we never got, that would’ve been DLC to download. Instead, we have another $2 time waster.
