The latest trailer for Batman: Arkham Knight - which is due on June 23 on PS4 and Xbox One - is so action-packed we had to take a five minute breather just to take it all in. For months it's seemed like the deck has been well and truly stacked against the Caped Crusader, with a cabal of villains led by a reinvigorated Scarecrow and a small army with the titular Arkham Knight at its helm looking to take Bats down for good.

Not to worry though as he's now joined by Robin, Nightwing, Catwoman and the ever mysterious Azrael. Alongside some brutal looking team-up takedowns we see some Riddler-stamped droids with green fishbowls for bellies (chemical warfare anyone?) and the return of the Batwing. Check out the trailer embedded below and tell us what you make of the new war for Gotham…

Batman: Arkham Knight is about escalation. Escalation of threat, by way of the Scarecrow’s chokehold on the entirety of Gotham City. Escalation of scale, thanks to the vastly increased play area that setting facilitates. Escalation of conflict, with the whole Bat-Family along for the ride, and now playable. Escalation of gameplay, by way of Batmobile racing, tank combat, and AI-driven, pseudo co-op beatdowns.

But how is this stuff going to work? How can it possibly gel with the lean, focused design of the previous Arkham games? Well actually, you’d be surprised. Having gone hands-on with everything recently, it’s time we gave you some in-depth impressions, so click on and check out everything there is to know about Batman: Arkham Knight, updated with all the news from out latest demo. And then have a look at the latest gameplay trailer embedded below, and tell us what you make of the new war for Gotham…

has a great story, but it plays things way too safe. The prequel lacks the innovation you'd expect from a new Arkham game, probably because Origins was developed by Warner Bros Montreal; not series-creator Rocksteady. It was a stop-gap, while Rocksteady spent time working on a new Batman game for a new generation of consoles. It's clear that Arkham Knight is the real follow-up to Arkham City.

Rocksteady has already mentioned numerous times that Knight is the conclusion to the Arkham trilogy of games. It's interesting to me that Rocksteady barely acknowledges the other 'third' game, Batman: Arkham Origins. That stubborn mindset shows that Rocksteady isn’t just going to settle for business as usual: the team is going to shake things up for this trilogy's finale, starting with an addition fans having been dying to see...

Rocksteady finally has a drivable Batmobile in its Arkham universe, and it's central to the new game. It looks like a combination of Christian Bale’s tumbler and the Michael Keaton-era vehicles, and it moves like an unstoppable beast. It plows through trees, concrete barricades, and taxis, all while being nimble enough to jump over gaps and even drive up walls if you've built up enough speed. It flies through the wide city streets with a powerful engine, blasting fire out of the back.

Gotham City has been rebuilt to make room for the Batmobile, so it slots in naturally. The driving is impressively integrated with Arkham’s traditional grapple ‘n glide gameplay. If you’re flying, a button press will summon the Batmobile for Bruce to hop right in, while you can eject out at any moment and return to the air. Even the Riddler challenges are now underground driving tests, trading brainteasers for drift racing.

You know how in Arkham City you’d sometimes suffer that irritating momentum break, as a smooth, flowing glide to a target location was suddenly stalled by a distinctly less dramatic ‘Batman opens a door’ animation, and accompanying loading screen? Forget that. To transition between exterior and interior parts of Gotham now, you just need to smash through a window and start punching guys. It feels brilliant.

Particularly when you bring all of Batman’s new abilities together in one focused assault. Example: A Gotham Fire Chief is being held hostage in a small room at the top of a building. We don’t mess around trying to find a back door in. Instead we tear toward it in the Batmobile, double-tap X to launch ourselves out of the cockpit and into the air, transition straight into a glide to cover the remaining distance, then target a dive-kick at one of the goons w can see through the window. Glass shatters. Bones shatter. The Bat wins again.

As you're driving around Gotham (or through it, depending on your driving skills), the Batmobile is virtually indestructible. It's built like a tank, and can even transform into one. With the push of a button, it morphs into a nimble machine (also called battle mode) that lets you strafe and move around in all directions with ease and fire everything you’ve got at enemy drones. Armed with heavy cannons, rockets, a Vulcan cannon, riot suppressors, and who knows what else, Batman’s sweet ride is fully-loaded with a ton of toys to play with. It even has a containment unit in the back that can hold people or other precious cargo.

The Batmobile's standard form, or pursuit mode, comes equipped with booster rockets (to do booster donuts) and a power winch that’s strong enough to raise bridges and elevators. Like a good sidekick, the Batmobile comes when called, but it also comes with a remote so you can switch views and control the Batmobile from any location, helping you solve puzzles and essentially save yourself when you're in a pinch.

Don’t go worrying that the Batmobile’s tank-like combat mode is going to turn Batman into Master Chief. You might be in a vehicle, but this stuff feels like a natural extension of Batman’s hand-to-hand freeflow beatdowns. In battle mode, the Batmobile pivots and strafes like one of Halo’s Ghosts, but is augmented with a rapid, lateral boost-dodge, allowing it to duck and dive around incoming fire like a champion boxer dodging punches. And you’ll need that ability. In fact the combat is built around it. Because this is really about evasion, not shooting.

Laser lines on the ground indicate the path of incoming fire, turning rapidly from green to red as the threat increases. What differs the experience from that of a traditional shooter is the speed that everything moves at. Those lines are pulsing in and out constantly, crossing each other, cutting off parts of the ground, and opening up new windows on a second by second basis. The battlefield is really a dancefloor, with the close-quarters combat areas making the affair feel like a cramped, taught fight for survival rather than an exercise in target practice.

Too many games make compromises to stretch themselves across current-gen and last-gen. Arkham Knight is part of a growing group of PS4/Xbox One/PC-only games, and that focus is really paying off. Arkham Knight looks so good, with lighting, weather effects, and intricate visuals that the old systems could never duplicate.

It is one of the best looking titles I’ve seen, and the devs explain that the game simply couldn’t be created on the old hardware. In particular, they say that the Batmobile is only possible in Arkham Knight thanks to the current-gen horsepower they have at their disposal. It certainly looks like one of the true show-pieces for the new set of consoles.

The Arkham games have always kept the full glory of Gotham City tantalisingly out of reach. It's in the background of Asylum, a chunk of it forms the jail in City, and Origins blankets another portion of the town in snow. Arkham Knight gives you ALL of Gotham City. On a clear day. And it’s approximately 20 times the size of Arkham Asylum. The demo gives me a guided tour of the city, including the blazing neon of Chinatown and the famous clocktower base of Oracle.

You can appreciate the wide-ranging scope of the city because all the people have been evacuated. Call it a lame excuse if you like, but thanks to a toxic threat from the returning Scarecrow, all the regular folks in Gotham have town, leaving the burg to the cops and crooks that stayed behind. I’m fine with this reasoning, mainly because it opens up the sprawling, lovely metropolis to be enjoyed to its fullest.

Despite Gotham being evacuated, the GCPD’s finest are still around to back Batman in this most desperate of times. While the offices of the police HQ are briefly seen in a corruption-smashing mission during Arkham Origins, this time around, everyone seems to be on the same side. Headed up by Jim Gordon (again emphasising the hero relationships that Arkham Knight seems to be pushing), the GCPD is now a living, breathing place.

After capturing certain villains, Batman can actually drive them to the station for questioning and incarceration, and even better, he’s free to explore the station at will. Investigating the holding cells after taking down the Penguin’s mob, we happened upon a bunch of imprisoned goons, who unwisely chose to throw some verbal abuse at the Dark Knight. Though with a quick tap of Square, we found ourselves able to grab one goon’s head and smash it into the cell bars, so double-justice was done. Elsewhere, we stumbled upon the evidence room, in truth a heartstring-twanging museum to the whole trilogy, by way of key character props dating right back to Arkham Asylum. Pro-tip: If you want to make Batman really sad, check out Talia’s sword.

Batman’s combat skills are still the gold standard in action-adventure, and Arkham Knight looks to beef them up considerably. When it comes to hand-to-hand, Batman can now hold onto weapons after disarming thugs, beating them with their own clubs, all while he smoothly chains combos together. While in stealth mode, the Caped Crusader can use Fear Takedowns, a move that gets the drop on three thugs at a time via a brief QTE. That’s in addition to Environmental Takedowns for unique knockouts based on where the guy is standing when you attack.

Batman’s newfound ferocity manifests in the Batmobile sections too. When chasing an armored car, the Dark Knight can shut it down with some well placed Neutralizer Rockets. And when the driver crawls out of the wreck, Bats threatens to break his arm unless he coughs-up some information. Of course, Bats then breaks the thug’s arm once he has given up the info. Nice. Also, did we mention batarangs to the face?

Tacked on multiplayer modes aren’t always bad, and Arkham Origins shows that there’s room for engaging, team-based combat featuring the Bat-family of characters. Despite reasonable quality, Origins’ online battles didn't go over well, so it makes sense that Rocksteady isn’t going to spend any of it’s resources on multiplayer. Like a good book, and the dour caterwauling of James Blunt, Arkham Knight is meant to be enjoyed alone.

Rocksteady mentions that - based on the size of the current team - it would have a tough time creating great single and multiplayer modes, so the team is sticking with the solo action it does so well. There are still the challenge rooms to keep you busy afterwards, including the Harley Quinn and Red Hood pre-order bonuses. And while the British studio has confirmed there won't be any co-op modes either, Arkham Knight will feature the new , which enables you switch between some of Batman's allies mid-fight for some brutal team-up beat downs. Sadly it's locked to combat only, but you will be able to choose from Robin, Nightwing and Catwoman as you bring a league of justice to Gotham's criminal underworld.

Fear not. Rocksteady has not lost the run of itself with the addition of the extended Bat-family. This is no last-ditch attempt at escalation for escalation’s sake, throwing in unnecessary scale just because. Arkham Knight’s combat is still a resolutely focused affair. Back-up from the likes of Robin, Nightwing and Catwoman is more of a cinematic flourish.

When you battle in freeflow, you’ll sometimes find an ally fighting alongside you, keeping half of the (huge) mob off your back, but never dictating the pace of the fight. When you trigger a co-op takedown (which looks stunning, by the way), both heroes will smack down the chosen mook together, before control transfers to the other character, effectively tagging them in. You’re still playing a single-player fight. You’re still controlling a single character at a time. It’s just that there’s greater spectacle now, and a blistering sense of drama.

Early footage from Arkham Knight show familiar faces like Riddler, The Penguin, and Two-Face boldly stalking the streets of Gotham, while Scarecrow goes as an unseen force that’s risen up in the villain ranks. These guys have all moved up to fill the void left after beware Arkham City spoilers The Joker’s death in the previous game. This means Batman is facing a more solidified force without Mr. J’s chaos disrupting their plans... but that’s the least of his problems this time around.

See, the Arkham Knight in the title isn’t actually Batman, but a mysterious new villain Rocksteady conceived in conjunction with DC Comics. Arkham Knight appears at the end of my demo, beating Batman convincingly, and seemingly shooting Bruce in the face as the screen fades to black. Arkham Knight’s style will remind comics-fans of previous Bat-pretenders like Azrael and Red Hood, but this new enemy’s motives and identity remain a closely guarded secret.

Arkham Knight sees the Scarecrow go from fear-inducing annoyance to a criminal mastermind out to level Gotham City. He's replacing The Joker not only in the criminal underworld, but also in Arkham's DLC, where Scarecrow will be the boss of a number of bonus missions. And all of them will be exclusive to PS4.

Alongside Harley's pre-order missions (set prior to the events of the main game), Arkham Knight's season pass will also feature a prequel story featuring fan favourite Batgirl (playable for the first time in the series). A Matter Of Family won't be set in Gotham, so fans should expect an entirely new locale for the Bat lady. There's also Seasons Of Infamy and Gotham City Stories which throws you into the shoes of Bats and co as you fight an invasion of no-good villains.

The game’s reveal hinted at some other interesting bits of new gameplay functionality and the like, but that’s not the most pressing question for fans that grew up with Batman: The Animated Series. They want to know if Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman for multiple projects and the first two Arkham games will return after being replaced in Arkham Origins. And the answer is yes.

It was confirmed in the earliest preview, which is good because we already had a hunch he'd be back. After Arkham Origins was announced, Conroy himself said that he had just recorded stuff for a new Arkham game. And yet, he wasn’t the voice in Arkham Origins, making the then-unannounced Arkham Knight is confirmed as the game he was referring to. Arkham Knights' Batman is supposed to be very experienced and later in his career than most incarnations of Batman, making Conroy the perfect fit for the established crime fighter.

The Dark Knight is one of the most omnipresent characters in pop culture, but people can't get enough of the Caped Crusaders. They want to know when his next comic series, film, or video game will come out, and now there's an answer for one of those. Batman: Arkham Knight now has the global release date of June 23. Yes, that's a worldwide date, avoiding the standard separate launches for different parts of the world.

Because it's a major release in the modern age, you'd be right to guess there's an extra-fancy special edition, filled with exclusive DLC, an art book, a comic, and statue of the Batmobile - or a Batman memorial, which seemingly implies a dark ending for the Dark Knight.

The Batman is almost upon us. If you're a goon in the Arkham universe, that phrase usually means it's brown-trousers time. Thankfully, most of you aren't. So it's good news. Got anything to say about Arkham Knight? Let us know in the comments below.

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