It
has been far too long since a game that had the pretension to adorn the infamous
name of ‘Batman’ was true to the franchise’s legacy. I find it hard to believe
that any iteration of the game, short of the original N.E.S. version is worth
its weight in bat-feed. Nevertheless, we must keep an open mind my fellow
bat-friends, what with the introduction of such radically improved videogame
hardware and all. So does Batman: Vengeance live up to the legendary legacy?
To paraphrase: no. Batman: Vengeance does however show considerable improvement
over its countless inferior predecessors, with any luck this game will mark the
outset of high quality Batman videogames for the future.
Batman: Vengeance
is based on Paul Dini and
Bruce Timm’s critically acclaimed cartoon, and as such, this game has a lot to
live up to. Ubi Soft did a terrific job of recreating the mood and overall feel
of the series, had they put as much time and effort in the gameplay department
this game could have been great. As it sits Vengeance is little more then a
mildly entertaining platform/FPS game that will undoubtedly sell through the
roof due to its monolithic fan-base potential and the fact that this game is
being ported to every last NextGEN system, GBA included.
The fist-a-cuffs
combat system in the game is so sluggish it’s practically turn based. Punching,
kicking, and blocking are your only options and most fights amount to nothing
more then punching — blocking — punching — blocking, you get the idea, not
exactly the dark knights most memorable moments.
The gameplay as a
whole is lethargic and inaccurate, at times you will come across parts where the
game has the audacity to present you with acrobatic platforming demands that
would be better suited for a Mario game, this inevitably leads to taking
unnecessary damage or having to re-do parts of the game over countless times.
Let this be a message to all game developers: bad gameplay costs lives!
The prerendered
cut-scenes are splendidly executed; they are aesthetically true to the animated
series while being rendered in 3D. The visuals and audibles integrate
seamlessly, leaving you anxious to progress just so you can watch the next
cut-scene. But alas, artistically impressive prerendered cinemas do not a good
game make.
The controllable
character animations are ludicrously impressive, you’d swear your watching an
episode of the animated series, that is, if the person playing the game is
skilled enough to overcome the nagging gameplay issues. Your not going to find
4-pass bump mapping, or NVIDIA-charged pixel shaders in Batman:Vengeance, but
thats not what Batman: Vengeance is about. What it sets out to accomplish is to
recreate the visual feel of the animated series, and it has accomplished this
task with polygons to spare.
One nice thing
about the Xbox version of the game is that thanks to the NV20’s graphical
processing power the visuals look noticeably cleaned up from its PS2 and
GameCube counterparts, aliasing is hardly visible. Load times are also far less
time consuming thanks to the built in hard drive.
A significant portion of the sound has a distinctive,
organic-gritty-ambience about it, which goes nice with its dark semi-serious
visuals. The music is true to the animated series with dramatic, sweeping
scores. Overall WBIE did an excellent job of reproducing the animated series in
the audio department. Voice-overs are equally impressive with Kevin Conroy and
Mark Hamill onboard to reprise their roles as Batman and The Joker,
respectively.
Towards the last
quarter of the game the difficulty gets ramped up to the stature of
‘frustratingly-annoyingly-difficult’, it would have been one thing if it was
entertainingly challenging, but when your having to restart entire levels over
again because of unresponsive play control, or shoddy level design, then you
start to second guess why your even playing the game to begin with. Expect to
clock in a substantial amount of time to complete this game, mainly due to the
aforementioned issues.
The bonuses that
the game offers are hardly worth the effort involved in obtaining them.
Throughout the game you will be awarded ‘points’ based on different actions you
take in the game, the more points you accumulate the more special power-moves
you’ll learn. The other bonus features come in the form of ‘cheats’. Obtaining
‘cheats’ is a matter of finding hidden envelopes scattered throughout the game’s
levels. Cheats allow you to do double-damage to enemies or make Batman
invisible to enemies, among an assortment of equally unimpressive abilities.
Perhaps they had a contest to see who could come up with the least creative
bonuses, if that is the case then I fervently applaud them.
To Ubi Soft’s
credit though, you can adjust the brightness through in-game controls, which
makes it nice because you do not have to displace your TV’s settings in order to
view the game at optimal contrast.
Despite the games
many inherent annoyances, there is a good game buried deep within the
digital information stamped onto this DVD. If you can look past its
denounceable play control then you will find a smart, stylish, Batman experience
that is, at its foundation, true to its namesake.
Gameplay: 6
Play control is so
annoyingly indifferent that you will die many a times due to the awkward play
mechanics. Gameplay is Achilles heal of this game, preventing it from being the
Batman game we all wish it could be.
Graphics: 9
True to the
animated series, remarkably done in full 3D. The animation is seamless and can
sometimes give the impression that your watching the Cartoon Network instead of
controlling the on-screen action.
Sound: 8
Music and sound
effects sound as if they were lifted from the critically acclaimed cartoon,
sweeping, dramatic, scores amplify the overall experience to the point where
you’ll feel as if you are taking part in a epic Batman adventure.
Difficulty: 8
Batman: Vengeance
gets exceedingly difficult towards the latter part of the game. If the gameplay
were not so clunky and unresponsive this would not have been a problem. The
difficulty in the game can be most likened to sitting on the control pad and
using your butt muscles to execute a Dragon Punch in Street Fighter 2.
Concept: 7
Batman: Vengeance
is based on the smart and stylish animated series created by
Paul Dini and Bruce Timm.
The joker is pulling strings from the grave and its up to you as the Dark Knight
to get to the bottom of it.
Multiplayer: N/A
Overall: 7
Overall Batman: Vengeance is a stylish and smart reproduction of the animated
series it is based on. If you have the time to refine your Bat-techniques then
this game can be very enjoyable. However, this is not a game you would want to
purchase, simply because the quality of entertainment it purports is vastly
inferior to other games on the market. Keep in mind, the main competition of
this game is not the heavy hitters like Metal Gear Solid 2, or GTA3, rather its
direct competition is games like Spiderman or Superman. On those terms this
title fares quite well.
