2005/06/25

Batman Begins

It’s a well known fact that games based on big Hollywood movies and popular comic books and graphic novels have a tendency to not live up to the original version, ie. they suck! But there have been a few recent exceptions lately where comic book heroes translated to big budget movies and then on to video games have made pretty good conversions, recent titles include Spiderman 2 and The Punisher.
If you haven’t watched the movie yet, chances are your better off watching it first before playing the game as it more or less follows the storyline of the movie of how Bruce Wayne goes from orphaned millionaire to caped crusader. The game also fills in a few holes from the movie’s storyline, and twists a few parts of the movie to enhance the game’s storyline.
The premise of the game is stealth/action with each level of the game follows a scene from the movie: Bruce receiving his training in the Himalayas, the docks, Arkham Asylum, and even Batmobile driving level! Everything is represented well in the dark gloomy atmosphere of the movie / cartoon / comics.
Gameplay requires you to guide Batman around the levels without being detected and taking out bad guys as you come across them. Interesting gameplay element is that like the Dark Knight of the series, you have a reputation to maintain by freaking out the baddies and making them scared of you. You do this by sneaking up on them one by one and taking them out, as well as messing with the background areas like blowing things up to scare them into dropping their guard (and their weapons) so you can swoop down while they are terrified and beat them down to either get past the area or question them for information and get items like keys and passwords.
Batman also has an arsenal of weapons on his handy utility belt. The ever popular Batarang is present, which you can use to strike certain background objects, smoke grenades and flash grenades to scare your and confuse your enemies while fighting with them, his grappling hook to get to high up places, and a little electronic device for hacking into computers.
Now here’s the problem with the game. Your whole path throughout the game is predetermined. You don’t have the freedom to move around as much as you like as there is only ONE way to complete each task, and they are easily pointed out to you as you progress through the game. This makes solving the puzzles in the game rather easy and you have to worry about is beating the bad guys in the fights, as they can damage and kill you rather easily if they gang up on you. I don’t remember Batman being that weak that it only takes a few shots to take him out?
Overall: Fans of the Dark Knight and the movie might want to give this a try as it’s the closest you’ll get so far to actually emulating him from the cartoon or movies in his dark world of Gotham City. You might want to give this a miss if your looking for a Metal Gear like stealth-action game.

Ratings:
Graphics – 8
Sound – 8
Gameplay – 6
Lifespan – 6
Overall – 6

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