"It's Batman with a vengeance"

Alright, so let me start off by saying this, the only previous Batman installment I’ve played was Batman Returns way back in the Sega CD days. I have never been a fan of the series but I’ve never avoided it either.

Gameplay - 8
In Batman Vengeance, you (as Batman) are being lured into a trap by the likes of The Joker (along with his main squeeze, Harley Quinn), Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivey and of course their stupid thugs who actually seem to think the can beat the bat.

Batman Vengeance seems like your typical platform run around, beat ‘em up type, but with the addition of weapons and gadgets found in the Batman universe such as the batarang, batgrapple, batlauncher, batplane, batmobile and more (they should really come up with better names). This game requires at least a Pentium 2 450 MHz, 128 Meg of RAM, a 32 Meg video card and direct x 8.1 (and of course a keyboard/mouse or gamepad). Well, with even those specs, this game runs pretty descent. But of course, with everything dealing with computers; the more, the merrier.

When using a keyboard, there are only 4 keys to remember. You can also use you mouse in unison with the keyboard. Move the mouse to aim when using your batscope, left click acts as the action/punch and right click to jump. Using the mouse makes it kind of peculiar when first starting up this game. I keep wanting to change the direction batman is moving by aiming my mouse. A side effect of too many PC FPS and RTS games I guess. However, try to configure this game for a gamepad and that’s were the confusion starts, well, at least for me. I mean, I’m still working on how they attach facial tissues in a box so that the next one pops up after you pull one out. But, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to change my gamepad button configuration. You might want to check out the control scheme prior to starting this game just to get it down.

This game isn’t totally beat-‘em-up bliss though, there is some stealth involved so you’ll have to learn a little patience. But mostly it’s just beat-‘em-up bliss. Aside from stealth, there are puzzles to test your patience. You may find the need to use your batscope to seek out a ledge to crawl up to using your batgrapple, a distant enemy to disengage using your batarang or finding the most effective way to sneak up behind a person to use your batcuffs on em.

This game is also cool in that you can view all your passed movies and play through all your passed levels to increase your batskills.

Graphics - 8
If you’ve ever watched the Batman cartoon series, this game stays pretty true to all the same imagery. The cut screens seem like they are directly from the cartoon. As for the in game graphics, all I can say is that on a Pentium 2 450 MHz and NVIDIA 16 Meg TNT video card (ya, it’s old) these graphics look pretty fair. There are a few instances of choppiness, but nothing to extreme as to deter overall. Although, working with that old of hardware, it might help to have you screen set to a lower resolution such as 640X480 or 800X600. Of course, having a lower resolution will also help the cut screens.

Sound - 9
The sound is straight out of the cartoon series. I don’t know if this game features the actual voice actors, but they sound authentic enough to me. The sound effects are also dead on with the cartoon series from the grunts of the thugs to the sound of Batman smacking his fists on the Jokers face, it’s all here.

Replay - 8
Well, to tell you the truth, there’s not allot in this game to keep me interested. I mean, it is a good title for the genre. Unfortunately, my computer (the one described above) runs it decently at best and that doesn’t make for a good lasting appeal. I think fans of the series will like this one and should check it out. But I think that if I had a faster computer and better hardware to run it, I could see myself playing this game a lot more.

I feel that the option of viewing all your passed movies and playing through your favorite passed stages is always a good thing and I wish more people would incorporate it.

Closing comments
Although I’m not the biggest Batman fan, this does seem to be a pretty good game. But in a sea of great games that fit into the same genre as this one, I feel that this game will just go as another one of those games only fans of the series will buy.

But control issues keep this game from achieving greater status. It’s cool that they incorporate the mouse and all, but they could have allowed you to customize controls and make it more user friendly for us gamepad users.

Overall – 8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/08/02, Updated 12/08/02