Batman Forever

""IF THE BAT WANTS TO PLAY, WE'LL PLAY!" Yeah, Ill get back to you on that one......"

INTRO
Back in the day, when Sega was still around, lots of games were made for the genesis, many games were cool, like Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Gunstar Heroes, and a few other titles. Then, there are the crappy games, like Batman Forever. This game was made sometime in 1995 by Acclaim, based on the movie, Batman Forever, while the movie was ok, the game was far from it.

Story:7
The Riddler and 2-Face team up to take over Gotham city with their gang of crooks and goons, while you and your friend take the roles of Batman and Robin to go save the way. The story pretty much follows that of the movie, you going on a chase to find the Riddler to stop his evil plans while he sets up trap. You go through each of the levels, solve his puzzles and defeat his henchmen, so that in the end you can save Gotham, be the hero, and get the girl.

Game Play:3
There are 2 modes of play in the game, story mode and 2 player battle. Story mode is rather boring, you go through each of the 8 stages, fighting the same bad guys over and over, jumping from platform to platform, or grappling up and down. The characters move very slow in this game and fighting is a hassle, the chars punches and kicks are slow and usually while you are punching a dude, another one will pop up behind you, and since you can't move out of the way fast enough he will kill you, or you get ganged up on or thrown off a platform causing you to lose a life. Jumping is also an annoyance in this game, you will be falling off a lot of platforms because you either could not jump far enough or you jumped too far. Besides just punching and kicking there are also many gadgets Batman and Robin can use, but they require weird button movements. The AI in the game isn't that great either, sometimes, when your enemy will duck, if you crouch and kick him in the face, he will not move and will just sit there frozen like until you kill him. There are also many secrets in the game that are pretty cool, like the hidden gadgets and areas, so you can always go and through the levels and such to see how many you can fund, that is if you can even stand the game, because its boring as hell. The game just suffers from the repetitiveness of the levels and messed up controls.

Sound:4
The sound in this game are pretty low quality and messy, like when you turn on the game and start the adventure, you hear 2-Face say "IF THE BAT WANTS TO PLAY, WE'LL PLAY!" , but the voice is very muffled and scratchy, and so are all of the other peoples voices in the game. The background music in the levels are not that bad, it is also dark and mysterious, perfect for a batman game, but they do repeat some of the songs in other levels. Also, some of the characters use the same voice, like when anyone gets tripped, they all make the same yell. All of the sounds in the game are just boring and the not interesting at all.

Graphics:6
The characters are not very detailed in this game, and they use the same chars over and over again so they lack any kind of flavor. The backgrounds of the levels however are kind of nice, dark and gloomy just the way batman is meant to be, but overall the movement of the chars are just sloppy.

Replay:3
This game is pretty tough, most of the enemys will give you cheap shots like knock you off the platform and make you lose a life, you only get six, or they will gang up on you, it might be better with 2 players but my 2nd controller was a 3 button and pretty messed up so I never found out. I don't think its worth it to waste your time playing it all the way to the end, you will most likely die, so just do yourself a favor and use the cheats if you want to beat it.

Buy/Rent:
If I were you, I would not buy this game, even if you are offered pots of gold from evil leprechauns, it is not a good game, even if you love Batman don't buy it, its what Batman would have wanted. I don't think you can even rent this game anymore, its pretty old.

Overall:5
The game suffers from frustrating controls, poor level design, and just overall crappiness, this game is just utter garbage, so pass on it because it stinks.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/15/06