Batman

"I'm not Bruce Wayne...I'm a crappy side scrolling adventure game!"

When you think of movie to game conversions, you always run across a game that doesn’t quite cut the mustard in any respect. Batman falls into that while following the movie, but missing some key ingredients to making a decent side scrolling action platform game! The story is based on the hit movie, in which you take control of the Caped Crusader and battle your way through a multitude of enemies and stages in order to stop the evil intentions of one mad man, the Joker. This sounds and even seems pretty cool at first, but you’re left with a game that is intentionally difficult to master and even harder to defeat simply based on the amount of in game difficulty that there is to encounter. There are different elements that may link this game to the movie, but rarely did I ever see Batman get his ass kicked this much and some of the bosses that you face off against are just too unreal to actually be anything linked! One game that I can say has potential, but in the end, it falls along the wayside of mediocrity due to repetitive stages and mind numbing action gaming.

The game play is strictly platform gaming in which you control Batman through several stages of action and adventure against a computer-controlled army that out powers you by one thousand percent! In your little adventure through the stages, you’ll find that your main tool of offense is your fists, even though you can collect the different items that Batman always uses. Wonderful toys as the Joker called them is basically your only hope of survival against gun toting enemies that fire and move faster than you do. What you will find through playing the game is that the computer difficulty is set so high {regardless of what you set it to} that it is nearly impossible to beat the stages in the later levels unless you have nerves of steel! These little instances of creating a challenging game only goes a long way into turning plenty of gamers off, regardless of whether or not they are veterans or brand new to the title and genre. With no secrets to find and really no break from the norm of what you see and what you’re fighting, you’ll find that Batman can be about as tedious as a Honors Physics exam and about as fun overall.

Controlling Batman is also an exercise is both patience and skill. In most of the stages, you’ll be required to move through the different waves of enemies and beat them down while trying to keep yourself as intact as you possibly can! The NES controller does nothing to help this matter any, in which you have plenty of stiff control and various instances of poor to no response. There is nothing that is more aggravating than getting through a particularly difficult review, only to get wasted because of one simple mistake! With the NES control being so stiff, the platform stages in general will be more than difficult to complete let alone having to face off against the enemies, which are so strategically placed at the very edge you’re jumping to. Aside from that, beginners will probably have more trouble trying to learn the precise control as the veterans of the genre will have problems learning how to use what it is that they have at their hands!

Visually, the game is heavy in background detailing, but very poor in the actual character development part of the game. Batman looks more or less like a moving black speak with pointy ears, while the enemies move, act and look the same! The fighting moves that you perform are limited to punches and a jump kick, but even those seem to be less than average looking, making Batman look more like a stiff legged stick figure than a vigilante bad ass. Add this and then multiply it by the different special weapons that you can collect and use, but have no real depth or detail to them, and you’re looking at just another average NES game that has nothing to offer visually with the already bland game play!

Audio wise, the NES puts the sweet sounds of generic action music from the game and right into your ears. At some point, the game seems to want to take on that dark and moody tone that the movie so eloquently focused on, but the cross of MIDI music and mood inducing tones really doesn’t come across as a workable theme! The music changes slightly from stage to stage and you do have your instances of different boss battle themes, but when you boil it all down, you have something of which you’ve heard before and you’ll hear it again in some other side scrolling action game. Sound effects are also less than stellar with your basic grunts and groans as well as the usual array of thuds and bumps when you do something in action. There are no special crashes or booms and even the explosions sound tinny enough that it seems they are coming out of a crushed pop can and not a video game!

Batman is a game that tries hard to stick to the movie while bringing the experience of what it feels like to be Batman all at once. What it really does is create a game that tries hard, but falls at the wayside simply because the difficulty and the lack of variation on the action is limited to side scrolling only! There are some instances that make the game rather fun, such as the different cut scenes that show throughout the game in key points. This adds a little more to the overall view of the game, but flashy cut scenes doesn’t eliminate the crap controls, the boring game play and even the lack of detail in the visuals that you may see. As a game that does follow the movie, you’re probably better off to go ahead and pick this one up because it is a fair attempt at recreating the Batman experience. However, if you’re not a Batman fan, or even a Batman fanatic, then this game is nothing that you haven’t seen before, and won’t see again!

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/04/01, Updated 12/04/01