Batman Begins

Not the perfect Batman game, but it sure comes close.

Review By HawkEye.

I'm a huge Batman fan, and was since an early age. It started with the television series that ran during the 1960's (I watched them in the late 70's as reruns), then with the animated show in the 1990's and then with the comic books and the movies (only the first two, the others were very bad). I also played a few video games that had Batman in them, but they weren't that good.

I'm just happy to see the Batman franchise heading into a positive market instead of where it was several years ago. The comics are always great, but the movies and video games were very bad and didn't capture the character very well. This has all changed now with Batman Begins since we now have a great movie and a video game that is close to perfection.

PRESENTATION: The best part of the game is the ability to make your enemies frightened of you. I had so much fun scaring a group of villains and then taking them out and finding that the last criminal to face me was scared ****less and saw Batman as a mutated human/bat creature. Pure sweetness there! This feature is like the executions in “Manhunt” as far as a fun factor is involved, at least to me. I can do this over and over just to see the horror in the faces of the victims who happened to cross my path.

But getting the fear/respect up for Batman takes some work. You have to know how to take out some criminals without them seeing you (using stealth) or you'll use a nearby object to scare them. Plus you can use some gadgets/weapons to add fear to the bad guys or to blind them.

GRAPHICS: The areas are done very well, and seem to have a lot of detail placed into each section. The in game cutscenes are very clean and look almost lifelike. I did experience some problems in a few areas (not too many) where the game froze for about one second and then started again. I also had it slow down in some fights where I had more than three people to attack at once. Other than that, the game ran smoothly. The movie cutscenes ran just like you were watching them on a DVD.

SOUND: The voice acting is great simply because the actors from the movie did them, so it helps to give the game that movie feel. Some games from movies don't realize this and their games usually are not very fun to play or listen to (Blade II is an example). The music in the background is good, and the sound effects are also done properly. The major area for this would be the voice acting, and every time a character talks you can understand them and they don't give a dry, emotionless read of the lines.

GAMEPLAY: There are some good and bad aspects to this area of the review. First the good. The game is very easy to understand since it basically tells you what to do and when to do it. This is an okay feature to have, but it leaves very little freedom in what you can do. Also, you can't do certain things unless the game says, “Okay do this” in the form of an icon appearing on the screen. The driving levels are simply great! I loved driving the Batmobile around at high speeds and taking out enemy cars or even the Cops. Sneaking up on criminals and taking them out was very fun, but I enjoyed this in “Manhunt” much more since you can kill them instead of just knock them out…But this is Batman after all.

Now the bad. Your character doesn't seem to move very fluidly and seems a bit slow and clunky when he moves around. The fighting can be a bit frustrating since Batman will be facing one opponent and then switch to another even though you didn't want him to. Interrogating a criminal gets annoying after a while. I think it would have been better if it had a style similar to “The Punisher” in how you can get information from your victim. Picking locks is also very easy, almost so easy that you have to wonder why it wasn't more of a challenge. The same can be said for hacking computers as well.

OVERALL: The game is quite short, meaning that you can easily finish the game in under ten hours, and that is with dying several times. Most people can probably finish this in less than eight hours, but the game is fun. I'm a big Batman fan, and when I saw that you can use a Dark Knight costume after completing the game, I had started a new game immediately just to see the cool looking costume! Plus you can replay the sweet driving levels, which I thought was awesome since the driving on the game was done exceptionally well. Some might complain about the length of the game, but at least it made some effort for replay value.

NAME: BATMAN BEGINS

SYSTEM: XBOX, Nintendo Game Cube, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance