GENRE
	Action
	DEVELOPER
	Eurocom
	PUBLISHER
	Electronic Arts
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1
	CONNECTIVITY
	no
	BUY NOW AT

Batman has a horrendous record when it comes to movies and games. Critics have berated every aspect of Batman films in the nineties and their video game counterparts. Recent games have been severely mediocre at best, and some have been miserably unplayable (Batman: Dark Tomorrow anybody?). Batman Begins, developed by Eurocom, hopes to change the trend of disappointing products featuring the Dark Knight.

visuals

Batman Begins is a mixed bag. Many of the graphical touches are pretty, but some objects and environments are unforgivably blurry and seem rushed.

The bright side of the graphics are the character models, which have high polygon counts, and the models based on the actors are impeccably accurate. For example, I was unfamiliar with Cillian Murphy, the actor who played Dr. Crane/Scarecrow in the film, and I played the game before I saw the movie. Thanks to the detail of the character model, I instantly recognized Dr. Crane/Scarecrow when he first appeared in the film.

There are plenty of other great touches including Batman’s cape, which is constantly flowing fluidly and has minimal clipping issues. Environments are moody, dark, and brooding as they should be. Particularly impressive are the unfortunately minimal and brief scenes featuring a digital Gotham city. The city is nicely recreated with detail and atmosphere, but it is, unfortunately, only a background in many of the levels. I’m sure with just one glimpse of the beautiful cityscape, many players will instantly wish to leave the linear environment and go exploring a la Spider-Man 2, which is something that should be considered for potential sequels.

While the game does have a lot to compliment, it has several issues which were not addressed. Some of the objects in the environments are blurred, blocky, and generally lack detail. One example is in a cut scene where Batman blows up some police cars to scare the cops away. The cars look prehistoric. They are polygonal and have muddled textures. These shortcomings detract from the realism and moodiness and are, perhaps, a product of the rush to get the game out in time for the movie.

In addition to some blocky objects, lighting is also subpar. Some environments feature moody lighting, but the shadow effects and other dynamic lighting really lack fine tuning as opposed to the incredible lighting in such games as Luigi’s Mansion and Splinter Cell. Batman’s shadow is the most apparent example—-it sometimes does not appear to be reflecting Batman or his movements, and lacks sophisticated animation. The general lack of response, or weak response, to environmental lighting changes shows that more time could have been invested into the lighting effects.

The movie clips inserted in the game are done so at appropriate moments with clean, crisp video. These clips are full of climactic scenes such as large explosions and the highly dramatic exchanges between characters in the film.

audio

Like the visuals, the audio is a mixed bag offering some great things along with some subpar sound.

You’ll get the most enjoyment out of the voice acting. Every actor from the movie who has a character in the game does the voice, and they do it well. This is some of the best in-game acting I’ve heard. Unlike most games, the actors offering their talent don’t drop the ball. Christian Bale and Liam Neeson offer the same great performance from the movie with the in-game audio, as do the other actors. These aren’t monotone, inhuman performances like most Hollywood game offerings; this should serve as an example to other actors offering their voices to software.

Music is ambient and moody--fully appropriate to the character and the game’s atmosphere. It changes as the environment and action shifts as one would expect. For example, if you’re creeping around a vent or sneaking around corners, the music will be slow, quiet, and dark. When you take on enemies, the music will remain moody, but will pick up in pace and give you that feeling of being heroic.

The audio does have its problems, particularly in the area of sound effects. The smacks associated with landing a punch or a kick on an enemy are flat and sound weak. Explosions don’t "blow you away" as they should. Various other noises fail to satisfy such as gunfire, flames, and footfalls. The sound effects could have been refined significantly.

The audio is mostly strong, but the weak sound effects detract a bit from the quality. However, the problem is not significant enough to harm your overall enjoyment of the moody audio.

gameplay

If you’ve played Splinter Cell, you know exactly what to expect. Unfortunately, it doesn’t match the quality of the game it imitates. The ways in which it hopes to differentiate itself—-Batmobile Missions (which are Burnout clones) and a fear system—-are not significant enough to compensate for its utter lack of originality and its inferiority to Splinter Cell.

Batman Begins relies on stealth gameplay emphasizing Batman’s detective abilities. Most of the levels require Batman to sneak around and find information from people. Additionally, Batman must use his fearsome image in order to strike terror into his enemies, which makes them easier to combat. Every time an enemy or group of enemies appears in the game, there is a way to scare them so they will drop their weapons. If you do not scare them, you will either die quickly from their gunfire, or do some fancy fighting and escape with very little life left. Because of the difficulty of fighting, the game almost forces the player to use stealth.

The fear element is a little underplayed and should have been more manual as opposed to its automated features. To incite fear in an enemy, you must cause things to occur in the environment, which will raise your “Area Fear” meter. In nearly every instance, the way to trigger the environmental disturbance is fairly obvious, such as throwing a batarang at some barrels to blow them up. It’s far too straightforward and requires little to no thought from the player. Once you trigger the scaring mechanism, your enemies will drop their guns and you can begin assaulting them.

Here’s where the gameplay really takes a dive. The combat system is unrefined, repetitive, and cumbersome. The problems start when Batman begins moving. There is a delay between when the player jerks the control stick and when Batman starts moving. This would be ok if it was only a brief delay in order to prevent players from mistakenly running off platforms and such, but, as it stands, the delay is too long and becomes annoying, especially in combat, when you thrust the control stick hoping to send Batman dashing.

Once you get into the fighting mechanics, Batman is extremely limited—-he can punch, kick, and uppercut. There are some slight variations in the punches and kicks, but nowhere near enough impressive combos to keep the player satisfied. One special move is the vault kick, which is completely automated with the exception of one button press. The player has no control over it, which takes away from its satisfaction. Finishing moves are not as brutal as one would hope in such a dark game-—usually Batman will just slam the character or give him a solid punch to the face. Nothing too fancy. The main problem with the fighting system is that the developers let the game do all the work, which gives no satisfaction to the player, and the lack of variety in the moves makes the fighting system repetitive.

The stealth mechanics are a dumbed down version of Splinter Cell's. Batman can use an optic cable, climb on pipes, crouch, hang off ledges, and perform sneak attacks by coming up behind an enemy. However, unlike Sam Fisher, Bruce Wayne lacks the wide variety of gadgets he should have. Batman’s only gadgets are his batarang, which cannot be used to attack enemies, his grappling hook (only for grapple points), and the optic cable, which lacks infrared and night vision. Batman doesn’t have any weapons, and the sneak attacks, like the special moves in combat, are performed automatically by the game instead of by the player. Batman can interrogate criminals if he needs info much like Sam Fisher does. wWen he gets what he needs, he will put them out by slamming them into the ground.

There are two Batmobile missions, which put Batman behind his car in Burnout style missions. Players must race the Batmobile across the level to complete a time sensitive objective, ramming and destroying as many enemy vehicles as possible on the way. The Batmobile has a turbo boost, which can be recharged by running through purple orbs spread throughout the level. The player can shoot missiles out of the front of the car. The levels are short and far too straightforward. Had the developers enhanced these levels with deeper play mechanics such as more advanced weapons, jumping, and other skill-based gameplay elements, it would have been a much more enjoyable addition to the game. As it stands, it is a weak distraction from the stealth gameplay.

The game is short. I ran through it in about seven hours and I took my time admiring the game and screwing around. If you rush and you’re good, it’ll probably give you four hours. The average player will get 6-10 hours out of it. Most of the levels tell you exactly what to do by highlighting the items in the environment that the player is supposed to use. Don’t expect to get a deep, lengthy experience with this one-—it’s driven primarily by some pretty visuals and neat theatrics, but once you’ve seen them, there’s not much. As for extras, you need not complete any special feats to pick up the hidden items. All you have to do is beat the game and you will unlock all the special features, including biographies of the villains inside Arkham Asylum, classic costumes, and film clips.

The game is severely lacking. It has quite a bit of potential, but the developers failed to create their own game and relied too much on the success of Splinter Cell and cheap thrills such as triggering explosions to drive the gameplay. This drops the game several notches straight into mediocrity. It is merely a one-time rental instead of the deep game it could have been had the developers expanded the fear features and made the Batmobile sections more complex than simply speeding into enemy vehicles. Perhaps a sequel will do the character more justice than this title, but gamers have been requesting that for 16 years now to no avail. To the game’s credit, it’s the finest attempt since the 1989 NES game.

multiplayer

N/A

overall

Rent, do not buy. Batman Begins needs a lot of refining and a lot of creativity to elevate it to classic status. The game is a run of the mill stealth title, borrowing gameplay elements from other titles in the genre, and it does nothing to expand or deepen them. The extra features such as fear and Batmobile action stages are automated when they should be intuitively controllable by the player. The game succeeds in providing an atmospheric Batman experience with some amusing cinematic scenes, but the gameplay is far too bland and the cinematic scenes grow dull after the first run through the game. It’s short and has very few extras to satisfy fans or the general gamer. There really isn’t much here but hints of what could have been a much better game with a lot more time and a lot more originality. Perhaps the game seems so limited because it was rushed to meet the release of the Batman Begins movie. If EA is planning a sequel, they would be wise to give it a significant budget and development time in order to finally and truly do justice to the Caped Crusader.

6.2/10