Review NaN of 2
Price Paid:
$40.00
from EBGames.com Summary:
The Dark Knight has once again emerged from the shadows and onto consoles in EA and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment's latest release, Batman Begins. Seeing that games based on movie licenses tend to under perform their silver screen counter parts, will Batman Begins overcome this all-too-frequently true stereotype?
Without giving away too much of the movie, Batman Begins details the birth of the Caped Crusader and his first battles against the evil that plagues Gotham City. Unfortunately, the game does not want to give much of the story away either. Sure you extensively play as Batman through all of the fighting scenes, but the movie clips that are used to tie the levels of the game together attempt to take twenty minutes of footage and trim it down to 15 to 20 seconds. This leads to one of two extremes: either too much or too little information is given about what transpired to get Batman from where he just was to where the next level takes place. As a result you're usually left attempting to piece together what just happened, where you are and why you are there. That is, unless you've seen the movie.
I played Batman Begins twice, once before and once after seeing the film and felt that the game was more enjoyable because I had already paid my $8.50 to see the actual segues into the battles instead of the twenty second Cliff's Notes version.
If you have not seen the movie, the game attempts to make up for its poor movie footage by having in-game characters interact with one another. Although this is interesting and you get more alternate dialogue as opposed to the film, you are forced to watch these scenes regardless if this is your first time through this part of the level or not. This makes restarting an area after getting killed very tedious and time consuming especially towards the later portions of the game.
Overall the controls for Batman Begins were only average. Besides the blocking issue previously mentioned, all other fighting and movement actions are fairly responsive. Changing gadgets in the middle of combat is nearly impossible due to the amount of maneuvering required to defeat computer opponents. So if you attempt to remove your thumb from the control stick to change a gadget, be prepared to get beat down by the computer with extreme prejudice.
At times the camera seems a bit unwieldy, especially when trying to sneak around an area via climbing or platforms or when dropping in on a group of enemies from overhead. Finally, I am a bit disappointed that there is no way for me to choose a different control setup, forcing me to use inadequate default layout.
Hands down the weakest part of Batman Begins is its replay value because it is almost non existent. Unless you're only looking for the challenge of perhaps completing the game on a higher difficulty, there is no reason to play through the game a second time. Upon completing a level you unlock rewards such as new costumes, movie clips, interviews, etc. However, you unlock these rewards regardless of what difficulty you're playing. Therefore completing the game on easy difficulty offers the same reward as completing it on challenging.
I'm sad to say that Batman Begins does not break the "Good movie, bad game" moniker. With only about 8 hours in total gameplay, it is a nice attempt to incorporate many genres into one game. However, not a single feature stands out from the rest as being excellent. At times it seems that many ideas, such as lock picking, didn't get fully implemented. This could possibly be due to a time constraint with the game needing to be released with the movie. Unless you are a serious Batman fan, I suggest only renting this game over a weekend after you've seen the movie in order to get the most for your money. Report this review >>
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