Real Talk By: Ms. Throwback

With the release of The Dark Knight Rises this weekend, the crew here at Play Legit thought we would remind our readers of  The Caped Crusader in Video Games with a review of Batman Begins. originally released for Nintendo Gamecube, Original Xbox, and Playstation 2. Batman Begins was a video game based off of the movie with the same name (we all know how that usually turns out) in June of 2005.

The game moves along the storyline of the movie plot fairly closely. Clips from the actual film are shown throughout the game as well giving an origin for the material. While it follows the story it also adds a touch of its own involvement by taking us deeper into the scenes of the movie and giving us more details that the movie doesn’t give us. Personally most of this is a downfall for me, I’d rather forget that I’m playing a game based off a movie than have it thrown in my face during cut scenes. On top of that it helps me remember how crappy the game actually looks in comparison to the highly detailed masterpiece that is the movie. They would’ve been better off in my opinion creating their own cut scenes and taking the story of the game from a focal point of one part of the movie rather than trying to cover the story of a movie we’ve already seen.

visually the game isn’t the worst I’ve ever experienced but it defiantly isn’t groundbreaking by any means. The art style of the game can be somewhat appreciated when comparing it to Batman games in the past, they took away the flashy colorful Batman and Robin type style and created a more dark and menacing Batman more conducive to the on-screen movie character. Graphically though, it’s just still alright.

The gameplay elements are pretty straight forward which I feel is a good and a bad thing at the same time. It’s pretty hard not to be able to figure out how to control Batman and he can perform smoothly but at the same time some of the challenge is missing. Especially today it seems very typical for a platformer and nothing is groundbreaking, new, or exciting about what you have to accomplish throughout the game. There are some cool items in the game for batman to use to scale walls, listen to conversations of other characters, and he is defiantly an acrobat able to scale walls, swing across areas on wires, and jump to and from ledges, creating a fun and ever-changing challenge in that regard.

Another issue with the mechanics of the game is that it’s very repetitive. Basically the entire time you bust into a room, Tap a few buttons to find all the items in that area, sneak into your hiding spot and use the fear tactic to scare you enemies, and.. repeat. They get scared every single time and it starts a scripted event that you can’t even control. The other two main components of the game are beat-em-up style fighting, which there is nothing wrong with and actually is one of my favorite parts of the game although I wish there were more options as far as combos go, and driving the Batmobile! Driving the Tumbler would’ve been the greatest part of this game but once again options are short and big huge blinking arrows on the street tell you where to go at every turn. If there was any upside to the batmobile portions of the game, it’s that you only have to do it twice and the sequences are short.

Although the gameplay elements are somewhat disappointing the actual environment of the game is quite satisfying. A lot of it has to do with the art style but the level design is also appealing. Batman finds himself in warehouses, in the mountains, in the streets, and really all over the place fighting crime.

Without question the best aspect of this game is the sound quality. The voice acting is top notch and the music is appropriate and involves the player deeper into the games environment. The sound effects are also fantastic and sometimes made me forget about the repetitiveness of the game in the beat-em-up portions of the game. I just wanted to hear Batman sock another villain in the face.

Overall this game needed more attention to detail. Considering that Batman has had absolutely horrible games in the past, this game seems decent in comparison, but as far as super hero platformers go and what a great game we know batman could become, it just isn’t good enough. Batman is a kick-ass super hero who deserves a kick-ass game and for that

Batman Begins Gets

Out of Five

What’s Legit?

+Sound

+Game environment

+Ease of control

+Art style

What’s Perpetrating?

-Not a huge fan of the movie cut scenes

-Very repetitive

-Doesn’t bypass any gameplay boundaries

-Feels like it could’ve been any platformer with Batman thrown in.

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