Batman Vengeance

Batman: Vengeance introduces the most versatile 3-D Batman game yet, with more than 500 animated movements, special fighting moves, and a multifunctional cape with its own AI. For the first time, players can journey through a fully rendered 3-D Gotham City with Batman's sleek weapons and devices at their fingertips, including the BatGrapple, BatScope, Batarang, BatLauncher, flash bombs, and more. There is a huge array of gameplay modes: exploring, fighting, first-person shooter, driving, flying, freefall, and puzzles.

The Gotham City environment, reconstructed in full 3-D, contains 19 playable maps, including the rooftops, Gotham Industrial Research, and the Batcave. There are also more than 40 minutes of cinematics featuring the original voice cast of TV's The New Batman Adventures. The game's original story line was collaboratively written by Warner Bros. and DC Comics from the files of The New Batman Adventures. The Dolby 5.1 surround sound soundtrack features original music inspired by the TV series.

Note: This product description refers to the PlayStation2 version.

As a Batman aficionado, I couldn't wait to get Batman Vengeance for the Xbox. And the game is great on some levels. It totally immerses you into Gotham and the characters that reside in the grimmest city of them all. Going up against the Joker, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, Harley Quinn and the Joker were akin to playing for the World Champion Boston Red Sox (another dream of mine). The story line seems very different than most of the previous incarnations of Batman through out the years as it involves the strange abduction of a child who may not be what he seems. The rendered graphics for both the environment and the characters appear just like a 3-D cartoon. The splicing of the game's "cinematics" and "real time" action is hardly noticeable. Once and awhile, there are some helpful hints that are provided through an on-screen display to help out the gamer if there seems to be a problem getting past a level. The option to save your game to the Xbox's hard drive was very nice as the game directions only state the use of the 8MB flash memory. And the use of the original actors' voices from the TV series brings a sense of authenticity that is really appreciated to this gamer.

Unfortunately, as for Xbox game play, there are some issues that are hard to overlook. While Batman Vengeance looks just like a 3-D rendering of The New Batman Adventures television series, it is only a direct port (or in other words, conversion) from the PS2 game that was released in the Fall of 2001 which does not take advantage of the graphical features and processing capabilities available in the Xbox platform. There are frequent load screens that appear in-between scenes that definitely slow down the play of the game. There is no saving "on the fly" as the game requires you to quit your current progress, go to the opening screen, and then save. The use of the gadgets (Batgrappler, Batarang, etc.) can be somewhat confusing due to the sheer volume of items available (all items are shown but not always available) and the small font used for the quantity number in the lower left of the weapon display (hard to tell between 5 & 8 sometimes). Also, Batman Vengeance is also somewhat like Two-Face (who does not appear in this game, much to my dismay) as it does not know whether it is an action/adventure third person game (like Tomb Raider) or a first person shooter game (like another Xbox game, HALO) since you must toggle between the two.

Overall, the game pleases more than it disappoints. It is fun to play once you get use to the toggling between the two perspectives and seeing the graphics are enough for any fanboy used to seeing visual garbage put out on other gaming systems to make the purchase. But for the hardcore gamer, you may want to check out HALO first as it is a game created specifically for the Xbox and uses the Xbox's strengths quite well.