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G AME REVIEW |
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Very over-hyped and anticipated in 1997, this game was finally released by Acclaim in late 1998. Their previous ''effort'' for the Playstation was the atrocious Batman Forever, and Acclaim promised that they would not repeat the same mistakes. The first preview video-clips and stills from the game looked promising and anyone interested thought that the game would be much better than the awful Joel Schumacher film. The end result? So-So. G RAPHICS: The graphics are the game's stronger point. They are not excellent, but they are well-done with nice details and a dark atmosphere that brings the first Burton film to mind. The Batcave and Wayne Manor look fantastic, and Gotham itself very good. |
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The problem is that a lot of ''fog'' is used (to avoid the pop-up of the buildings), but it could be forgiven because first, Gotham is supposed to be dark and foggy and second there are no loading times while you are in the streets. Batman himself looks very good, and the animation is nice, especially the movement of his cape. Robin looks good too, but Batgirl looks very ugly (not that Alicia Silverstone is gorgeous for that matter). The six different vehicles for the heroes look good too (2 for Bats, 2 for Robin and 2 for Batchick). The three main villains (Freeze, Ivy, Bane) are well-detailed as well, but the normal foes look average, not to mention some enemies that did not appear in the film and they look awful (like large Spiders, plant ''Zombies'' and other nonsense). S OUND: The music is taken directly from the film, which is a nice thing. Elliot Goldenthal's score is poor compared to Danny Elfman's, but while the music is crap for a film it sounds good in a game. The action SFX (punches, explosions etc.) sound very good, but the ''ughs'' and ''ahs'' sound awful. There are also digitized one-liners from Arnold as Freeze and Uma as Ivy that sound very amusing and hilarious (A Freeze is coming!!!).G AMEPLAY: The game's flawed part. In the beginning, it seems very interesting and promising. You start at the batcave, you learn that there is a robbery at the museum. You go to the vehicle storage, you pick your vehicle and you go to the crime scene drive-thru a virtual Gotham City. Nice. When you arrive at the museum, and when you enter you face a game similar to all the Tomb Raiders of this world. This first mission is easy, and when you complete it you must search the city for clues that you will extrapolate them with the Bat-Computer in order to find the location of the next crime. Needless to say that the search for clues is a tedious process. After a while the search for clues becomes very boring and ''hopeless'', since most of the times you will be arriving late to the crime locations. The play control is also a bit awkward, especially fighting.O VERALL: All in all, this game is an almost tragic missed opportunity. If they had made a traditional action game with the same graphics it might have been really great, but they attempted to make something really ambitious that becomes tedious instead of masterful. The game's ambition was to make you feel like you ''are'' Batman with it's freedom of movement, but instead it makes you feel like you don't know what you are doing. |
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G AME REVIEW |
