Game Reviews - Indews

The storyline follows the movie in most respects. Bruce Wayne starts out in the mountains of China learning ancient martial arts and ninja styles before returning to Gotham City and your billions. Shortly thereafter, Bruce makes his transfer into being the Caped Crusader, the defender of Gotham City. From then on it is your job to foil the plot of a bunch of baddies who want to put a deadly drug into the people of Gotham.

Gameplay wise, Batman Begins offers a new twist on its approach compared to previous games carrying the Batman name. While you still have plenty of Bruce Wayne's martial arts skills and advanced gadgets to work with, much of the game is focused more on sticking to the shadows. You can creep around and use stealth and darkness to your advantage to quietly take down the bad guys. This also plays into another important aspect of the game: fear. Enemies will fear you. The higher their fear of Batman is, the easier they will be to take down and the less fight they will put up if they spot you. So basically you will want to make sure criminals fear the Caped Crusader, Batman

Luckily, you are also armed with plenty of acrobatic moves to roam the streets and buildings of Gotham. Ranging from shimmying across pipes to going hand by hand while hanging on a wall to climbing fences, there are plenty of ways to get around town. However, doing it just isn't that much fun. The gameplay is too straightforward, the combat is too plain, and there aren't enough levels to keep you interested for very long. All of these elements combine to form an overall gameplay that isn't what it could have been.

On a positive note, the game actually does look fairly good, especially considering it is an EA game. The levels and environments are all fairly well designed and modeled. The characters and animations are superb, looking just like their big screen counterparts and come complete with smooth, realistic movements. Overall, the game has a very quality look and feel to it. This is only supported by the game's sound, which is definitely above par. The actors from the movie all reprise their roles and lend their voices to the game, enhancing the story and helping to draw gamers in. The music is also fairly good and the effects sound crisp and clear. Overall, Batman Begins is presented extremely well and it is too bad the gameplay couldn't have followed suit to produce a truly quality title.

Batman Begins simply ends up being another disappointing Batman game. The whole series is built up to make an absolutely perfect video game if done right. And EA is the absolute worst company to even be attempting to right the wrongs done in the past. Batman Begins is a solid looking and sounding game but the gameplay is just too boring for the game to be appealing.