Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Batman Vengeance

Written by John Scalzo on June 20, 2001

First Impressions: Robin: Jiminy Jillickers Batman, awesome looking game! Batman: No need for profanity Fallout Bo?err Robin

The Dark Knight is coming back to the world of video games this fall in Ubi Soft's Batman Vengeance. The game was first shown to the world last month in non-playable form at E3. And since I haven't seen how the game plays yet, I'm going to talk about something that has greatly impressed me with this game: the look.

Being an old school gamer, I tend not to look at graphics first in a game. But Batman Vengeance is based on the (unfortunately) recently cancelled Batman: The Animated Series. And Ubi Soft has managed to perfectly capture the dark moody atmosphere of Batman: The Animated Series. At quick glance I couldn't even tell the difference from a screen shot of the game and a screen shot of the cartoon. Of course, a more prolonged look lets you see a little of the polygonal shapes some of Gotham City has been given. In a perfect world, Ubi Soft would get all the cartoon voice actors to lend their voices to the game. This hasn't been confirmed either way yet, but a guy can dream, can't he?

As for the game itself, Batman Vengeance is a one player, third person adventure with your standard Batman plot: beat up all the bad guys. Yeah, it's your traditional beat 'em up style game, with that wonderful theme of kick bad guy ass first, ask questions later. And these aren't all just generic bad guys either. Early screen shots show Poison Ivy and her mad vines are in the game (and I hope a few more villains make it in, but again, no other villain has been confirmed). As for the heroes side, Batgirl makes an appearance, but no word yet on Robin.

Digging deeper into Batman's toy chest, it's good to know that a lot of his toys make an appearance. Known toys that make appearances are the batarangs, BatScope, smoke bombs (why don't they get the cool "bat" name like everything else), the Batmobile, and the Batwing. And cribbing a little from Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, whenever Batman uses his grappling hook, the game switches to a first person view of Batman aiming where he'll shoot the hook. This is exactly what happens in Zelda: TOoT when Link uses his Hookshot (which was in itself a complete rip-off of Batman's grappling hook, ah the Circle of Life continues).