"Batman: Vengeance" - Gamecube

In the early '90s there was a Batman cartoon called "Batman: The Animated Series," that was apparently pretty beloved (it won four Emmy Awards...). And nothing good can ever exist without there being a reboot of it, so in the late '90s, they rebooted it as "The New Batman Adventures," with some new characters and what not but apparently the same general idea-- though apparently they made it more cartoony and simple looking because of budget.

It still won two Daytime Emmy Awards though so I guess it did alright for itself.

Well anyway, that show ended in 1999. Fast forward 2 years and you'll get to where I need you to be: the release of Batman: Vengeance on the Gamecube. I don't know what he's getting vengeance for but I'm sure it'll be a real hoot.

This game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, who would go on to develop Assassin's Creed 6 years later, which to be honest completely blows my mind when I think about it for more than a second.

So let's check it out and see if they were living up to their modern legacy in 2001.

I like how it doesn't really look like he has a chin at all, his face just continues straight down into his chest.

----- Playthrough -----

This game mostly revolves around a loop that ought to be more than familiar to anyone who's played games in the last two decades or so. In general, you'll watch a cutscene which will take a couple of minutes and reveal the exposition for whatever it is you're doing, and then you'll run through a level and beat up some bad guys and what not, maybe do a boss fight, and then watch some more cutscenes.

You'll control Batman on his journey to get Vengeance on the people who designed the platforming sections in this game.

'If I find you guys in this city you're getting dropped.'

For the most part the game actually controls fine-- the camera is a little wonky and you can't control it with the C-stick; when you press any direction on the C-stick, the camera will go directly behind you, kind of like L recentering in a 3D Zelda game. You can only do it when you're standing still though, so during any action scenes this probably isn't going to help you much unless you can stand to eat a hit or two.

Batman has a variety of gadgets (as expected), but they're mostly tied to a weird first person view that you access by holding the R trigger for a second. While holding R, you can move the analog stick to choose between things like various types of "Batarang" (ugh) and remote bombs and that sort of thing. You can't just whip these out in the middle of a fight, you really need to have a moment, because anytime an enemy hits you, you'll be thrown out of first person and into third person again. Using this mode seems pretty critical to most boss fights.

You're gonna want to have the full "getting blinded" experience as Batman.

The game is divided into 5 chapters which have a handful of levels in them apiece (it seems like 10 or so). I played through the first 2 chapters, which involved rescuing a woman from Joker, who kidnapped her kid and was about to do something evil to her too, and saving some scientist from Mr. Freeze, who sounds less like a villain and more like an ice cream man.

You know that's pretty much how Spider-man killed Gwen Stacy, right Batman?

Occasionally, the game also randomly breaks away into various mini-games with different playstyles, such as solving a twisty puzzle to unlock some doors, or a random level where you fly the Batplane (or whatever it's called-- Batjet?) to take down Mr. Freeze's helicopter. These levels are nice breaks from the repetitiveness of the game but not really anything mind-blowing. Just your average platformer side levels.

Maybe Batman needs to turn his jet in for one of those helicopters.
It's got a shield and is twice is fast, and the Batplane blows up when it hits a street sign.

I watched the opening cutscene for chapter 3, which had to do with Poison Ivy, before shutting the game off for the night and deciding I'd play the rest tomorrow. Unfortunately, I remembered the next day when I turned it on that games didn't autosave in 2001, and all my progress was gone because I forgot to hit "Save Game" on the main menu.

I actually sat down to play it again and get back to where I was, figuring I'd skip all the cutscenes, but it turns out you can't skip the cutscenes until you've seen them once, and after I played for about 20 minutes and got to the Joker fight again, the game suddenly froze dead and began emitting a high-pitched whine.

I decided since I gave myself a week to play these Gamecube games, I'd try it one more time before writing it off.

That was a decent line, the first eighteen times I heard it.

I adopted a new routine of quitting to the main menu to save after every two or three levels just in case, and I was able to complete the game. It never crashed again or anything so I guess my fate awarded my persistence.

In the back half of the game you figure out the story behind how the writers were able to hamfist like 5 different Batman villains into one plot as though they were all relevant via some spaghetti thin strands of logic, but I imagine if you like Batman you don't need an enormous amount of justification for there to be a bunch of villains for you to fight.

Just punch the guys, don't ask questions. What are you, some kind of nerd?

Then you beat it, get some cutscenes, and unlike the Assassin's Creed games, you can actually skip the credits.

----- Review -----

How long did I play?
6ish hours.

How much did I beat?
I beat the story.

-----

Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

Like every other Gamecube game we've played so far, there's a lengthy tutorial and the game only slowly introduces mechanics so that you're never burdened with a need to think things through too much. One questionable mechanic to this end is that during boss fights, you'll always find ammo for the particular weapon you need to beat them lying around, which means if there's ammo for it, you probably need to use it to win. Ultimately though, none of them are huge puzzles anyway, so it doesn't really take much away from you.

Gameplay / Difficulty: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel?

Most of the game is very easy up to a point-- the focus is clearly on you watching the cool cinematics and playing as Batman and feeling strong and cool, not really on challenging you or making you do anything too crazy. The controls are fine, and controlling Batman isn't very tough.

However, as the game goes on, some of the later levels (the whole "gasworks" level in particular) start making you go for a really long time without checkpoints. I got most frustrated during that level, having to restart it nearly ten times before I could get to the first checkpoint, some 5 or 6 fairly large and dangerous rooms into the level.

Alright, that's it. I don't care if Batman doesn't kill, every last one of you is going in the acid pit.

One complaint I had was with fighting the goons towards the end of the game-- they ended up being so difficult to land a hit on after a while (they knock you down and immediately hit you when you get up, or grab you when you try to block) that I just started jumping past them instead of wasting my health and time getting uncomfortably close with every goon in the level.

No! Stop hugging me! I told you it was just a one night stand!

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

Apparently roundabout 3 or 4 hours, not counting the hour or so I had to replay from the beginning because I forgot to save. There's not a huge amount of gadgets or crazy stuff to worry with in the normal game flow either, so I wouldn't expect to have your socks knocked off when it comes to overall game complexity.

Sound / Graphics: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

The sounds in the game are pretty good actually, for the Gamecube. They got the voice actors from the actual TV show in the game to do the voice acting, and they do a pretty serviceable job with few particularly bad deliveries over the course of the game.

Would send wood? You don't need the Joker for that-- let me get these gloves off.

I was impressed right off the bat by the way my subwoofer was pounding on the main menu-- the music in this game is pretty epic and sweeping at times, but like most modern games it's really not very memorable. I guess if I have to pick a favorite it's probably this one because it's a little bit goofier than the rest of the OST.

The graphics in the game are fine. The animations are pretty good, and the simple texture style probably works more for the game than against it. It's a little disappointing how most things are just nearly textureless surfaces, but I imagine covering them with a big ugly compressed texture the Gamecube could handle wouldn't have really made it look any more appealing.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

I don't really like superheroes, but the art style of the game is pretty neat. If I did have to pick a superhero to a play a game about though, it wouldn't be Batman, so...

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

I'm gonna just say no, unless you're going for like a "play all games made by Ubisoft Montreal" kind of a thing for some unknown reason. 

I mean, I do have to say this is probably one of the best Batman games I've played, not counting the modern Arkham Whatever games which everyone loves so much (I've only played Arkham Asylum, and it was good, but not amazing-- better than this but hey). 

If you like Batman, maybe that would make it worth it, but I'm not really a superhero kind of guy... so just on the merits of the game alone, assuming you don't care about Batman, probably a skip.

-----