Batman Beyond Bad: Return of the Croaker Review

Batman Beyond Bad: Return of the Croaker

The Joker’s back in town, and he wants to give Gotham a wedgie. A wedgie in the

form of mass destruction and casualties, that is. Some 30 odd years into the future,

the city of Gotham is still rampant with crime. Evil still lurks in the shadows,

hoods and freakshows vie for control, and the clown prince of the city is back

for laughs. But Joker isn’t the only one back in town – justice still comes dressed

as a bat.

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, based upon the direct-to-video

movie of the same name, is a side-scrolling action game in the same vein as

Streets of Rage, the only major difference being that Streets

was good and Batman is awful. Like, really awful.

The back of the box says "16 action packed levels," but apparently

someone wasn’t paying attention on counting day in kindergarten. There are actually

4 levels. Four! The Air and Space Museum, Bruce Wayne Enterprises, Arkham,

and the Jolly Jack Toy factory. I don’t know what butt they pulled the number

16 out of, but I’m guessing the designers either don’t know how to count or

every single area within a level was considered a full-fledged level.

I also have an issue with "action packed." If walking up to bad guys

and punching them repeatedly until they disappear is the definition of "action

packed," then indeed this game could be considered "action packed."

It could also be considered "repetetive" and "boring," as

well as "stupid" and "dumb."

Control is a bit puzzling. In order to switch from walking to running, you

use the R button. Shouldn’t walking be handled with the analog stick? Wasn’t

that the whole point of an analog stick? Between the suit switching and the

walk switching, this game was clearly designed with the elusive three-handed

gamer in mind.

Batman has an arsenal of different Bat-Suits that you switch into using the

directional pad. It sounds kind of cool, but there’s basically no point to it.

The only suit you really need is the Defense suit. You just use your ‘Defense

punch’ over and over for maximum effectiveness and the damage it dishes out

is practically exponential.

Sure, Batman can whip out all sorts of stupid toys like magnetic nunchucks

and flying disks, but they’re all weak and useless. Since when did Batman use

such fruity weapons? Makes me miss the good ol’ batarang and exploding gas balls.

Seriously.

The cutscenes between levels don’t even use the movie footage. Instead, you

get redrawn images based on the movie with all the talent and skills of an eight-year

old. I can get into some nerdy fanboy details by saying “Joker looks like he

has a flat top” or ” the one character who only makes animal sounds in the movie

talks in the game,” but this piece of work already has enough going wrong for

it, so why bother?

The background environments are blurry, with low resolution and lack of clarity.

They just don’t capture the style of the Batman Beyond series. The different

characters look shoddy and overly simplistic in design. I’d rather stare at

the floor.

To add insult to injury, when Batman gets hurt, his animation is to fall over

like a domino. Here you’ve got a fully equipped destroyer of crime, and he takes

punches like an inflatable ‘punch-em’ clown. This speaks pages for how poorly

the rest of the animation fares.

As if the game isn’t bad enough, the music will severely offend your ears.

Instead of music from the cartoon, you get bad, thematic variations. Weak! This

poor-man’s composition of music is like ramming screwdrivers into your ears.

And no voices? It’s a movie! The voices are already done. Did these designers

even get to watch the movie this game’s based upon? I know it’s a cartridge,

but sheesh, how about even pretending to make an effort?

At least the experience is a short one. I easily beat this game in an hour

the first time I played. Afterwards, I had an overwhelming urge to use the cartridge

as my own Bat-arang. I just didn’t want it to come back after I threw it.

While Batman Beyond doesn’t quite sink to Superman

64’s level of crappy comic cartridges, it comes damn close. It’s clearly

nothing more than a cash-in for the license. Those Warner Brother’s executives

already censored and toned down the violence in the movie. What they really

should have done was keep this game from coming out. The only possible way to

make this Batman game any worse would be to let Joel Shumaker direct

it.