The Dark Knight

If you were to ask the majority of gamers out there what they think of spin-off games to try and capture the film’s followers you’d probably find many saying something along the lines of “Oh no! Not another movie turned into a game?!”

Well, thankfully this follow-on from the recent Batman, Dark Knight adventure is far from terrible – actually it’s quite good! Shocking, I know – how dare the creators actually try and make a game that looks well and plays well?

Thankfully they haven’t re-written the rule-book entirely and there are a few things that could be improved but I’ll come to these later.

So the good news, much like the film (it actually follows the plot) it’s an atmospheric Gotham backdrop with plenty of bad guys armed with a various assortment of weapons and yes the evil Scarecrow and Joker also put in an appearance for good measure.

You play the Dark Knight himself (better known as Batman) armed with all the usual gadgetry we’re pretty accustomed to e.g. the Batarang and grapple hook. You must move around the platform game eliminating baddies as you go. Some of them are pretty easy to defeat, others are far tougher. The good news is, much as you or I would probably do things should we be a superhero, we can do things the hard way or indeed the easy way. For example, a tough to hit and wound thug armed with a heavy pipe would be hard to take down with just your fists and feet, however, if you are a little slyer, you can come up from behind and in one special move, knock them out in one!

So now with the bad news, the game is all pretty short and although there’s 12 chapters for you to fight your way through – swinging from crane to crane along the way, you could probably manage to complete the game in around an hour should you be fairly good at these sorts of games. For as much use as the utility belt is, Batman seems unwilling to use the variety of weapons to take down anyone.

OK, maybe I’m being a little harsh and yes, this isn’t like the cult daytime programme from the colourful 60’s, but I am forced to add my own sound effects like ‘Zokk!’, ‘Kapow’, ‘Blam’ and ‘Boom!’ as the ones that are made by the game, although good, don’t have quite the same appeal.

The game follows a linier approach, for example you can’t deviate from the story in any way and although you can do things easily or not, that’s about the only flexibility this game provides. Indeed the most challenging part of the game comes at the very end where you have to search the final level to hunt out any explosives and diffuse these bombs. It actually makes you wonder why the earlier levels hadn’t been given such attention as this would make the game definitely more of a challenge and more rewarding upon completion.

In the end then, despite the sleek and sexy man in black himself and the beautiful levels and detail in the characters, this game is a bit of a near-miss and sadly fails follow on from the movie’s success. The game’s entertaining enough but once completed, you probably wouldn’t see much point in replaying the levels or game again.

Rating 76%

Positives

Beautiful game to look at and play

Pretty decent controls

Allows you to choose how to beat your foes (or indeed just concentrate on getting to the end)

Levels are short so can kill a few minutes or indeed your lunch-hour perfectly

Negatives

Limited addictiveness

Quite repetitive

The game’s fairly short