E3 2005: Level Up
Winged Freak Terrorizes
Product: Batman Begins
Company: EA Games
Date: 05/24/2005
Avaliable On:

With the next ?Batman? movie only a few weeks away, it's fallen on the shoulders of EA to bring the experience home to players in game version of Batman Begins.

Batman Begins' main element is fear and how you use it to your advantage as you root out crime in Gotham. Face it, the very fact alone that you're Batman already has criminals spooked, so anything you do is likely to send them over the edge. At the same time, this also puts a giant bat-shaped bulls-eye on you -- so they won't hesitate to fire first and there's only so much protection the Batsuit can give. Because of this, Batman Begins will largely be a stealth-based game, where you try to remain in the shadows and use intimidation to "spook" criminals, making them easier to prey on later.

Intimidation tactics involve silently "removing" their buddies from an area or unloading the contents of your utility belt in various ways, such as using a homing emitter to send a group of bats swarming around a criminal. By using various scare tactics, so far it looks like Batman Begins is, for the first time in a video game, capturing what Batman is really about. The focus isn?t to kill criminals, but instead to scare the hell out of them and get information. Still, expect lots of fighting once you drop down on criminals and ?go for the kill?.

Depending on how good a job you?ve done in scaring a criminal, he?ll be less efficient in combat, making him easier to dispose of. Attacks will pack a little less power and their aiming will be off ? making that bulls-eye a little smaller.

While a majority of the game will involve sneaking around areas, Batman Begins will also feature a few driving elements where you get to jump behind the wheel of the Batmobile. Given EA's past successes with racing games, these sequences should play out nicely and provide some adrenaline-pumping action experiences to balance out the stealth gameplay.

As an added bonus, most of the cast from the movie will reprise their roles in the game. Batman Begins is set to be released around the same time as the movie.

Starscream aka Ricky Tucker

GameVortex PSIllustrated TeamPS2