Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker

For some strange reason, in Great Britain at least, Batman Beyond is called Batman Of The Future. Why exactly? Is it because we can't fathom the concept of the original title and so slapping 'future' on it will make more sense to us? What is it at the moment with 'the industry' in general? Anything old is revamped and placed 'in the future' to get more mileage out of it! In Batman's case it certainly does not help matters and it certainly doesn't help the gameplay any!

Batman Of The Future: Return of the Joker is heavily reminiscent of the kind of games you'd wait 45 minutes to load on your Commodore 64 and then feel really disappointed with! It's our good friend the side-scrolling beat-'em-up adventure genre, which many thought had gone the way of Noel's House Party.

Dinner, Dinner, Dinner, Dinner... Dinner Lady!

Come on, you know what we're talking about! You walk right for a bit, the screen freezes, a host of bad guys enter, you kick ass until they're gone and then the screen unfreezes and you walk right a bit more until... well, you got the picture! If that sounds basic, then it sums BOTF up perfectly. In a simple sentence: the Joker is being very naughty again and Batman must stop him. At his disposal are a bunch of weapons that, as you'd expect, are hidden inside various easily-destroyed wooden crates. The villains take it on the chin and the bosses are a little bit more stubborn. There are a few glimmers of hope but like a candle underwater, they are quickly extinguished!

There is nothing here you haven't seen before and unless you REALLY like this kind of thing then, I'm sorry, but there is nothing to justify buying it. It's funny how something set in the future should remind us so much of the past!

The movie Mystery Men was great because it put forward the idea that all superheroes were total losers. All the successful heroes were greedy, egocentric idiots with their heads up their own bums, and the rest of them, the 'wannabes', were sad, lonely, desperate individuals with an appalling taste in costumes. One of the things it managed to prove was that the modern day superhero needed a gimmick more than a purpose. Even though this idea was mainly a platform to start the comedy from, if you look at many of today's newer superhero cartoons or movies it is blatantly obvious that gimmicks are all that they rely on. When it comes to the new Batman cartoon: Batman of the Future (or Batman Beyond if you're an American citizen), the main selling point is that it is set in the future, which is a shame as Batman has always seemed fairly timeless. Anyway, setting a new franchise in the future is just lazy. Why not make it Batman Vs The Druids or Batman In Lollipop Land? At least that sounds different! But I digress...

(Ahem) I'm Batman...

The latest Batman game is almost identical to its Game Boy Color counterpart. It has the same plot, the same gameplay style and almost the exact same level layout. If it wasn't for the fact that one was 64-bit and the other was 8-bit, we're sure that you couldn't really tell them apart. The plot, if you really want to know, is that a bunch of evil people have somehow resurrected The Joker and as soon as they let him loose on Gotham, he's up to no good. Typical, if we had been resurrected from the dead sometime in the future, we'd want to keep our nose clean so that someone didn't end up putting us six feet under again. Thinking about it, we'd probably bugger off somewhere hot and live the high life, but no, not The Joker. So it's up to Terry, the new guy in the Batman mantle, to save the day.

If you remember Final Fight or Double Dragon then you know exactly what to expect from this fist-fighting frenzy of a game. Move from left to right (in most cases) and smack whatever you come across. Smash boxes to reveal power-ups and new weapons and collect keys from the defeated minions to move on into the next room. If you want more than that from your games then you'll have to look elsewhere! This is videogaming at its most old-fashioned. If you've missed having this kind of game then you might enjoy diving into Batman's newest adventure, but if you have moved on from this sort of thing then it probably won't be worth your while even reading the rest of this review!

I'm... Batman!

Batman has a number of different moves, and these vary depending on which Batsuit you are wearing – yes, Batman has a whole new wardrobe! For instance, there is an offensive suit that puts all its energy into fighting or a nimble suit that's good for speed and jumping. However, in practice when you have changed suits there is very little to actually tell them apart. Punches and jumps don't really have any devastating or obvious differences, and you're hard-pushed to see any new effects. The weapons that are offered are fairly mundane too, and really they just give you something else to look at when you're smacking the living hell out of an opponent.

The action in this game doesn't particularly come thick and fast and enemies just seem to cluster around you. Collision detection also seems rather poor – it may look, for instance, like you are just out of punching distance but then one of the enemies swings a fist or fires a rocket (or whatever) at you, and suddenly you find yourself flat on your back.

Controlling the Dark Knight is no walk in the park either. When it comes to walking or jumping there are no real problems, but when you finally have to give your foe a swift kick up the arse things don't go exactly to plan. Getting in close enough to attack can be quite hard and when you do strike a blow, not every hit seems to count. The long and the short of it all is that you'll find your life bar fading away like your dad's ELO album covers (if you're old enough to understand that reference then you're probably... es, old – Roy).

I... AM... BATMAN!

Visually, Batman Of The Future is not really all that impressive. Despite all the fancy N64 flourishes the game is barely distinguishable from any other scrolling fighting game. The levels don't change all that much as you progress and so as you go through there is a strong sense of déjà vu about it all. Everything looks reasonably nice, if unremarkable, and if we had to sum up in one word the overall feel and execution of Batman Of The Future, it would have to be 'competent'. This really does have the feel of the classics like Double Dragon, but without the nostalgia that went with those games of yore. As a challenge, it isn't one. Apart from getting to the end and winning, there is nothing else to pull you back in and make you want to relive the experience. On a slightly different note: the short pieces of story which are presented to link all the action together, fly by at such a speed that there is really no time to take it all in. This makes the whole idea of the story rather pointless.

I... Oh Forget It!

As an N64 game, Batman Of The Future is rather on the basic side. If this type of thing is right up your street then there is a good chance you'll find plenty of merry high jinx to revel in. The rest of the world might prefer a bit more meat on the bone than this and in that case they should have no trouble keeping patient until the next big thing rolls around the corner. On the plus side Batman doesn't have any really major faults that could ruin your enjoyment and passes the hours innocently enough, making it a simple, yet probably unsatisfying, purchase.

The Dark Knight creeps up on the N64 unnoticed but he's not quite the Gotham City hero you might be expecting. Batman Beyond is based on the cartoon series of the same name, which stars not Bruce Wayne but an all new futuristic hero who has donned the Dark Knight mantle. This is a good thing, because it means we get to play with his new gadgets including Dark Knight discs and a lovely pair of nunchakas!

Similar to Fighting Force 64, the gameplay basically involves fighting and takes place in a variety of locations. This includes the Gotham Aerospace Research centre, which the Joker and his clown gang have invaded. Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker's gameplay recalls the classic Streets Of Rage or Double Dragon games, as most of the action takes place on side-scrolling levels. Let's hope that Batman manages to better the last comic outing Superman - but let's face it that won't be difficult!

First Impressions

Wahey! 64 Magazine are big fans of Batman and if you read our Dragon Sword feature a few issues ago, then you'll know that we're rather partial to progressive beat-'em-ups too, so this game went down a treat! However, we're reserving judgement until we get hold of the final code, because Fighting Force originally looked good and then turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. We're definitely waiting for this game with baited breath though... it can't fail, can it?