Batman (NES) Review

BATMAN / Sunsoft / NES

Batman is initially a cool Badass Platformer that takes a lot of inspiration from Ninja Gaiden 2 - dark tone, tunes, cinematic cutscenes between levels, and intense boss battles all centered around the original Tim Burton movie from 1989.

That impression only holds up until you get to the boss of the second level. At that point, the game gets so ridiculously difficult as to be nearly unplayable, even with save states. From the pixel-perfect timed jumps of the levels to the fiddly spots you have to stand on to avoid being damaged in the boss fights, the game becomes overly demanding and tedious and only seems to get worse as you go.

Damn shame too because there's a core of an excellent action game here. Batman's wall jumps are generally implemented well (when they aren't in segments that are too finicky and cheap) and lend a bit of a "jumping puzzle" touch, but the ridiculous difficulty just kills the game.

If there ever was a game that was a "difficulty rebalance" away from being a gem, this is it - tone down the number of hits required of certain enemies like the giant jumping armored frog things from the beginning of level 3, give Batman a little more breathing space in some of the precision jumping segments, and maybe make Batarangs not a consumable item, and the game would probably be fantastic. As is it's basically only got two playable levels and then it's garbage.

Videos :

* Gameplay Video