Crossover: Batman Vengeance

Like many children of the early 1990s, I was madly in love with Bruce Timm's Batman cartoon because of its immense quality and retro noir style. Here was a Batman who was tough, determined, and knew that black was a far more fashionable to wear when battling crazed maniacs in brightly-colored outfits. More importantly, Kevin Conroy provided the voice that would be associated with the Caped Crusader for well over a decade, and boy was it a voice. Even though the show had wrapped up and become associated with Timm's Superman series, Timm's creative team joined forces with Ubisoft Montreal to develop Batman Vengeance for the PS2 and Xbox when the consoles were still relatively new technologies.

Batman Vengeance was an action-adventure game featuring a plot straight out of the cartoon: after yet another battle with Batman, the Joker accidentally plunges to his death and leaves a power vacuum in Gotham's supervillain community. Suddenly, Batman finds himself going up against enemies who are embarking on crime sprees of absurd proportions. However, someone seems to be manipulating things from behind the scenes; so the Dark Knight is determined to find out what's going on and just who happens to be behind it.

At its core, Vengeance is an action platformer which happens to tap into a rich franchise. We've all seen this before and been unimpressed, but in this case the gameplay was tightly designed and featured a lot of variety. Aside from the standard combat one would expect, Batman Vengeance also included other sequences that involved driving the Batmobile through the streets of Gotham City, flying the Batplane around skyscrapers, or diving down from tall buildings in order to catch falling people/objects before rappelling to safety. While it may sound like an odd mix, it actually works really well because every element feels natural to the Batman universe and no segment is sloppily executed.

However, what really makes Batman Vengeance a lot of fun to play is, aside from the well-executed gameplay, the fact that it's essentially longer and more mature episode of Timm's series, complete with all the wonderful voice-acting from the show's original cast (including Mark Hamill's always excellent rendition of the Joker). While it may seem a little weird to watch the fully 3D cutscenes, they still contain the same art style as Timm's animation and are incredibly polished.

Batman Vengeance is one of those games with which Ubisoft really hit a home run. The only possible complaint a person could have about it is the fact that it's a bit on the short side, something that probably could have been fixed had another major villain like Two Face, Penguin, or Killer Croc been added in. However, the trade off with the game's length is that it's a perfect weekend rental for either the PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube. If you're in the mood for some Dark Knight goodness, this is definitely the game for you.