Review
Release Date: 11.11.2003
Platform:
GameCubeDeveloper:
Ubisoft EntertainmentPublisher:
Ubisoft EntertainmentReviewed by
Wade Monnig on 3.14.2004
Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu feels like Ubi Soft set out with one goal in mind: To make a good old fashioned beat ‘em up (BEU). And that is exactly what they succeeded in doing: creating a
good beat ‘em up. It doesn’t tear up any new ground but it takes the BEU fundamentals: solid gameplay, good story line and a simple but diverse combat system, and does them well – All for less than 20 bucks.
One of the most impressive things about
Batman: RST is that it actually adds a character, Sin Tzu, to the Batman mythos. And we’re not talking about some hack-eyed character from a programmer’s head (sorry guys, but you know what I mean) but a real, honest to goodness character from the mind of comic legend/god Jim freakin’ Lee! Sin Tzu is, for those familiar with the timeless novel “Art of War”, an obvious take on the author Sun Tzu Wu. Even if you aren’t familiar with the actual novel, you have no doubt heard countless quotes from the novel in one form or another. A wonderful foil to Batman, Jim Lee’s Sin Tzu takes the art of war to heart and unleashes it on Gotham City.
While Jim Lee is famous for his comic expertise, the Batman characters contained in this title are those from the Gotham Knights animated series. You’ll find wave after wave of enemies flood each level and each one looks as if it was hand picked from the series and dropped into the game. Attack and movement animations are fluid and, while you’ll see the same “base” goons over and over, they look excellent. Mid-bosses and end-bosses stand out and, once again, the Batman legacy comes through with some established villains that are a treat to pummel. The visuals really do an excellent job of using light and shadow to recreate the gritty feel of Gotham: Fog rolls, explosions light up the night and you can practically feel the thugs eying you up from the shadows.
The voice acting is superb with Kevin Conroy reprising his role as the Dark Knight, Ron Pearlman voicing Clayface, and Tara Strong (Rikku from Final Fantasy X, Bubbles from Powerpuff Girls) handling the duties as Batgirl. These are all the same talented actors from the Gotham Knights animated series and their familiarly with the characters translates into exceptional quality.
Players have a choice of four characters: Batman, Nightwing, Robin and Batgirl. Each have character specific moves but Batman/Nightwing and Robin/Batgirl share a base of movements and attacks. This means that a gamer that plays as Robin only has a very slight learning curve when moving over to play Batgirl and the same goes for anyone playing Batman who moves to Nightwing. In the traditional BEU layout, you have the fast but weak characters (Robin/Batgirl) and the slow but strong characters (Batman/Nightwing). Combos for all the characters range from the lightning quick to the slow and devastating. Which attack you choose will somewhat be determined by which combo you find easiest to execute but most players will find themselves naturally gravitating to the fast combos for the hordes of henchmen and the heavier combos to break though the bosses defenses. The combos make liberal use of an Attack, Attack, (Pause), Attack system, so it takes a bit more than just unrelenting button mashing to progress through the combos.
You begin with a limited moveset but the included point system rewards you with points dependant on you performance that, in turn, are used to buy new, devastating combos. The point system also provides much need replayabilty along with a host of unlockables such a behind the scenes look at the creation of Sin Tzu.
If there is any real downside to this title, it is that it never really tries to go beyond the traditional Beat Em Up. If you find BEU’s repetitive, you’ll find
Rise of Sin Tzu repetitive. If you hate titles that only allow you to save at the end of the level, once again you’ll find that here. The one disappointment that could have been avoided is the fact that you can only play two players simultaneously. With the GameCube’s four controller ports and four playable characters, it would seem that a 4-player co-op would have been a given.
Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu also includes connectivity with its GBA counterpart. Unfortunately, I was unable to try this out because I don’t have the GBA version. It seems to consist of using points earned in the GBA version to trophies and items in the GameCube version.
Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu is straight-up Beat Em Up action. It succeeds at crating an excellent 3-D rendering of a classic genre. It’s almost good enough to convince me that the trip to 3-D for the BEU was a good idea…almost. If you are a fan of the Batman or the Beat ‘em up genre, the twenty dollars entrance fee into the world of Sin Tzu is money well spent.
