A shadowy figure clad in leather clambers over city rooftops. They leap between the buildings, bounding across stretches of concrete on all fours like a jungle cat pursuing their prey. Suddenly, they slide down a slanted surface towards the camera and into view: it's Halle Berry. The model is detailed and well-animated. She looks down from her position at some crooks robbing a jewellery store. It's time to play.

Within seconds the camera jerks wildly. It swoops, tilts at bizarre angles and changes directions suddenly. I am immediately disoriented, but also impressed. It is an almost perfect recreation of Pitof's filmmaking, on which the video game is based. He also preferred dynamic angles and constant camera movement over maintaining any sense of coherency. Cinematic camera angles can work in video games, but it helps if they are fixed. In Catwoman the camera shifts so quickly and unpredictably that it is impossible to maintain any sense of spatial awareness. By constantly moving it also hides important visual information. There are times when you can't see where you should be going next, which lead me to randomly runnning up walls hoping for a ledge, or committing leaps of faith while praying for progress. Interestingly, just by dumb luck, it still manages to frame its capoeira action sequences better than its film counterpart. It helps that video game characters don't require stunt doubles, and clumsy editing to hide them.

Following the brief tutorial sequence, we are treated to a flashback that fills in Catwoman's origin story. It looks great, is easy to follow, and is also the last bit of storytelling the game will bother with. For the first few levels I found myself wondering why I was doing anything, before it being clarified simply as: 'Revenge!' They have cut away the fat from what was already a barebones story, leaving only scraps of gristle for die-hard Catwoman (2004) fans to chew on. Fortunately, Jennifer Hale turns in a vocal performance that is deliciously campy. Unfortunately, the material she had to work with was not just bad, but also dull and unimaginative. Some choice cuts include:

-"My whiskers are twitching. What's that?!"

-"You're heading for the junk bin!" (hmmmm... junk bin?)

-"Buy a girl a saucer of milk?"

-"Right in the litter box!"

-"Ready for fur to fly?"

And finally: -"Life's a bitch. Doesn't mean you get to be one."

Despite Hale's committed performance, the dialogue is weirdly sparse. There are long stretches of silence, and the game would have benefited from more hacky one-liners. This would be fine if the setting wasn't so generic. I found myself referring to it as Big City, because the non-descript rectangular brick buildings lacked any personality or sense of place (a fault that the film's Metro City definitely shares). Even a trip to a nightclub felt like a warehouse had been dressed up with LCD screens that flash the word: DANCE (those screens exist and are glorious). In the game's first half, location variety is defined more by some light environmental details. In one level it is gently snowing, in the next we are treated to a moody, blood-red sky. The second half mixes things up a little. We are taken to Hedare Mansion, which has gardens, a gym and a library. It is exciting to see the colour green. This is followed by a 'derelict building', before the game's highlight: a level taking place backstage at a performance centre, where they use the lighting scaffolds to create shifting geography as you ascend the space.

The game's tagline: 'Feline Domination' is important, since once you submit to its flaws there is some enjoyment to be had. The controls are really, very decent. The right shoulder-button jumps, the left one shifts you down onto all fours where you can move with great speed and agility. Not being able to control the camera frees up the right joystick for combat. It is your whip when standing, but a series of badass capoeira kicks when crouched. You run up walls (even leaving scratch marks when you slide back down), jump to ledges, swing from posts and cling to surfaces. When you can see what you're doing it feels fast and fluid - a perfectly passable Prince of Persia clone. Catwoman doesn't kill, which is fine, but the workaround they came up with is wonderfully silly. The good: beating up goons for long enough will cause them to get scared and run away. The bad: if you prefer you can kick the badguys into human receptacles. These come in the form of dumpsters, windows, or my favourite: big, bulky roadcases in the night club scene, so it looks like you are kicking ragdolls into toy chests. It is all very goofy.

Catwoman suffered from a short development time, a tight deadline, and a lot of stakeholders that required consultation before decisions could be made. According to one person involved: "the team working on the project from the beginning had been doing crunch since day-zero; six months in they were still working from 11am to 1am, seven days a week. Enough to break even the most committed of people."

It is pretty obvious where that development time went: Catwoman. She looks and moves great. Her model is far more detailed than anything else in the game, and her animation means any screenshot taken is going to look appealing to potential game buyers. It is clear their goal was to create a character to take Lara Croft's crown as the sexiest video game character on the market. Nearly every design decision was made to reinforce this. The loading bar is Catwoman in silhouette - low to the ground, posed seductively. Pressing the select button in the menu is signalled with a sensual moan. There is an unlockable ability called 'Pose' which can be used to distract enemies. The game describes it as: "Send the guys into a frenzy by showing your curves." The whole game glows with soft, sleazy lighting, but most egregious is the idle animation. In pre-release interviews and previews, the development team referred to it as 'Ogle cam'. Let Catwoman stand still for a couple of minutes and you will be treated (?) to a cutscene of her wriggling while rubbing her hands over her scantily clad body. Like the film, the game is both agressively sexual and laughably sexless. It is sex appeal as designed by committee - so over-the-top yet lacking in anything geniunely alluring, an image catering only to horny 13-year-olds.

I wanted to finish with a positive, so here it is: your health bar. It consists of diamonds, and for the most part is pretty standard. When you get hit you lose health. When you fall from up high you lose health (and due to the camera you will be falling again and again). If you die you have to restart the level. Midnight (the cat that transformed her into Catwoman... yeah, I know...) is hidden in each level - finding her will give you nine lives (a nice touch). Otherwise health can only be regained by completing goals related to combat and agility. There is an unlockable ability called 'Domination' that can only be used at full health. It is essentially bullet-time (and is pretty useless), but using it actively drains your health. Having to fight to regain health, to use a special ability that drains your health has the potential to be a fun balancing act of a gameplay mechanic. Catwoman doesn't do anything with it, but I wanted to end on a positive, and that was all I had.

In closing:

Stay safe, take care, and don't watch or play Catwoman. Just because you have more time doesn't mean you should waste it.