The Adventures of Batman and Robin, for SNES
Rating: 5.0/10; Average
This game is a 2D side scrolling platformer, with some brawler style combat. The art is excellent, looking exactly like the cartoon on which the game is based. Story is decent giving several lines of very basic dialogue for each mission, though it fails to have any kind of overarching story to tie all of the levels together. At the end, you fight a gauntlet of most of the villains who all seem to be in the same place to defeat Batman, but don’t seem to have any kind of coherent plan or cooperation at all. Some new villains just show up out of the blue with no explanation.
The gameplay is dull and repetitive. On the plus side, the game manages to throw a good variety of mechanics and situations at you, but they are overused and take too long. Jumping off of walls and using the grappling hook are the main platforming aspects, and ironically I found there was not enough of that. There are only a few types of regular enemies; generic thugs that are very easily defeated and pose no threat whatsoever, thugs with guns, who have to be dealt with using ranged weapons or jump kicks, and the poison girls and civilians, who Batman will refuse to hit and must be either jumped over or disabled with non lethal attacks. I did like how gun using thugs will drop their guns if you hit them with the boomerang.
There are crushing walls and ceilings, though they are painfully easy to avoid and do not really feel appropriate to the license. Riding a roller coaster while avoiding floating bombs and other obstacles, and then a ridiculous sequence where you punch bombs back at Joker. Dodging floating bombs recurs later in the game. There are some weak platforms that will break, an incredibly boring level where you jump over mines and deal with infinite enemies (only 1 at a time) while trying to navigate a map-less building with samey rooms. A driving level which seems like an entirely different game and is painfully easy, except for the dumb time limit. Then there is a maze with infinite enemies and some very obscure riddles. One of the riddles is absolutely asinine because you have to answer in abbreviated letters rather than an actual word. At least this one has a map.
The bosses are highly scripted and perform the same actions in a pattern over and over. The Joker and Scarecrow were particularly bad because they are the same fight and you fight each twice. That is 4 times! They pull out a gun, you stun them with the boomerang, then move over and punch them once before they turn invulnerable. Then they jump over you and repeat until defeated. The other boss fights were better, with a couple having at least a slight amount of unpredictability, though the final boss was painfully simple.
The equipment screen at the beginning of each level gives a false illusion of depth. There is no penalty for taking too much (other than having to cycle between them all), so why would you ever not take everything? Why even have the option to take the 3 special items (which are only needed for a single stage each), and why not assign them to an unused button? This game has zero replayability, and is barely worth playing in the first place, though I can see how fans of the Batman cartoon would love this.
