New Games for New Consoles: Ten Winners
Batman, Daffy Duck, Peter Pan and their pop culture brethren have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I first met these folks in the pages of comic books or in movies, or on Saturday morning cartoons. The newer generations still have the old fashioned ways to meet these stars but new icons have emerged in the form of video game superstars.
And that is truly the point of all this. Lots of people play video games these days and many, like myself play to become immersed in new levels of animation and mind blowing action.
The graphics horsepower behind the new console systems -- Microsoft's Xbox, Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's Playstation 2 -- have given me, and plenty of other pop culturists reason to pick up the controller and spend some time in a world of pixels.
Here are 10 current titles (priced at $49.99) from the 3 hottest systems that need to be added to any gamer's core library.
Batman Vengeance
Batman Vengeance (Rated Teen; Ages 13+; By Ubi Soft for Playstion 2) brings fans a game based on the old cartoon series The New Adventures of Batman. Keeping the game parallel to the cartoon, it features the same voice actors battling it out in a very familiar Gotham City, while the tighted one is drawn in an overly muscular, square chinned, glowing eye sort of way. The environments are extremely dark, befitting the grittier side of Gotham City. Batman Vengeance also reincarnates my favorite Bat-villain, the Clown Prince of Crime, the Joker. An added bonus is the video cinematics that serve to motivate players to get to the next level.
My favorite aspect of this game may be the ultra-mobile three-dimensional Batman that in addition to some very cool Bat-gadgets, such as the Bat-communicator, Bat-grapple, Bat-launcher, Bat-cuffs and Flash Bombs, has more than 500 animated movements creating realistic flight and fight. And the pièce de resistance, for this Bat-fan, is the crime fighter's really cool, new multi-functional cape with its very own artificial intelligence. I mean, how cool is that!
Technically, the game is fluid and fun to play. Players will find success in pounding those villains using a button mashing or more controlled fighting technique. It is not easy to get through all 19 levels, set within five huge and vastly different episodes, where players will find a myriad of Gotham City criminals, like Mr. Freeze, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy to name a few. Batman not only flies around courtesy of his cool new cape, he also has the Batmobile and the Batplane at his disposal.
DC Comics' Batman may be one of the most diversely interpreted pop culture characters of our time. And unfortunately, up until now, I have been left less than enthused by the stories and oversimplified four-color animation of past Bat-video games.
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