Batman has been in a countless number of video games, most recently and well-received aretheArkhamseriesof games that he was featured in. Almost all of theArkhamgames have been well received and even the worst one in the series is still considered a well-made game, if not a downgrade from its predecessors.
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This doesn’t mean that all of his games are considered good though, but two names come to the top of the list of bad Batman games. We are going to cover which game does the Batman worse betweenBatman: Dark TomorrowandBatman Beyond: Return Of The Joker.
10Batman: Dark Tomorrow - Terrible Stealth
Most goodBatman gamesintegrate stealth in someway. Considering how important stealth is tied into the character of Batman this should not come as a surprise to anyone. The problem is stealth can be very hard to do well in video games, especially back in 2003 when this game was released. The problem with the stealth inBatman: Dark Tomorrowis that it is an integral part of the game and a requirement in certain parts, which only serves to highlight how terrible it is.
TheBatman Beyond: Return Of The Jokergame was released all the way back at the turn of the millennial in the year 2000 for the PlayStation, N64 and Game Boy. Most are willing to excuse the bad graphics by writing them off as a product of the time but this game’s animation and character models were bad even back when it was released.
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The character models were blocky for the time and that’s saying something and the moves that the characters had were sticky and lacked impact in its strikes.
On top of the game’s stealth not well done,Batman: Dark Tomorrowhas some pretty bad controls to make it even worse. The first problem comes with the game’s controller mapping. You’re going to be using the square button on the original Xbox controller as all the gadgets are mapped to that button. The controls are also stiff with Batman sometimes taking his time to execute certain moves, like the stealth takedown which decides whether it wants to work or not.
For some reason, most likely a lack of proper development time that is so common with movie tie in games, all the cutscenes in the game are just the classic texts and portraits of the characters speaking next to it.
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These cutscenes look terrible and are absolutely devoid of any dialogue which is fairly surprising as it is very likely that the development team would have access to at least some of the dialogue that made its way into the actual movie. For whatever reason, these cutscenes are more or less just a slideshow that is not visually appealing.
6Batman: Dark Tomorrow - Slow Gameplay
Like we mentioned earlier, a large portion ofBatman: Dark Tomorrow’sgameplay focuses on its stealth gameplay, which is not the best. This leads to the gameplay being very slow, as most sections require stealth at some point and for the stealth, you need to move at an insanely slow pace to not alert any enemies to your location. This is made worse by how close you need to be to enemies to do the games stealth takedowns, this combined with the need to move at a slow speed makes this one of the slowest Batman games.
5Batman Beyond - Movie Tie-In Game
Movies and video games just don’t seem to get along most of the time as we all know just how most movie based on video games turn out but most movies that are turned into video games are also not that good. There used to be a lot more movie tie in games but now it seems that people have caught on to how bad they usually are and stopped buying them, so the game developers have stopped making them. The Return Of The Joker is just like every other movie tie in-game, a poorly donebeat em up.
4Batman: Dark Tomorrow - Weird Camera
The camerawork of a game is probably one of video game designs most underrated aspects. A good camera is a requirement just to make a decent game but the thing about a good camera is that you rarely ever hear it get any attention but a bad camera you will notice and talk about immediately. The camera inBatman: Dark Tomorrowis this weird combination of a fixed camera and a moving one where it is fixed on a certain location but will move in a direction whenBatmanmoves, it also changes location way too often.
3Batman Beyond - Boring Level Design
Level design is another underrated aspect of game design that rarely gets any love when it is done well but if it is done badly then you are never going to hear the end of it. InBatman Beyond: Return Of The Joker, the level design is really boring and basic, to the point that while the game is in 3D and can move on a 3-dimensional plane the level design makes the game feel like it might as well have been in 2D as all you do is move left to right fighting enemies with some jumping up to different locations.
2Batman: Dark Tomorrow - Useless Bat Grapple
The Batgrapple is probably the most iconic tool that Batman has in his utility belt. Every time you seeBatmanyou expect him to use his Batgrapple in some way and the developers ofBatman: Dark Tomorrowknew this and integrated it into their game, or at least they tried to. The Batgrapple is very hard to control, first it hard to find places to use it and when you are able to and you attempt to swing off it, you may’t because halfway throw you will hit an invisible wall that stops your momentum.
1Batman Beyond - Overpowered Suit
For a lot of gamers, the fun they derive from games comes from overcoming a difficult challenge. This is why games likeDark Soulsexist because the feeling you get from beating a game that is that very hard is unquantifiable but that’s something you won’t get from this game. The game has differentsuitsthat you can choose between with different abilities but there is no reason to choose any suit other than the defense one, as it provides you with a shield that is capable of taking down most enemies in 2 to 3 hits.
