Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu
Batman goes all multiplatform and we've got the skinny.
Published: May 20, 2003
Batman licensed games have been a mixed bag. Ubi Soft's earlier game, Batman: Vengence worked well because the dev team actually understood that Batman is all about vengeance and generally requires a certain level of inherent level of bad-assness. We'll just skip right over commenting on Kemco's Xbox effort and march right along to report on our impressions of the next Batman game, Rise of Sin Tzu.
The game's namesake is the first for the DC Comics franchise - a character created for the game that will go on to appear in normal Batman continuity. In fact, to ensure Sin Tzu, a practitioner of Sun Tzu's classic Art of War techniques, slips smoothly into the Batman universe, DC and Ubi Soft have tapped Batman artist and Wildstorm Comics founder Jim Lee to actually create and design Sin Tzu's visage for the game.
Sin Tzu, hearing of Gotham's infamous caped crusader and his knack for defusing tactical situations with a detective's head and a dark knight's fists, decides to make the city his newest wartime playground, recruiting Batman villain mainstays Scarecrow, Clayface and the backbreaker himself, Bane. Ol' Bats has an arsenal of more than 35 different moves he can use to dispense justice throughout 12 different levels, and if the urge to pair up with a partner strikes you, a second player can drop into the game to play in a co-op mode as Batgirl, Robin, or Robin's all-grows-up Nightwing persona.
Visually, the game seems to share a look more in like with the Batman Beyond TV series than any of the past cartoon iterations, but Ubi Soft Montreal, the game's developer, seems content to kick the game out without resorting to cel-shading techniques, a move that was well placed it seems, since the game oozes with art style.
We weren't able to get a significant amount of play time in during the hustle and bustle of E3, but the few moments we were able to spend with the game gave the impression of a reasonably deep combat-driven action game. The combo system is easy to use, and while button mashing yields some results, it's clear that there's more under the surface, though we'll have to wait until we can spend some extended time with the game before really exploring the different moves.
We'll obviously have more as the game nears completion and hits stores this Fall.
The game's namesake is the first for the DC Comics franchise - a character created for the game that will go on to appear in normal Batman continuity. In fact, to ensure Sin Tzu, a practitioner of Sun Tzu's classic Art of War techniques, slips smoothly into the Batman universe, DC and Ubi Soft have tapped Batman artist and Wildstorm Comics founder Jim Lee to actually create and design Sin Tzu's visage for the game.
Sin Tzu, hearing of Gotham's infamous caped crusader and his knack for defusing tactical situations with a detective's head and a dark knight's fists, decides to make the city his newest wartime playground, recruiting Batman villain mainstays Scarecrow, Clayface and the backbreaker himself, Bane. Ol' Bats has an arsenal of more than 35 different moves he can use to dispense justice throughout 12 different levels, and if the urge to pair up with a partner strikes you, a second player can drop into the game to play in a co-op mode as Batgirl, Robin, or Robin's all-grows-up Nightwing persona.
Visually, the game seems to share a look more in like with the Batman Beyond TV series than any of the past cartoon iterations, but Ubi Soft Montreal, the game's developer, seems content to kick the game out without resorting to cel-shading techniques, a move that was well placed it seems, since the game oozes with art style.
We weren't able to get a significant amount of play time in during the hustle and bustle of E3, but the few moments we were able to spend with the game gave the impression of a reasonably deep combat-driven action game. The combo system is easy to use, and while button mashing yields some results, it's clear that there's more under the surface, though we'll have to wait until we can spend some extended time with the game before really exploring the different moves.
We'll obviously have more as the game nears completion and hits stores this Fall.
