by Vinson Chen

Created on: July 21, 2010

Batman Vengeance was a side-scrolling action/adventure game made for the Game Boy Advance and multiple other gaming consoles in 2001 by Ubisoft. The game features the legendary Batman, of course, and his endless quest to rid Gotham City of crime. In Batman Vengeance, Batman gets framed for attempting to attack Commissioner Gordon and is forced to discover who framed him while running from the police. Supposedly Joker had fallen to his death while fighting Batman, but in the end, Batman discovers who truly is behind the new crime wave. Unfortunately, even with an exciting plot in the Batman saga, the Game Boy Advance version of the game is still rather lacking. It is simply a standard side-scrolling game with repetitive game play like the rest of the Game Boy Advance side-scrolling games out there.

Like all side-scrolling action/adventure games, Batman Vengeance holds generic controls and even more generic enemies. The only attempt to make the game any different from any of those others was its effort to make the Batman belt accessible. Now the side-scrolling adventurer, Batman in this case, starts the quest with more than only A for jump and B for punch or kick. (Most other games only utilize those two buttons for most of the game.) Now Batman can use L to switch between useful items to fight with in his belt and R to use said items. It is too bad that a swift punch to the stomach or a swift kick to an enemy's head holds much more potential than these items. It falls almost to the point where the belt is near worthless. 

Furthermore, the enemies are generic as in they seem to be the seem bad guys that are fought in every single side-scroller for the Game Boy Advance. The only difference would be the appearance of the villains, but even so there are still the ones that try to punch the protaganist to death, the ones that shoot guns, and the ones that throw grenades. There is not much special about Batman Vengeance that makes it unique in comparison to other games similar to its genre.

All in all, Batman Vengeance is a typical trashy game that attempts to take advantage of large and popular franchises in order to make some quick dollars. With the poor quality of work put into the game, Batman Vengeance does not deserve to be put on store shelves and should furthermore not be played. 

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