Forever! Forever!

It seems that more than any other character Batman seems to go through phases: from the original detective to the campy Adam West show to the Alan Moore stories of the 80's, the first two 90's films, the gay Batman sequels and finally the Chris Nolan series. The story so far has been a constant fluctuation between taking the Bat seriously and treating him like a children's story. Batman Forever for the SNES treats tries to treat Batman like the former but ends up treating him like the latter.

And it makes sense too, the first two Batman films could be considered almost in the same category as the Nolan films, only injected with some Tim Burton crazy for good measure. Starting with Forever (and most ridiculously seen in Batman and Robin) the studios decided to turn Batman into a kids movie, complete with ridiculous villains and even more ridiculous gizmos all designed to sell more Happy Meals and increase profit margin. Two-Face for example was more eccentric than out of his fucking mind, the fact that Val Kilmer was Batman pretty much says it all (even though Clooney played him in the last, and worst, film, its Kilmer who personifies the kiddie Batman era).

The game is supposedly a direct translation of the film, not having seen the movie since it first came out I have no idea if this is the case. It takes a serious leap forward graphics-wise, the characters look and move like they have been pulled out of a Mortal Kombat game to the extent that as he moves Batman seems to be dancing around and is able to pull off the infamous MK crouching uppercut. There is a two-player co-op mode with the second player having the ability to play as Robin. The problem here is that, while the Dark Knight looks well graphically because he's not much more than a few splotches of black, Robin looks like a Mego doll. Also he wears the classic Robin outfit instead of the one he wore in the film (and in the fucking box!), you'd think someone would have noticed this inconsistency during motion capture.

Batman walks along some closed levels beating up an assortment of Arkham inmates and men in business suits with such names as Mad Ned, Amazon and (probably) Anvil. The baddies start off easy enough but once they start ganging up on Batman and pulling out chainsaws and flamethrowers it starts to get pretty complicated. What's worse is that the caped crusader is armed only with his arms (and apparently Batarangs and other weapons that I haven't been able to use) and only has six lives (less than a fucking cat), there is no Save feature, no continues and no password system so one can only advance so far before dying and having to start from the beginning.

This isn't a regular beat-em-up either, Batman has to solve puzzles, he has to climb up and down levels, has to fill a quota of beat up villains and find secret compartments and doors. Its hard enough that I had to consult a walkthrough online, I cant imagine how the average 8-year old ever managed to advance through this game in the late 90's, its not that the game itself is hard its just unnecessarily complicated. You do get clues along the way (in the form of riddles, ugh) but most of the riddles are cringe-worthy and completely obvious: oh you want me to "climb" something? look "up"? how imaginative!

My main issue with this game is that I bought it thinking it was the one with Poison Ivy, Schwarzenegger and nipple costumes, I was looking forward to some campy shit but instead I got a game that is more reliant on its "technological advances" (as described in the box) than any actual gameplay. It's not really fun, its frustrating, but its also kinda satisfying to get through because its so difficult. The only problem is that once you turn it off you're gonna have to start from the beginning when you want to play again, its demoralizing. But its also Batman, and its hard to be angry at Batman, even if he is a right wing lunatic.