Batman: Rise of Sin-Tzu (Xbox, also on PS2, XBX)
Holy Sore Thumbs, Batman!
by Susie Vee

PLATFORM: XBX, PS2, GC

PUBLISHER: Ubisoft

DEVELOPER: Ubisoft

GENRE: Action

ESRB: Teen

SCORE:

A few years ago, people used to joke regularly about the poor showing the Star Wars franchise had made in games up until then. Eventually, the technology caught up, and we were flooded with great Star Wars games. The same was true, to a lesser degree for that other great geek empire, Star Trek.

We mention this because, if anyone needs a break from a steady stream of mediocre games, it’s Batman. Gothem’s favorite caped crusader has endured the numerous forgettable “walk around and beat up thugs” games over the years. The most recent ones have been based on the popular carton series. While they manage to capture the look and feel of the TV shows, they remain arcade-style slug-fests.

Sadly, the same can be said about Rise of Sin-Tzu, the latest game about Bruce Wayne and his caped alter-ego. A new villain, Sin-Tzu – apparently a big fan of Sun Tzu's The Art of War -- wants to take over Gothem city.

In a nice touch, you can take to the streets as either Bats himself or Batgirl, Robin, and Nightwing. If you’re not up on your Batman lore, Nightwing was the original Robin, but now he’s all grown up and out on his own.

With a cool background story and a great feel for the popular animated series, we expected more from Rise of Sin-Tzu. But for the most part, the game consists of walking from one end of a linear level to another, beating up thugs as you go. That’s it. Ok, maybe there’s a little more, like disarming the occasional bomb or freeing hostage civilians (you just run up and touch them, and the run off to safety).

The game is perfectly adequate beat-‘em-up, but the button-mashing gets old after a few levels. There are a few nice touches, like Scarecrows fear bombs that cloud your mind, but even that gets old after you get hit by the effect over and over again.

Even more frustrating is the arbitrary timers on levels that can ‘cause you to fail a level through no fault of your own, and even worse, the invisible barriers that prevent you from taking another step forward until you’ve knocked out all the bad guys on that particular stretch of street.

There’s nothing more frustrating than watching the timer slowly tick away its final seconds while a civilian you need to rescue is literally right in front of you. But you can’t get to him because there’s a thug half a block back who’s not dead yet you’ve got to go back and finish him off first.

On the plus side, the graphics and sound are great – especially the voices. And, playing the two-player co-op mode is a groovy arcade-style flashback to the Double Dragon days.

With its arbitrary design flaws and repetitive gameplay, Batman: Rise of Sin-Tzu is only for hardcore fans of the animated series. But, despite our reservation, bonus points to Ubisoft for the inclusion of Batgirl as a playable character!