Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu

A new evil rises.

NA release: 11th November 2003
EU release: 5th December 2003
JP release: N/A
Developer: UniSoft
Publisher: UbiSoft
NGC Magazine Score: 45%
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

While this is based on Batman: The Animated Series, this isn’t a follow on from Batman Vengeance. Instead, it’s a very basic and traditional beat-’em-up similar to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles GameCube game I recently played. Obviously, I chose Batman to start with and…well, his attacks were so slow that it literally took less than 30 seconds for me to become tired of it.

Luckily, you can also play as Nightwing, Robin or Batgirl. I figured that Batgirl would likely be the fastest. She was actually bearable to play as, although the combat itself was still incredibly basic. As the combos you have to grind for barely work, you basically just mash A or B. You automatically target the closest enemy to you, which makes it difficult to strategically choose a target, especially as you can’t move for a period after attacking, so you just have to launch into the next attack. You’ll also be spending far too much time just waiting for enemies to get up, which is a bigger problem because the game is on a time limit.

In each level, you have to save civilians (or complete other objectives) before time runs out. Most of the time, it’s not an issue, but it means you can’t really stop for a moment to look around (that said, the levels are all dull and grey). It was a particular problem in one level where I walked for quite a while with no enemies before I hit a forcefield, meaning I missed an enemy. Turns out I somehow missed a trigger point that activates the next 8 or so batches of enemies. You lose a life when you run out of time where the timer resets to 15 seconds – which means you lose a life every 15 seconds until you reach the objective.

It’s all just immensely dull, with annoying voice lines – I had to listen to Batgirl spout the same misogynistic “how embarrassing, you were beaten by a GIRL” style lines over and over.