Background: I'm Damien the DM from adventures in Irelia, a collaborative storytelling experience told through a game of Dungeons and Dragons, part of the Gunnageek network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others find other epically geeky shows@Gunageeknetwork.com.
Chris Osborne: And welcome to Play comics, where once again, we are here looking at a video game based on a comic property and how well it represents that source material. And today we are really in for a treat because I've got Robert Fitton here to take a look at some Batman stuff. And, Robert, how are you today?
Robert Fitton: I was much better before playing this game that we're going to talk about. But, you know, other than that, I'm doing. I'm doing pretty good. Doing pretty good.
Chris Osborne: I mean, I hate to start things like that, but also, you're not wrong at all.
Robert Fitton: Yeah. This game that we're going to talk about is rough, to put it lightly.
Chris Osborne: In case anybody is listening to this without having looked at the title of the episode, we are here looking at Dark tomorrow. And, Robert, let's start on kind of a hopefully positive side of things. What was it that made you just jump at the opportunity to come talk about a Batman game here?
Robert Fitton: I mean, honestly, this game specifically, I heard about a few years ago on a YouTube video about terrible video games. And it has been in my mind since then, just for years. So when I was looking through the list of games, I think I may have missed it on the list, but when you reply back and you're like, what about Batman Dark tomorrow? It just flooded my brain with the memory of this game. And I was like, yes, that's. I. Yeah, I need to find that game. I need to play that game to see if it's as bad as I thought it was. And luckily, it's not as bad as I thought it was because it's worse. But I had a great time playing it. It's one of those so bad that I had a fun time just bashing my head against the wall.
Chris Osborne: At least there's that. I mean, that's more than we can say about a lot of these bad games. What is your history with Batman as a character?
Robert Fitton: So growing up, Batman was never really my character, like my favorite superhero. So most of my knowledge and everything of Batman is just the movies. Honestly, when it comes to the comics, I was more like Superman, Spider man, but, you know, or Batman would be in some of those. But my kind of history with the character is definitely the movies. You know, growing up, the Batman movies were. For a long time, the Batman movies were the only decent comic book movies that were being made. You know, the ogs with. With Keaton Clooney being Batman. That was. That was a trip. Val Kilmer, still my favorite Batman. But, yeah, growing up, it was mostly it was just movies. Honestly, I was never really reading the comics for Batman or watching the cartoons, but obviously, Batman being the icon that he is, you know, about him if you're reading almost any other DC comic.
Chris Osborne: So are we, like, the only people in the entire world our age who weren't watching the Batman animated series when it first aired?
Robert Fitton: I think so. I know a lot of people watched it. A lot of my friends talk about it, and I'm just like, I. What channel was it on? Was it on the Cw? No, because that didn't exist. Is it on the WB? Maybe. Probably. Actually, yeah, I think it was. Or UPN. I don't know. Yeah, no, I was. I was never, never into the Batman animated series. I've gone back and watched a bit now as an adult, and I'm like, oh, this is actually pretty cool. I think. Actually, the only Batman animated series thing that I watched, which, if this. I'm pretty sure this was from the animated show, was it mask of the phantasm, the movie, if I'm not mistaken, that was from the animated series. But, I mean, yeah, that was. My biggest link to the animated series was Mask of the Phantasm, the movie that actually came out in theaters growing.
Chris Osborne: Up, for me, it was kind of the same way. Batman was just somebody that I knew about. The fact that he doesn't really have superpowers helps out because, you know, you don't have, like, a Superman problem where all of a sudden he has laser eyes, he has freezy breath, he has stinky breath. Batman is just Batman. And if he gets a new gadget, that's cool, because he had money, and his superpower was being insanely rich, so, you know, he could go and make a new gadget. That wasn't a weird thing for him. So nothing really was a weird thing. If Batman had something, it's because he invented it or somebody else invented it, and, you know, we could make up whatever we wanted for Batman. It was probably true at some point.
Robert Fitton: Some of my big things with Batman that I always remember is, I don't know if it was exactly what it was from, but just the Batcave and a giant penny, and that's one of the first things I think about, whenever I think about, man, um, just kind of over the top in some situations, over the top zany, and then in others, like this game, just overly serious. But, yeah, the. The fact that no actual superpowers, but rich is all, you know, rich is all heck and willing to kind of do whatever he needs to do to save Gotham, but, you know, not just doing the one thing to save Gotham, which is to kill the Joker. I'm gonna. I'm gonna say it should have killed him a long time ago. Okay. Some of those deaths are on Batman's hands. Controversial take. I know.
Chris Osborne: And one of the cool things this game does have going for it, though, is other characters that it has in it. I mean, you don't get to play as them, but you still get to see them. So you get to see that interaction between Batman and Batgirl and Oracle and Robin and Commissioner Gordon. Batman is pretty often seen as somebody who is off on his own doing stuff. But, you know, we're seeing right here in this game that that's not always the case. And his bat family that he has around him is really important.
Robert Fitton: Yeah, that's one of the things that I can definitely say about this game that I, that I liked is the kind of big cast of characters, not even just Batman's support, you know, with Oracle and with Commissioner Gordon, but even, like, just the. The actual, like, rogues gallery of Batman is in this game. But, yeah, when you're kind of going through and you're actually interacting with Commissioner Gordon, there's. For the bit of the game that I was able to get through, you kind of start off talking to him, and then about 20 minutes later, I found him again on the rooftop and I'm talking to him. And you're actually interacting with, with Commissioner Gordon and Oracle almost like the entire time, as opposed to, yeah, just being, oh, I'm Batman. I'm just going to do everything I might hear from Alfred every once in a while, and that's. That's it. Other than that, I'm on my own. No, he's. He's got the support team, and you actually, you get. You get to interact with that support team much more than in a lot of other Batman games. But, yeah, it's definitely not just him being the. The one doing everything unlike some of the other Batman games. Like, really Arkham, like the Arkham games. The most I remember is speaking to Alfred over a thing for him to drop a pod with a suit, and then you're pretty much on your own. But this game gives you the feeling of being Batman on the team for Batman, if that makes. If that makes sense on the bat team, I guess.
Chris Osborne: Oh, it definitely does. And you brought up the villains, too. You know, you've got some pretty big hitters that are all over Batman games, obviously, Joker, because if you have a Batman game without Joker, it's just weird. But poison Ivy and Ross all over the place. I know, right? Like, how do you have anything that's Batman like this without the Joker? And inevitably, I'm going to find one, and it's going to be amazing. But you've also got some characters that I don't see all over the place. Black mask. I keep hearing the name, but I think I'm hearing about other things, and they might just be describing a mask and saying it's the black one.
Robert Fitton: Yeah, no, black mask is in. The only other thing that I really know Black Mask from Batman Wise is Batman. Arkham Origins, which is the Arkham game that a lot of people didn't like. And he's kind of the big bad in that one, sending almost kind of similar to this game, where it's just a bunch of villains that you're fighting back to back to back to back, and then there's, you know, somebody over it. I'm not gonna. I won't spoil that game. Yeah. Black Mask is the first. Was the first boss battle in this game that I got to, and that was the last boss battle that I got to, and that was the end of my time playing it, because it just so many problems. But other than that, what do we got? We got Victor Zsasz, who, once again, isn't. I always see Victor Zsasz is like, one of the first villains that you fight in a Batman game, because he's just there, and you can just beat him up and he's just a guy. But Mister Freeze, poison ivy, killer Croc, the rat catcher, which, if I played this game before I watched James Gunn's suicide squad, I'd have been like, that's a weird character they made up for this game, right? Nope. That's a historical character.
Chris Osborne: It's just so weird that you would have a character completely revolving around summoning rats and stuff. But Batman has so many weird villains anyway. It fits in its own weird little way.
Robert Fitton: Like, he shows up to the villain thing, and they're like, what do you do? I've got rats. Sure. Come on in, Ratcatcher. We'll get you on the team somewhere, bud.
Chris Osborne: Batman is just such an iconic character. I'm surprised that there aren't more games that come out. I'm surprised that they keep going back to the same core set of villains. Like, we were kind of, I don't know how joking you were. I was kind of joking about having to have Joker in as, like, a requirement for a game, but you've got so many villains there that you could pull into. Like, I kind of wish they would branch out more for a lot of Batman games. But at the same time, if you make a Batman game without some of these huge, well known villains, you're gonna get so many people asking where they are.
Robert Fitton: Yeah. And I think, I think nowadays, it's like, if they were to release a Batman game and they're like, you know what? He's going to be fighting some of these lesser known villains. And that's kind of the crux of the stories. And going through and fighting these lesser known people would either get mad that there's no Joker or they'd be like, okay, so I'm just, they're gonna put Joker in as DLC later because that's what they do now. And then if it doesn't happen, yeah, you're gonna have people that are confused and upset that there's no big, big names. But Batman's rogues gallery is deep enough to where you could have. You could definitely make a game with these kind of, you know, more off the wall, unconventional villains, and depending on the gameplay, could be a great game. But, yeah, even back now, it's. It's kind of the same few villains in this game that are then in the Arkham games and, and later on, like, you know, in actually, I think really in the, in the more later movies, it's really just Joker. If I look at it and Rage Albuquerque was in Batman begins. But yeah, a lot of, lot of villains you can have. This game has the ventriloquist as one of, like, the main bad guys. And they just, in, in the first cutscene when they're talking about a gang war, Commissioner Gordon's like, oh, and there's this guy just walking around with a puppet, and Batman's just the ventriloquist. I know him like, that's a silly, silly boss. Give me Batman versus the ventriloquist. The video game make it happen wbdez, whoever owns the Batman license now, which I think is still WB games.
Chris Osborne: Oh, we're just gonna drool over some potential plot lines for that. While I dropped some pros for a few other things.
Oh, no. There is all this anime and no way to help me, an american understand it.
What if I compared one of these anime shows to an american show like the Simpsons?
Oh, that is a cultural touchstone I am familiar with. But what anime will it help me to understand?
How about one piece? There are over 1000 episodes of it.
Wow. If both shows have lots of episodes and characters, this makes sense.
It doesn't. But we can try on domains, dawn.
And on this show, I actually know what I'm doing.
Do you? Do we? Can we ever really know?
Domance, dawn. Find us@dohmancedawn.com.
American flags. Yee haw.
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Chris Osborne: Get it? That was some great stuff to check out, but first, let's finish up here. So, Robert, I mean, let's kind of start things off factually because I want to make sure that we don't get lost in the horribleness of the game. Dark Tomorrow was released sometime March in 2003. Developed by Hotgen and published by Kemco. Originally, the plan was to have it on just the GameCube, and then later they were told, yeah, you're going to put this on multi platform stuff. So it came out on the Xbox. It was supposed to come out on the PS two, but that never happened. I'm not sure if that is a feature or a bug. And, I mean, Kemco weren't exactly newcomers here. You know, they hadn't made super amazing things. They'd done Batman, Return of the Joker, north and South, and Superman game from 1987. So, you know, they'd had their hand in things before, superhero wise. As far as what we'd looked at for the show, hot Gen, I haven't noticed anything yet at all.
Robert Fitton: Yeah, hot Gen is a name Kemco Springs to mind. Just. But it also might just be that sounds close to, like, you know, Namco or, or, you know, some other names, but Kemco is a name that I think I recognize. Hotgen. No idea.
Chris Osborne: In 2003, you had a bunch of good games coming out. There was Mario Double Dash, Final Fantasy X two, Mario party five, Legend of Wind Waker, and, you know, some little series called Pokemon put out Ruby and Sapphire. So this game was competing with some heavy hitters that year.
Robert Fitton: Yeah, I know. Young Robert was definitely on the Pokemon train with Ruby and Sapphire back to back. I also didn't have a GameCube or an Xbox, so this, this game actually just completely missed me when it first came out. I had a PS two at this time and that was it.
Chris Osborne: So you might be the winner here then, because this whole game, they made an original plot for this game, which I have said before many, many times that I wish more things would do, especially with somebody like Batman, who has such a long history. Like, if you can just make something up, it probably could have happened like you were alluding to before. You have a game war between the ventriloquist people and black masks people, and they're going and doing their gang thing while commissioner Gordon and Batman tried to make sure that they don't overrun Arkham and Batman. Things happen.
Robert Fitton: Bad things do be happening. You've got so many stories that you can tell that haven't been told with Batman, and you can make them make sense. That is one of the things that I will give this game props for is an original story. Like we said, a ton of characters that they're bringing in as opposed to just here's one villain and then all these goons, you know, that you're fighting. And the story itself, honestly, not terrible. It's a pretty decent Batman story. The problem is the entire package around that is just heaps of burning garbage, to put it nicely.
Chris Osborne: That's really the crux of this whole back half of the episode here. I think because you have Batman trying to do things by himself and then having to get help from other members of his bat family around. You have villains actually kind of working off of each other a little bit, whether they mean to intentionally or not. You have multiple endings here where depending on how you play through some of those last few levels, you could get a good ending or a bad ending. And, you know, there's just so many things here that are so if we were watching this as a movie or something, it would be amazing, but the gameplay drags it down so much.
Robert Fitton: If you've got a chance to go and watch some gameplay of this game, please do. But one of the first things that you do in this game, you take control of Batman. You fight a couple of thugs, which, you know, the fighting is a very basic couple of buttons to either punch or kick. That's fine, that's fine. It doesn't have the fluid fighting of the later Arkham games. But pretty simple fight style. One thing that I did like, at least at the beginning, is you fight the thugs, you beat them up, and then you have to actually cuff them with your bat cuffs or else they'll get back up and keep fighting, which is something that I haven't seen in any of their Batman games, where you're not just beating these people to a pulp and they're just, they're, quote, unquote, not dead. But it's like you kick them off of a building, Batman, what do you think's gonna happen? You are Batman incapacitating these, these thugs and then getting them ready for the police to show up. So they're cuffed, they can't go anywhere. Which at the very beginning, I was like, that's a cool design. That I can do that. That's cool. But later on in the game, and I say that, you know, 20 minutes later, when you're getting ganged up by, you know, five or six bad guys and they're shooting at you, and you have to beat one of them up and then try to cuff them while somebody off screen is shooting you and then blocking you from being able to cuff. And then you go and take that person down. But then by the time you get over there to take the person who's shooting you out, this first person has come back up, and it's, it just, it was a good idea in theory, but in practice, it didn't always work. But, you know, one of the first things you do in this game, you beat up a few thugs, handcuff them, and then you're taken up to the rooftop. And you have to go rooftop to rooftop until you get to wherever you want to go. And you're using bat gadgets to swing over or do whatever. But the game does not tell you how to do anything or what to do. You know, there's no tutorial saying, oh, you want to go from this building to this building, use the bat grapple and do this. You just start pulling out tools. You know, I pulled out the bat grapple, shot it up in the air. Once again, I'm on a rooftop. What is this connecting to? And then Batman just sits there holding onto the bat grapple, not moving, just a foot above the ground. And I'm like, am I? Am I? Is this magic? What do I do here? And I tried multiple times. I'm sitting there just in the air. I try to hit a button that says jump, and he just jumps off, off the rooftop, and he flaw, he just falls down on his face. And dies, and it's game over. And probably about 1520 minutes of me just trying to figure out what tool to have to use to get across. When I finally did, it was like, okay, I know how to do it now, but that's not a fun way to experience a brand new game. You know, I'm thinking if I, if I got this game when it first came out, I'd be. I'd be pretty upset.
Chris Osborne: At the same time, this is coming out in an era where reading the manual sometimes is absolutely necessary. And if you buy the game new, then you're guaranteed to have the manual with it. Yeah, I'm back and forth on that, like, tutorial levels. I'm not a huge fan of running through them because most of the games I'm playing are either here for the show and I want to hurry up and get to the meat of the game, or there's stuff that I'm familiar enough with that I want to just jump into them and go. But at the same time, I've gotten so many just loose cartridge games out of flea markets and stuff, and I don't have the manual for those. And I know there's stuff that I'm missing that any kid x number of years ago. I don't want to do that math. They'd have the manual available.
Robert Fitton: It doesn't. Three. What is that like? That's like four years ago, right? We're not old.
Chris Osborne: No.
Robert Fitton: Right. Yeah, it's not having a manual. I think I honestly forgot about game manuals with everything going digital now, like you said that. And I was like, oh, yeah. Games used to come with a manual as opposed to just the download and then a card inside that says, don't eat this because of California.
Chris Osborne: I was definitely the kid who would bust the game open and read the manual on the way home because I wanted to start playing as soon as we got home.
Robert Fitton: Yeah, I was the kid. If we went to the store and bought a video game, I'm sitting in the car just reading the back of that case over and over again, every, every single little detail on the back of that case. But, yeah, gameplay here, I cannot overstate how bad it is. Collision detection, not great. The cameras. The camera is kind of like the, kind of like the resident evil. Like Resident Evil one, two. Where it's kind of that fixed thing. You go around a corner, it moves, which causes a lot of problems if you're the cameras behind Batman. I'm running down an alleyway, and then when I turn the corner now, the camera is in front of you and you're still pressing forward because you were running. And he turns around and he goes back around the corner because you. Now, when you press up on the. On the D pad, it's going away from you, you know? So there were. There were a few times where I just kept. I would forget that that was going to happen, or I wouldn't know it's going to happen. I'm running away from like a fight or something. I hit the camera change and then I just run right back into that fight and I get killed.
Background: I'm.
Chris Osborne: I mean, normally we don't try to harp on the gameplay mechanics a lot here, but this one, it's just so hard not to, because so much of getting the feel of Batman, you know, the fact that Batman doesn't have any powers means you've really got to feel his combat expertise, his detective expertise, every other aspect of Batman. And I mean, you've got to have gameplay somewhat, right? And this one, just all of the gameplay on there, you know, you're sitting there, here's a cool villain doing their cool villain thing, and you don't know how to beat up a crocodile guy. You're running around just doing all these things where you're not feeling like Batman, and you don't know how to beat up killer Croc. You don't. You get caught in these death loops because where you just happen to fall, happens to be on the path of a giant anchor hook type thing. And it's just so many things that really makes me wonder how much Kemco and hot gen got screwed over by being told they had to make this game multi platform.
Robert Fitton: Yeah. Yeah, I know. There was. The multi platform thing for me was when I was. When I was replaying this game. Now, I did have. I was on an emulator, and the controls just didn't feel right. They were correct, but they just didn't feel right. And I'm wondering if that was yet, them having to. Okay, we've got so many things that Batman can do, so many tools that we can go through, but we don't like. It's not a standard kind of control scheme that we can use. So things just kind of didn't always feel as intuitive as you'd want them to. But, you know, going, I didn't even honestly get to a killer croc fight. I got to, like I said, a black mask boss fight. And it was essentially just a loop of dying because Black Mask would run away and just shoot you from across the room and hit you with, like, three bullets, and you're dead by the time that you actually run up to him to hit him. He then runs away. And it's like, am I. I actually looked up a game facts guide because I thought, am I missing something that I'm supposed to be doing in this boss fight? And they're like, oh, no, just, you know, don't get shot and punch him. Like, I mean, that's what I can't do, that. He just shoots at you as you run towards him. And even some of those, the gadgets that you get just don't feel like Batman gadgets in the way that Batman, you would think, uses them. You've got. You've got Batarangs, which what I picture with the Batarang is, you know, from the Arkham games. Once again, I gotta bring those up because those are kind of the gold standard Batman games. But you've got the batarang, and you can just hit a button, quickly, throw it at an enemy, and, you know, like, disarm them. This game does not let you do that. This game, if you want to use a batarang, you have to equip the batarang, hold a button, and then you have, like, a first person view of where you're going to throw it. But you can't really use it against an enemy because if you go into that first person mode and they see you, they will shoot you, and then you get pulled out of it. So it's like, okay, I have these batarangs that I can't use. I've got. I've got smoke pellets. You throw them on the ground, it goes away within, you know, 3 seconds. And it's just a tiny little thing of smoke. And it's like, okay, cool. That's also useless. You've got a bat grapple and a bat hook, or it's bat grapple and bat cable. Once again, where am I supposed to use these and for what reason? You know, it's. There's a lot of things that look like you should feel like Batman, and most of them just do not make you feel like Batman.
Chris Osborne: And one of the things here about this plot is that it's supposed to be based kind of on the contemporary comics of the time. So you're in that period between the super campy, Tim Burton y films that you grew up on, but not to the Christopher Nolan films yet. So Batman, outside of being in the animated series, is kind of just in the comics looking through a bunch of story arc things. I'm not seeing anything that jumps out to me as, like, this is a definitive Batman story that could have influenced their writing. I'm also not the biggest Batman fan in the world anyway, so there's probably some stuff that they definitely could have been looking at and thought, we want to make a story like this. I've started my Batman reading way too old, so, like, I'm looking at 1930s stuff because I'm the weirdo that actually likes that kind of stuff right now.
Robert Fitton: Yeah, it looks like. I mean, this game was written by veteran DC Comics, former Batman Gotham adventures writer Scott Peterson. So it was written. The gameplay, the game itself is written by somebody from the comics as opposed to it's, hey, we've got this Batman license, have our video game. People write a Batman game, and it's just kind of, you know, nonsense, which, once again, the story itself, fine, serviceable, too. Great, to be honest with you. It's the gameplay. Gosh, and they got the royal Philharmonic Orchestra to do the score. There are so many things about this game where it should have been a home run, and it's just bad.
Chris Osborne: I mean, overall, what do you think this game really gets right about Batman?
Robert Fitton: I would have to say the Bat family, if you will, you know, Oracle and working with commissioner Gordon and, and that. That vibe of you're not alone as Batman. Like, you've got that team with you. The. The story beats of you working with them, I thought was great, and I thought, that's okay. Cool. That's. That's a. Not every single version of Batman, but that is definitely a version of Batman that feels. Feels right, I guess, is this. This Batman is part of a team, but other than that, yeah. Villains, honestly, also did feel, you know, makes you feel like a Batman game because you do have these. These multiple villains that you're gonna go through as opposed to just, hey, there's. There's the one guy, and there's just goons that you're fighting. You know, there are multiple characters, multiple villains, multiple, you know, cohorts that are familiar to you that make you feel like, okay, I'm in this world. But yeah, it is. It is brought down once again by that gameplay. I'm sorry that I keep harping on that gameplay. It is just. It's legitimately the worst game I've ever played. I'm not saying it's the worst game ever. I've not played every game. But me personally, this is the worst game that I've ever handled with my. With my human hands and seen with my human eyes. And tried to do both of those things at once.
Chris Osborne: I'm completely with you on the story part. This plays like somebody took a Batman comic strip that, for whatever reason, wasn't made and said, okay, cool, let's just make it into a game. And I could see somebody going back and making a comic version of this game, and it would probably work pretty well.
Robert Fitton: Yeah. Having either seen this as a, as a comic book or, or he'll take it. Make it like an animated movie. You know, DC has a ton of animated movies that they make all the time. Take. Take this story, make it an animated film. It's going to actually be great. It's going to be a really good story because if you're just watching it or reading it, you're like, oh, cool. Yeah, this is very interesting. We're working with, with Commissioner Gordon. Oh, commissioner Gordon got kidnapped. He's off to Arkham, but Batman's got to try to save him at Arkham and then also try to thwart these other bad guys doing other stuff. And then Ra's al Ghul is off doing something, and you don't know what that is. And everything kind of culminates at the end. Great. That is a great story. Make it a movie. Make it a comic book. Make it. Make it a novelization, even. Don't put it in the worst video.
Chris Osborne: Game ever made, ignoring the gameplay part of it. What does this game get, get wrong about Batman?
Robert Fitton: I think I would go back to, like we said at the top of the episode, Batman doesn't have superpowers. You know, so Batman's quote unquote superpower is, you know, he's smart. He's, he's the detective. He's got the gadgets. He, you know, it's got all these things to help him fight crime. And, and the thing about this game is, as far as I could tell, really, there was no, no, no semblance of, hey, you're the greatest detective because you're just kind of running from place to place and beating up goons. The gadgets themselves are just terrible. You don't feel. It doesn't feel like you are Batman and, you know, kind of sneaking your way through and scaring, like, using the aura of Batman because once you run out onto the scene, bad guys aren't intimidated. They're like, oh, yeah, Batman, let's shoot him and probably kill him. You don't have that aura of being Batman. You could take the bat suit off of him and it's just a bog standard action game. Besides, this story obviously. But, like, you don't feel like you are the Batman that you want to be, if that makes sense.
Chris Osborne: Oh, completely. Like, the fact that this just feels like a random game with Batman skin thrown on. It was what was going through my head a lot of the time while I was getting ready for this episode anyway. And most of that really comes down to not only do you have so many low level street thugs coming after you, they get up and come back after you after they've been knocked down.
Robert Fitton: Which, like I said at the very beginning, when you have to knock them down, you get them in the cuffs. I was like, oh, that's a cool kind of. That's something you don't see in Batman games in kind of the mythos of Batman. You have to feel like he is the. He kind of runs every, you know, not necessarily runs everything, like. Like a bad guy, but if you are a street level goon and you see Batman, they're supposed to be intimidated. They're supposed to, you know, not. Okay, yay. You know what? I'm the last person here because you beat up all my guys, like, all my dudes here. Cool. I'm gonna run, or I'm good. But you don't get that feeling with the game because once you back up and they just start fighting again, and it's like, what? Who is Batman in this world, other than a dude who punches people and puts them in cuffs? Like, he. You don't feel like the intimidating Batman. And these goons are just so dumb, and they don't. It doesn't. It feels almost wrong to fight them and beat them up because you're like, you made some mistakes in life, bud. You can turn it around, but you're just gonna keep shooting Batman. Okay, now, you're. If I could kick you off a building, I would, but I can't because this game doesn't let you fight on rooftops.
Chris Osborne: Every other Batman game, Batman story, I can at least head candidate to be. Yeah, those low level thugs, they're scared of Batman, but they know Batman won't kill him. And whoever they're working for might kill him. So they're gonna go fight Batman and have that plausible deniability there that they tried and failed, but, you know, they're not going to get up for round two, three, and four just because Batman didn't put handcuffs on them.
Robert Fitton: Yeah, it's you. If I'm a goon and I get knocked down by Batman, okay, I'm good. I don't need to get up and get punched by those gauntlets. Again, the AI just makes no sense.
Chris Osborne: I probably already know the answer to this, but if you have somebody who wanted to get into Batman, ignoring that other better games exist, would you give them this one as a bit of a primer course?
Robert Fitton: No. If they wanted to get into Batman video games, specifically, if they wanted to get into the character, no, I wouldn't. I would say just go watch, you know, the cart. Read a comic book if you want to get into Batman as a character and as, you know, like as the idea of Batman, read one of the comic books or watch almost any of the other movies. Do not play this game because you're not going to come away from it with a good idea of who and what Batman is. You'll have an idea of what Batman is, but it's not going to be correct.
Chris Osborne: I would almost just randomly pick any other game that exists and give them that one instead, because that is how bad the gameplay ruins any understanding of the feeling of Batman.
Robert Fitton: In this one, I'll take a ratchet and clank game and mod it to where Ratchet is wearing a batsuit, and I'll be like, this is Batman. And it's going to make as much sense as a Batman character as this game does right now.
Chris Osborne: I mean, I'll give him the Batman returns game on Genesis in Super Nintendo. At least that has good looks and I feels of everything. That's kind of. You can blame it on the era instead of just the game being bad.
Robert Fitton: Yeah, core memory unlocked that Batman. I had that Batman game growing up on Genesis, and I was obviously very young and I was terrible at it. But I remember it looked dope. The artwork in that game was actually pretty dope.
Chris Osborne: Well, Robert, it has been great talking to you about all this. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you? Around the Internet?
Robert Fitton: I do stream occasionally, actually did stream me playing this game the other night on my Twitch. Mister Hawks H o X 182. And I also have a gaming podcast that I do with my buddy Mike called Story Motors podcast. M O d e r s. Motors. Like story mode, Easy Mode, because I'm terrible at games. Yeah, the Story Motors podcast, straight up video games. We just have a different topic every week that we talk about the. This most recent episode was us talking about Borderlands just as a video game series. Borderlands. But yeah, Story Motors podcast and twitch.com tv. Mr. Hawks 182 is where you can find me.
Chris Osborne: And as always, we'll have links down to the show notes for that because clicking links is so much easier than trying to remember how to spell things.
Robert Fitton: That's fair. And a lot of people, when I say story Motors, they think of a car, which makes perfect sense, but not motors like a car. I thought it was a fun name. And the more we do it and the more I say it, I'm like, that may not have been a great, a great thing to call it, but, man, we're too far gone now.
Chris Osborne: It is a good name, especially when you throw in kind of the reasoning behind it there. And that's why QR codes exist.
Robert Fitton: Yeah.
Chris Osborne: As always, the best place to find me is still going to be playcomics.com. social media is just a total dumpster fire right now, and I have no idea where anything is. I'm still kind of hanging on to twitter, so maybe that one. I don't know, something like that. If you want to be on the show yourself, there's a link down in the show notes. You can go check that out and see what games I'm looking to get things booked for. You can also use that list to try to pressure your friends into coming on the show. That's cool, too. You should definitely do that. If you want to show support, though, the best thing you can do is to share it with friends or leave reviews on places like Podchase or Apple Podcasts, all that fun stuff. It doesn't do anything for, you know, me being discoverable. But maybe if people read your review and they see it, they'll say, hey, that sounds cool, I'll go check it out for myself. Or, you know, you can give me money like, oh no, Laclass in Dan McMahon. That's cool, too, because making a podcast does cost money. Don't forget that play comics is a part of the Guinea Geek Network, home to such wonderful shows as Legends of S H I E l D, where we are continuing to go through X Men evolution. And we've already talked about Deadpool and Wolverine because I know this is coming out after we talk about that one and probably after it gets released, too. If you like the music that I'm talking rudely on top of right now, head on over to Soundcloud.com bestday to check out Bestday's music. Most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, and go find yourself a new favorite character.