Aside from being based on one of the best adaptations of Batman, this game ranges from being serviceable to annoying. It's a third person/first person hybrid game that has you going from point A to B in levels whilst beating up enemies in a half baked fighting game style combat with the occasional puzzle solving.

The controls during the combat portion are pretty basic, but some enemies will be quick to stunlock you during those portions. You are able to leave the fight by pressing a specific button, but as soon as you're punched again, you will be forced into the fight again. After the enemy is knocked out, they will eventually get back up unless you handcuff them. Unfortunately handcuffs are very rare to come by in levels, and the game's minimal UI doesn't do any favors of letting you know how many cuffs you have either.

Third person camera control is extremely poor. It's a chase camera with absolutely no way to control the rotation. You have two methods of controlling the camera; flicking the right stick to center the camera behind Batman, or use one of his gadgets to go into first person.

What made me put down the game is how janky some of the platforming portions can get. On certain points, the game expects you to be pixel perfect with your jumps across an instant kill hazard. Batman is extremely picky with what ledges he can grab and mantle up vs approaching a ledge, do nothing and fall to his death.

It started to become a commonplace the more I played the game, so I abandoned it. This game is good to satiate your curiosity of playing a Batman game before the Arkham games, but there isn't anything redeemable otherwise.

Also for some reason, the game doesn't save automatically. If you play with save states in emulators that shouldn't be an issue. If not, you have to manually save your game in the main menu before you turn off your system. Ah, yes, the early days of playing with memory cards.

Cheat mode
At the main menu, press L2, R2, L2, R2, Square(2), Circle(2). If you entered the code correctly, you will hear a sound.

All power moves and 120 achievement points
At the main menu, press L1(2), R2(2), L2, R2, L1, R2. If you entered the code correctly, you will hear a sound.

Infinite Handcuffs
At the main menu, press Square, Circle, Square, Circle, L2, R2(2), L2(2). If you entered the code correctly, you will hear a sound.

Infinite Batlauncher
At the main menu, press Circle, Square, Circle, Square, L1, R1, L2, R2. If you entered the code correctly, you will hear a sound.

Infinite batarangs and electric batarangs
At the main menu, press L1, R1, L2, R2. If you entered the code correctly, you will hear a sound.

Envelope A
Go to the Rooftop Battle level. When the clowns chase Mary, you will go up to the rooftops. Grapple hook up to her roof and beat up the white clown. Go up to the next roof, where you are on a little balcony. Jump across, then go in to see a thug run across a hall with the girl. Follow and he will jump off the roof. Follow, look down, and drop to lowest edge. Walk along to left until at the corner the grapple icon appears Grapple over, go in the door and pick up Envelope A.

Envelope B
Go to the Bridge level. Knock out the thug at the start of the level. You should see the glowing item on the left when you start. Climb the ladder and jump/glide around the crate onto the other crate. Then, glide onto the platform with the letter.

Envelope C
Go to the Plant Electrocution 2 level. You will start the Plant Electrocution 2 level by sliding down towards some holes in the ground. The second hole is not fatal. Fall into it and glide (to avoid minor damage). You will see a lit area. Glide down there and pick up the item you find inside. Use the grapnel to exit, jump out of the hole, and finish the slide. The item you picked up should be the key do the door right beside the vines behind the glass. Go inside and fight one of the "Plant Men". You will find an envelope that has a "C" on it in the room. When you finish the game, you can activate this cheat for all weapons and infinite ammunition.

Envelope D

Go to the SWAT Chase level. You will enter the elevator shaft. Ride the elevator all the way down until it stops. Get off the elevator and wait for it to rise again. After it rises, jump down to the bottom and use first person mode to find the control box. Use a Batarang to disable it and the door behind it will open. Stay clear of the elevator and wait for the correct time to get in the open room. Inside the room is "Secret Key 2." Get out of the room and ride the elevator up to the top. At the top there is a door that is supposed to be locked. The key opens the door, and inside is an envelope with the letter "D" on it. Finish the game and the cheat will be unlocked.

Envelope E
Go to the Gasworks level. You will reach a room with two levels, each floor with two goons on them. First, take out the goons. Then, look around on the lower floor until you see a sewer pipe with boxes in the sewage. Carefully glide down and land on the first box. Jump over the next few boxes and pick up the envelope with an "E" on it. Finish the game and the cheat will be unlocked.

This game is just very bad. Not the worst that ever exists but it's a very bad game. I like how the voice actors came back and they did a very good job with voice acting. Soundtrack is very good. Most of the models look great except for like some of them. I enjoy all the villains that are in this game. I also love how this is based off of the animated series. The story is written well for a mystery and it is very great.

Now for the bad. Notice how I didn't mention any of the gameplay mechanics? Yeah well the gameplay is REALLY bad. It feels very clunky and janked. Most of the missions are a pain. They barely give you any health packs for these sections. The level design for most of the levels is awful. The combat sucks. One big issue is the joker thugs. I really DESPISE them in this game. They keep throwing in cheap hits without giving the player a single opening and before the player could get a chance to block. They also have this move where they grab you in a hug and squeeze you. They keep on spamming this and it made me so annoyed throughout fighting them. Another huge issue is the first person mode is awful. Why have your gadgets in first person? It is not a good mechanic to have for your game.

Overall, not a great game for Batman fans or fans of the Animated Series. Hopefully rise of sin tzu is a lot better and actually decent at least.

For 2001, this could look a lot worse, and having the cast of the animated series helps it a lot, but the game itself is not good at all.

The controls are way too loose, especially when it comes to aiming: there were so many times that I missed an opportunity to damage a boss because the crosshair just wasn't cooperating.

The platforming is very wonky, worsened by the occasional odd collision on certain platforms. Your glide is incredibly unreliable, its speed and height seemingly random. I think if you do it immediately after a jump you go faster and higher, which makes no goddamn sense. There was a particular jump where logic denoted waiting until the peak of the jump then gliding, but I'd miss every single time. For whatever reason, doing it as soon as I jumped got me to where I needed to be.

Combat is flat-out broken. When you engage in it, you're locked into it and can only exit by pressing Y, but if an enemy hits you when you do, you're immediately locked back in again. If an enemy grabs you, you have to wiggle the analog stick to escape, and as soon as you do, the game exits the combat stance and costs you the chance to punish every time. When it's semi-functional, it's really stiff, your attacks are very delayed and enemies can start attacking while you're mid-combo, completely snapping the balance in half. By the end, I just started blocking everything, getting potshots in to fill my special meter, and spamming the special moves that deal a shitload of damage.

There are a lot of really poorly designed setpieces throughout with very little conveyance as to what it expects of the player or if they're even performing it correctly. There are some fundamental design decisions that are questionable as well, like having finite ammo and Batcuffs. There are always conveniently respawning pickups for them when they're needed, so they're already practically infinite. Why waste the player's time with having to keep picking them up?

I wanted to give this game a chance because I knew it had its fans, but unfortunately I'm not one of them.

Yet another game I loved when I was 8 that holds up about as well as the Captain Underpants fanfiction I wrote at the same age. Starting to think I may not have had very good taste back then!

There's so much fundamentally wrong with Vengeance's game design, it's honestly kind of impressive. Every play mechanic feels horrible to engage with, from the awful FPS gadgets to the miserable melee combat to even the freaking character movement. I don't understand how you can mess up "push analog stick to move in specified direction" but I have somehow managed to play two different 6th gen superhero games in a row that did so in distinctly different ways. Batman at least moves in the direction you want him to, but regardless of how much you tilt the stick, he must always "build up speed" by slowly walking for half a second before running. This makes the platforming segments even more painful than the limp jumping and inconsistent ledge-grabbing already did.

The visual style is pretty cool, though. They did a great job translating the artwork from the later Batman animated series episodes into 3D, even if the models don't animate particularly well. The FMVs also look weirdly shiny and plasticky, but I kind of love that aesthetic tbh. The voice acting is pretty good too (with the same actors from the cartoon!), but the sound mixing is so horrendous you won't even be able to hear it half the time. There are even some interesting cinematic gameplay moments that feel ahead of their time in a way. All this rounds out Vengeance as a fun curiosity despite how bad it is to actually experience.

These are some loosely assembled notes on the game that I took as I went.

Movement is strangely clunky, like he has to walk and then get up to running speed even at full control stick tilt. He doesn’t like to smoothly change direction either.

Opening intro credits is very ahead of its time. Feels cinematic.

Great voice acting and good writing!! But of course, with the same writers and actors from Batman: TAS. So of course it is.

Me: “LET US PILOT THE BAT WING YOU COWARDS!”
Me, once piloting the Bat Wing: “OMG LET ME OUT OF THIS THING!” CRASHES 20 TIMES

The idea that after being knocked out, enemies will eventually get back up and fight you is interesting. You can handcuff them to take them out of the equation, but the handcuff system is a little puzzling because I was never sure when I did or didn’t have handcuffs or how many I had.

The idea that most of these goons could lay a finger on you, much less that 100 pound Mr. Freeze henchwomen could lay you out is preposterous. I’m talking flat on the ground here. Sigh.

Really digging the story, acting, cinematics. Definitely top tier. The graphics hold up really well even 20 years later.

The combat is almost what I would consider broken. The ability to block doesn’t help because the attack animations are too long and can’t be canceled and you often times get flattened by enemies who can haymaker you.

The game does an abysmal job of explaining things. (Note: I played my old save file from 20 years ago when I rented it, and I think there might be scenes where things got explained the first time through a level but not upon revisiting.) Some puzzles are introduced with no explanation, whereas others are.

Batmobile section is inexplicable. You missed a turn and failed. What? How? Why? I just started! It’s the first turn! You won’t even let me make it before insisting I missed it and FAILED. How did this make it through 2 minutes of play testing? I don’t even have enough time to drive to figure out the controls without failing first. Absolutely horrible game design. Absolutely unforgivable. (Update…I think this might be explained to you the first time through…that would make sense.)

Some interesting cinematic kind of moments, like running through a hallway while a helicopter shoots out the windows and you run ahead. Again, feels sort of ahead of its time here and there.

This game makes loading noises on my Wii I have never ever heard before. Maybe my console is failing?

Whether or not the Batmobile section is forgivable or not, the combat is unforgivable. You can’t guard until you enter combat, upon which the controls change, and if enemies are barreling at you, you have no choice but to let them land a series of hits on you before you can even guard. You can try to strike, but they usually beat you to the punch (literally) and if you choose to attack, you can’t guard.

There’s absolutely no flow or rhythm to the combat. There’s no dodge or counter moves. You can only guard, and there’s no right way to time an attack vs. a block. It’s not like the enemies have discernible patterns or openings. You just have to wait your turn and hope there’s an opening when you strike. You are pretty much playing roulette every time you throw a punch or kick. There’s no way to master the combat and emerge unscathed because you’re skilled.

Enemies have an annoying bear hug move that just happens. You can’t preempt it. You just have to wriggle free once someone uses it on you. Enemies late in the game spam the heck out of this. Others also get into a loop where they just punch you over and over again that you can’t break out of. Is the correct thing to guard until they stop? No! They won’t stop, and hits taken while blocking still sap your life slowly. If you want to interrupt the cycle, you have to hit back, and this works maybe 50% of the time without getting whacked.

The platforming is sometimes sloppy. I appreciate how good the game is at catching you instead of letting you fly off a ledge clumsily. Batman has a reliable twirl around and grab the ledge animation that he’ll do.

The implementation of various gadgets is kinda neat. Using Batarangs to disarm enemies is rewarding, if clunky, but the challenge makes it interesting. Cycling through the entire gamut with one button in order to find the right one is a sad system, and while it makes good use of dual analog aiming, the C-Stick dead zone is rough and the look sensitivity is a tad slow. It made me appreciate how the Arkham games eventually loop gadgets into the combat, because you don’t get that here.

FINAL THOUGHTS: This game frustrated me to no end at times. I dig the art style, voice acting, and story. It feels exactly like The Animated Series in the best possible way. Some of the puzzles are kinda nifty. The combat fluctuates between uninspired and straight BS. The level design is ho hum, and I got lost once or twice. I think most of my issues with the game stem from the combat—the difficulty, the frustration, and the tedium. I’m glad I played it, but I won’t be revisiting anytime soon.