I often confuse The Adventures of Batman & Robin for being a Traveller's Tales game, and not because Gamehut did an excellent video explaining how many of the it's graphical tricks work. Rather, like Traveller's Tales' games often are, Batman & Robin looks very impressive but is a total chore to play.
This is a run-and-gun, because Batman famously only does battle with his rogue's gallery by chucking a hundred and fifty thousand batarangs at their faces. This isn't really a bad thing, but levels drag on and on and on, often inundating you with ceaseless waves of spongy enemies. Your batarang can be upgraded by picking up power-ups similar to your typical shot upgrades in a shoot-em-up, and much like an average shoot-em-up, starting from a game over on a particularly hard stage with your piddly basic shot is abject misery, though far worse here give how resilient enemies become towards the middle to later half of the game.
There's also several levels that straight up are shoot-em-ups, with Batman gliding around in an overhead view taking on waves of attack helicopters and battleships, and these feel like total trash. Your sluggish movement coupled with how often enemies want to ram into you or fire bullet-hell barrages pointblank makes these incredibly irritating. Your best strategy to carry you through these levels is to pause the game and tap B, A, down, B, A down, left, up, C and just skip the god damn stage. Consider that code a Christmas gift from me to you.
Damn good looking game, though. There's some really impressive parallax scrolling to give the illusion of 3D, and the title cards before each chapter are incredibly detailed and faithful in style to those of the 90s cartoon. I feel that moreso than any other game in my Genesis collection, Batman & Robin is best experienced on a CRT. It's not too surprising to see a 1995 Genesis game swinging for the bleachers with its graphics, the tail-end of the system's library is full of titles that are more preoccupied with making an immediate impression with their visuals, often at the expense of good gameplay.
I decided to add this to my yuletide shortlist alongside holiday favorites like Clockwork Knight and Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, and I guess nothing says "Christmas" more than sitting hunched forward, glaring at the TV, controller in a death grip while constantly sighing and muttering "Jesus..." under my breath. Happy holidays!
This is a run-and-gun, because Batman famously only does battle with his rogue's gallery by chucking a hundred and fifty thousand batarangs at their faces. This isn't really a bad thing, but levels drag on and on and on, often inundating you with ceaseless waves of spongy enemies. Your batarang can be upgraded by picking up power-ups similar to your typical shot upgrades in a shoot-em-up, and much like an average shoot-em-up, starting from a game over on a particularly hard stage with your piddly basic shot is abject misery, though far worse here give how resilient enemies become towards the middle to later half of the game.
There's also several levels that straight up are shoot-em-ups, with Batman gliding around in an overhead view taking on waves of attack helicopters and battleships, and these feel like total trash. Your sluggish movement coupled with how often enemies want to ram into you or fire bullet-hell barrages pointblank makes these incredibly irritating. Your best strategy to carry you through these levels is to pause the game and tap B, A, down, B, A down, left, up, C and just skip the god damn stage. Consider that code a Christmas gift from me to you.
Damn good looking game, though. There's some really impressive parallax scrolling to give the illusion of 3D, and the title cards before each chapter are incredibly detailed and faithful in style to those of the 90s cartoon. I feel that moreso than any other game in my Genesis collection, Batman & Robin is best experienced on a CRT. It's not too surprising to see a 1995 Genesis game swinging for the bleachers with its graphics, the tail-end of the system's library is full of titles that are more preoccupied with making an immediate impression with their visuals, often at the expense of good gameplay.
I decided to add this to my yuletide shortlist alongside holiday favorites like Clockwork Knight and Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, and I guess nothing says "Christmas" more than sitting hunched forward, glaring at the TV, controller in a death grip while constantly sighing and muttering "Jesus..." under my breath. Happy holidays!
2 Comments
@PasokonDeacon It's probably up there in like, my top five for the most impressive looking Genesis games. I've always felt like it was a drag to play through, though, and only bought a repro copy a few months ago because "I need to see this on a CRT again" became too much of an intrusive thought.
PasokonDeacon
4 months ago