Reviewed: February 4, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Ubisoft

Developer
Ubisoft Montreal
Warner Bros. Interactive

Released: November 11, 2003
Genre: Action
Players: 2
ESRB: Teen

7
8
7
7
7.7

Supported Features:

Now Ubisoft moves back into Gotham with a fresh take on the Batman franchise. Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu not only updates the series with the look and artistic vision of the current WB animated series, it also introduces a new villain created by renowned artist, Jim Lee. Sin Tzu joins with Bane, Clayface, and Scarecrow to present Batman and his crew with their greatest challenge to date.

Rise of Sin Tzu Features:

• The Rise of Sin Tzu: Sin Tzu, cunning master of strategy and martial arts, makes history as the first Batman character to debut in a videogame. To commemorate this event, DC Comics and Warner Bros. have showcased the talents of renowned comic book artist Jim Lee as Sin Tzu’s creator and character designer.
• Four Infamous Supervillains: Battle Batman’s most infamous enemies including Bane, Clayface and Scarecrow – each appearing on a videogame for the first time – and the formidable Sin Tzu.
• Two-Player Cooperative Gameplay: Play solo as Batman, or recruit a friend into the battle as Nightwing, Robin or Batgirl in 2-player cooperative fighting mode.
• 35 Batman Attacks: Topple Sin Tzu’s soldiers of crime with more than 35 martial arts moves and combos.
• 12 Levels: Wage brutal street battles through the Gotham City Docks, Crime Alley, Arkham Asylum and more.
• Full-Color Lithograph designed by Jim Lee
• Bonus Content: 27-minute Making of a Villain documentary, featuring comics legend Jim Lee

Batman has always been about fighting, from the early days of comics and even the 60’s series with Adam West. Rise of Sin Tzu offers up some of the best fisticuffs action in recent fighting history thanks to some fluid and intuitive controls. It won’t take you more than five minutes to master the buttons that have these superheroes punching, kicking, throwing, and executing some of the coolest combos in town.

To keep things interesting for all 12 levels there are more than thirty moves and combos, many of which have to be unlocked. This guarantees there is always something new and exciting to learn and master each new level. These new moves start to get rather complicated in their button sequences but the resulting payoff is worth the effort. You can even learn “buddy moves” where one character starts the move and it’s finished by the other. While the characters share the basic moves, each hero does have three signature movies that are extremely cool.

Like Bond, Batman is nothing without his bag of tricks (“where does he get those wonderful toys”), and you have all the classic gadgets like the Batarang, smoke bombs, and grappling hook. Unfortunately, these gadgets are seldom required and you will likely forget you even have access to them as you settle in to what is more of a traditional fighting game.

While Rise of Sin Tzu offers up plenty of content, both in the sheer size of the game and the wealth and variety of combat moves, the game never really exploits any of it. With more than thirty moves at your disposal you might experiment with each one as you earn it, but during normal combat you will ultimately resolve yourself to a few of the faster and more powerful attacks simply because they are easy to pull-off and just as effective against the enemy.

Enemy AI is not that good and you basically fight endless swarms of generic henchmen who seem to be coming off some off-screen assembly line. These guys come in three flavors; the easiest of the three is merely an annoyance, somebody to eliminate to get to the next guy. Then you have the guy with the gun or ranged weapon who needs to be prioritized and taken down as quickly as possible. Then you have the leader of the group who is clearly identified by the extra-long health bar. With each new level the bad guys learn a few new tricks and increase in numbers, and even though they might change their costumes they never deviate from these three types. They rely more on sheer numbers than intelligence.

There are some challenging boss battles that rely on the tried and true method of analyzing patterns and weaknesses. Once you discover these “secrets” none of them present too much of a challenge, especially for seasoned gamers.

You can tell this game was designed with multiplayer in mind, and playing with a friend in simultaneous co-op mode is actually a lot more fun than playing alone. At least you have somebody to blame and yell at when something goes wrong. The same old problem of the camera restricting movement is still here, so Batman is unable to move forward while Robin is kicking butt at the bottom of the screen. You’ll constantly be yelling, “move left”, “come up”, “get back down here”. It’s moderately annoying but the price we have always paid for these kinds of games.

In addition to the main story mode there is a Challenge mode that offers four games, two co-op, and two versus. These vary in objectives but pretty much include even more bad guy butt-kicking. Completing these challenges will earn you some cool Batman extras in the bonus gallery. You can also unlock more during the story mode. These are really cool, especially if you are a Batman fan, but you will have your work cut out for you if you want to earn them all.

Characters look and move with all the grace and style of their TV counterparts. The combat moves are excellent and you will have as much fun previewing these moves between levels as you will performing them during the missions. The game even slows down the combat just enough so you can appreciate the subtle details.

Other touches include realistic fabric movement like capes flapping in the breeze and smoke that swirls around the moving characters. There is great use of color and colored lighting and excellent special effects like reflections in the water, volumetric smoke, fog, and gas, particle effects and fiery explosions, and even a cool screen distortion effect used when you fall under the effects of Scarecrow’s gas bombs. All of these colorful visuals and special effects are delivered at smooth framerates regardless of what is happening onscreen.

There are plenty of cutscenes in the game and they all use game-engine graphics, which keeps the gameplay flowing smoothly with the narrative. These movies look just as good as anything you would see on TV, truly a testament to the quality of the game engine and the artistic design.

The voice work is also a pleasant surprise with some quality lines of dialogue that are both humorous and even informative. They will actually tell you when you need health so you aren’t constantly monitoring your health meter.

I really liked the music in Sin Tzu. Blending some techno tracks and infusing them with just a hint of the Batman theme, you have a great thumping beat perfectly suited to thumping bad guys. You’ll find yourself matching your button mashing to the rhythm track and sometimes it actually improves your fighting.

The GameCube commemorative version comes with a cool full-color lithograph designed by Jim Lee and is only $19. You can buy a lot worse games for $19. Any self-respecting Batman fan should skip the rental and make this a permanent addition to their game library.