Rowr, Fsss! Fsss!

Film-licensed video games have lengthy been given a nasty rap, however to be truthful to them, that’s solely as a result of they’re normally unhealthy. This goes again to the ‘80s, with a few of the earliest video video games to hit the market. I don’t have an evidence for why these titles are sometimes unhealthy. The truth that they should be rushed to fulfill the identical launch date because the film definitely does no favors. Nonetheless, my idea is that, when a recreation already has promoting that comes from a bigger trade, why even trouble making an attempt to make it good? It’s going to promote on recognition alone.

With that in thoughts, right here we’ve 2004’s Catwoman, based mostly on the movie starring Halle Berry. It has the excellence of being based mostly off what is taken into account by some to be one of many worst big-budget movies of all time. It might be actually ironic if this recreation turned out to truly be good!

It’s not.

The town’s most interesting

I’ve by no means seen Catwoman, and I’m going to be trustworthy with you, I don’t actually need to. I favor the Catwoman that was pushed out a window by Christopher Walken within the vacation traditional Batman Returns. The film apparently focuses on a lady named Persistence Phillips who’s killed by her boss otherwise. Nonetheless, a cat revives her, and that makes her a cat girl for some motive. Neat how that works. When somebody is resuscitated by mouth-to-mouth, does that flip them into The Human Kiss?

Catwoman truly begins with the titular zombie breaking into a jewellery retailer. Besides there are already individuals there. So after a non-lethal takedown of the thugs, the police roll up, give Catwoman 5 seconds to give up, then simply mild the place up with a torrent of gunfire. To be truthful to the police, there have been gunshots earlier than they arrived. Nonetheless, I’m undecided how they’re going to clarify that to the proprietor of the jewellery retailer. “We had motive to imagine there was a lady armed with a whip inside?”

Your complete opening sequence is riotously humorous. Catwoman then escapes the shop and is confronted by two cops who’ve apparently wasted all their ammo and are going to take Halle Berry on bare-fisted.

Upon (non-lethally) dispatching the officers, a helicopter rolls up, places the highlight on Catwoman’s leather-based pants, and begins dropping a hail of bullets on her. Nonetheless, none of those bullets can hit you. You may stand in a single place, and the surroundings round you’ll be completely torn to shreds, however not one bullet will pierce your feline flesh.

Who’re we? The Wild Cats!

Catwoman itself is horrible, solely value enjoying for these moments of awkward hilarity. The controls are uncomfortable and atrocious. You utilize the L button to get on all-fours like a cat, and the R button to leap, then the remainder of the buttons don’t do a lot of something. The worst a part of utilizing L and R for principally the whole lot is that the Xbox and Gamecube controllers have analog triggers. Extra uncomfortably, the Gamecube’s controller makes a loud “pling!” each time you push them down all the way in which, so that you’re enjoying with resistant buttons that scream at you. The A button is used for an unlockable “pose” transfer, the place you get guards sexy so you will get the “pussycat” rating multiplier.

I’ve sworn to myself I used to be going to keep away from utilizing “pussy” as a euphemism on this article. It’s taking each scrap of my willpower to abide by that.

You whip and assault with the C-stick or equal proper analog stick, which is okay in idea, however Catwoman largely ignores your instructions anyway, so it provides no further precision. A lot of its controls are utterly in opposition to instinct. If you wish to swing on a pole, you need to maintain L, however when you’re hanging from one utilizing your whip, you press backwards and forwards. It’s like two individuals had been designing the controls, they had been situated in numerous international locations, they didn’t communicate the identical language, they usually hated one another.

Not that higher controls would simplify issues. The digital camera is vocally disinterested in what’s happening. It received’t present you essential particulars like what’s in entrance of you, with the sport helpfully telling you to modify into first-person view to go searching the surroundings. It takes its time to point out you what’s happening. As soon as, I jumped by way of a window, and when the digital camera lastly determined to pan all the way down to the place I had landed, a guard had me in his arms, and one other was taking photographs at me.

Impenetrable layer of suck

This isn’t to say Catwoman is tough past its impenetrable layer of suck. It’s truly terribly unwilling to allow you to die. You recognize the entire “simply kill me already,” countered by “I need to watch you undergo?” That’s the vibe happening in Catwoman. You may fall 20 tales, and also you received’t die. No, it’s a lot worse. It’s important to then climb again up by way of its irrationally crappy platforming sections.

The one mercy it actually has is typically, very often, it’ll open up a shortcut, so you will get again up quicker. Nonetheless, this has the implication that the builders anticipated that you just’d fall, so all these occasions they selected not that can assist you again up was simply maliciousness. Checkpoints would have been higher, however whereas Catwoman has these, I by no means noticed them in platforming sections the place they’d have mattered.

So, I climbed up time and again, as a cat with 9 lives that it couldn’t lose quick sufficient.

The underside of the platforming sections

The hassle to inform the story is token, at greatest. Like I mentioned, I by no means watched the film, so I don’t know the way trustworthy it’s to the film’s plot. Nonetheless, after the jewellery retailer heist, Halle Berry then chases round a cat for some unusual motive. A number of essential narrative context is totally glossed over, leading to storytelling that’s simply as messy as the sport itself. I suppose that at the least makes it constant.

The fight is just misguided. You may both beat up guards till they cower in concern out of your relentless slapping or kick them into dumpsters and different containers. At one level, early within the recreation, I opened up one among these containers and a guard simply jumped in beneath his personal energy. I’m undecided if I beat him up sufficient previous to opening the trapdoor the place he simply determined that fleeing right into a trash compactor can be higher than going through Halle Berry’s tight pants, nevertheless it was extraordinarily humorous to observe. After all, whereas the implication is that Catwoman doesn’t kill and even subdue her targets, I took each alternative I needed to knock enemies off ledges to the underside of platforming sections. See how they prefer it.

To nobody’s shock, Catwoman is terrible. It’s an archetypal licensed movie-game rushed out to make the most of branding. A number of the builders moved on to larger and higher issues, however you may inform their hearts weren’t in it for this one. Effectively, apart from whoever was chargeable for the puddles. They did an exceptional job.

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