Batmobile racing game that disappoints in almost every single aspect.

Story

The city of Gotham is sprawling with criminals following a massive jailbreak that took place at the Arkham Asylum. The authorities are dumbfounded and incapable of dealing with the sudden surge of criminal activity and citizens are being terrorized on a daily basis. Batman, the mysterious hero and his trusted companions take action in an effort to regain control of the city.

The Game

Batman: Gotham City Racer is a PlayStation exclusive action racing game featuring the iconic crime-fighting superhero Batman. The story and design of the game is based on The New Batman Adventures, which is a TV series cartoon that aired in 1997.

As Batman, your objective is to protect the city from all the mad criminals, and in this particular game you do this by racing with the Batmobile. Everything you do will involve racing in one way or another. Unlike an ordinary racing game though, you will be able to use some unique features of the Batmobile such as shooting Batarangs and using nitro boosters. Also, the game takes place in an open ended urban setting rather than enclosed racing tracks in the traditional meaning.

The whole game is based around specific mission objectives, so you’ll always know where you’re supposed to go and what you’re supposed to do. You’re either being chased, chasing someone, or trying to reach a location before time runs out – and it all has to do with the activities of infamous Batman villains such as Poison Ivy, The Joker and The Scarecrow.

Content

Batman: Gotham City Racer can be played in three different game modes. The main attraction is the Adventure mode, which is a single player campaign featuring 51 missions, or stages, rather. The second game mode is called Patrol, and this is a timed arcade style game mode where you roam the city freely and try to stop crimes as they occur at random locations. Last but not least is the 2 Player Pursuit mode which is played with two players on a split screen and versus basis. Here one player will play as one of the Gotham heroes, and the other plays one of the villains. The villains will try to rob different places and the heroes must stop them.

Gotham City is divided into five different zones, and there are about 30 different locations of interest in the city such as museums, the city bank and the Arkham Asylum. Having 51 missions to complete may sound like a lot, but there are only three different types of missions in the Adventure mode as mentioned above. Each stage is time limited and there’s nothing else to do during the missions other than to complete the given mission objective. Thus the free roaming aspect falls very short – it’s practically without function.

Most missions can and must be completed in just a minute or two, so the length of the Adventure mode, including retries, will only be about four hours of gaming.

As you navigate through the streets of Gotham, you have two tools to assist you. The mission tracker arrow pointing out the direction of your objective and a mini-map. The mini-map will show you the street layout of the surrounding area, so it is pretty helpful even though you can’t zoom or scroll it in any way. The mini-map will also show you the location of street blockades, which are your number one reason for not being able to take the fastest route to your destination. There is an overview map of the city which can only be seen in between missions, but it is not very helpful because it does not show you the said street blockades, and even if it did you’d still have to memorize them and cross-reference it to the mini-map. The street blockades are so frequent that you don’t have to worry much about trying to find the shortest way to your objective – you can be sure that it’s blocked off anyway. So, the best practice is to drive in the general direction of the mission tracker arrow, and make sure you get around all the blockades. Because you’re constantly racing against a time limit, you must be quick about finding a route that isn’t blocked off, and that’s basically what the whole Adventure mode is about. There are power-ups that can be picked up such as extra time and extra nitro boost, so with some luck you can save yourself even in the most desperate situations.

The missions in which you must stop a villain by destroying their vehicle are the hardest missions in the game. Here the damage level of your vehicle really matters, because if your vehicle wrecks before the villain you’ll fail the mission instantly. All villains have their special weapons, so these missions are practically shoot-em-up style death races as projectiles will fly in both directions.

Some missions will take place in two different zones of Gotham City, meaning that there’s a loading sequence in the middle of the mission. Normally this kind of thing wouldn’t be a problem, but sadly this game has long loading times overall.

The 2 Player Pursuit mode is somewhat unique, but essentially boils down to that two cars are driving around and shooting at each other. It can be fun for a while, but the novelty wears off quickly because of the fact that the game is very limited. The level design is uninspired and the weapons and vehicles aren’t all that exciting either. The weapons arsenal consist of various types of mines and projectiles. As you can only hold three charges to your special weapon, you can’t really have much fun with those anyway. The split screen also hampers the already poor graphics even further, introducing frame rate stuttering, which may not be game breaking but annoying nonetheless.

Batman: Gotham City Racer can be played on three different difficulty levels. The difficulty setting tweaks the given time limit and the amount of damage you and the villains can take before going down. Overall, this is an easy game to beat, especially once you’ve figured out how to avoid each villain’s weapons and continuously pepper them with Batarangs. Those looking for genuine gaming challenge will be disappointed for sure.

Should you fail a mission, you’re given the chance to retry it infinitely. Because of this, you’ll quickly learn what works and what doesn’t on the harder missions. So, with enough patience anyone can beat this game regardless of gaming skill.

The story of the Adventure game mode is inconsistent. There’s no dramaturgic finesse or logic to speak of either. The mission plot line doesn’t always tie into each other making it feel like you’re playing entirely different episodes, even though it all is supposed to be one continuous story. There’s short descriptive text messages before and after each mission, but even so the sequence of events doesn’t add up. Every now and then a mission begins with an animated cut scene, and these sequences are taken directly from the animated TV series. The scenes are poorly edited into the game, but do add some much-needed depth to the adventure on the whole.

Sadly the world portrayed in this game isn’t very believable. Most parts of the town look incredibly uninspired and poorly designed. It barely looks much like a town at all. There isn’t much traffic on the roads to care for either – at most you’ll see two other cars beside yourself on the screen at one time, but most of the time there isn’t even that.

To further ruin the illusion of that you’re dealing with living people in a town is the awkwardly bad AI of both the villains and citizen vehicles. They’ll blindly bump into each other, and even get stuck in walls for long periods of time.

During the course of the Adventure mode you’ll be forced to drive the same few routes multiple times. Gotham City isn’t all that big in this game, but there are unused locations which they could have used to at least change the scenery a little more from one mission to another.

Controls

The biggest issue with this game is its poor controls. The Batmobile and other vehicles don’t behave anything like cars – they are hard to control, tend to oversteer and skid along the road almost all the time. The Batbikes are even worse because they tend to oversteer even more than the cars. Every time you happen to bump into something – a wall or another vehicle – you will bounce off of it as if you were made of rubber. So with the vehicle physics out the window, you’re left with a bouncy and incredibly off-putting driving experience, which is an issue because driving is all that you can do in the game.

The game can be played from a first- or third person perspective, and it should be said that both needs some time to get used to. After a few minutes of playing however, you’ll be able to adapt to the sluggish controls and even learn to compensate for the illogical behavior.

Graphics

The 3D graphics tries to portray the look and feel of the animated TV series in that it’s constantly dark with only a few bright colors that pop out every now and then. The biggest issue with the graphics is that you can see through walls if you drive close enough to them, setting up some very confusing elements to the game. Also the view distance is pretty short, but that’s kind of understandable coming from the PlayStation hardware.

The special effects such as explosions and weapons does put some contrast to the otherwise dark and gloomy setting, reminding you that it is a cartoon-style game after all. On the whole, the graphics are very mediocre and generic.

Sound

The music in Batman: Gotham City Racer is orchestral and has a dark, doomsday sound to it, faithful to the soundtrack of the cartoon TV series. It certainly builds up a tense atmosphere. The music is pretty good, and certainly fits the bill too. There are six different songs that you can choose from to play in the background. Sadly they’re all a little too short, so they’re playing on a loop for the duration of the mission.

The sound effects in this game are terrible though – the sound of screeching tires sounds like someone trying to imitate the sound vocally, and there aren’t that many other sounds either. Shooting and hitting your target has its distinct sounds, but they are mainly for indication feedback rather than for cinematic effect. Overall the sound production is pretty sloppy.

Summary

Batman: Gotham City Racer falls short in any way you look at it. The controls are very bad for a racing game, and the missions are very short and mostly far too easy to beat. The extra game modes could have been okay additions, but there isn’t much fun to be had – the limited replay value simply ruins the fun. Playing against the poorly scripted AI isn’t exactly a blast, and the two player mode is far too limited to be enjoyable. Either way you’ll be disappointed and realize that this game just isn’t worth any of your time. I doubt that even hardcore Batman fans would enjoy this.

Developed By: Sinister Games, Inc.
Published By: Ubisoft
Version Reviewed: Playstation
Genre: Arcade Racing
Players: 1-2
Released: 2001-05-01