Player 1

This week: Catwoman

PJ HRUSCHAK | CIN WEEKLY CONTRIBUTOR

Catwoman

JUST THE FACTS

TITLE: Catwoman

SYSTEMS: GameCube, PS2, Xbox, PC (Win)

NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER: Electronic Arts

GENRE: Action-Adventure

ESRB RATING: "Teen" (for violence, mild language)

WEB SITE: http://catwoman.ea.com

PJ'S LAST WORD: Counterintuitive controls and frustrating play overshadow good graphics. Play with the local stray cat instead.

VIDEO GAME REVIEWS
• New game releases
• Visit Cincinnati.Com's video game section
• Player 1 archive

Sometimes, I cannot help but repeat myself. But then again, neither can companies when it comes to a game based on a movie.

So I repeat: Rarely is a game as good as the feature film. Developers try too hard to include movie elements and focus on the celebrity character while pretty much forgetting everything else.

Catwoman, based on the movie of the same name, is too frustrating to enjoy.

PUSSY WITH A WHIP

You play as the newest version of Catwoman, Patience Phillips - not Selina Kyle - as portrayed by Halle Berry. Phillips accidentally discovers a malicious plot involving face cream and mean corporate execs, leading to her demise.

A rare Egyptian cat literally breathes life back into her along with the nifty side effects of increased agility, vision and desire for shiny things.

You'll utilize these new feline skills to cling to walls, leap between buildings, see in the dark and sniff out clues that will help you to defeat villains and spoil the evil cream plot. In true sex-kitten style, leather-clad Catwoman wields a whip to put baddies in their place.

STINKY STRAY CAT

This game looks pretty good, with well-textured buildings, good character designs and fluid motion. They have done a nice job making Phillips look and move like Berry's on-screen portrayal, including her proud cat strut. A few cool particle effects have been included for the more elaborate attacks, whipping and night vision.

Even so, the awkward camera and frustrating game controls make Catwoman unenjoyable. The control setup feels counterintuitive, using the mini joysticks to control movement and attacks, while using the trigger buttons for jumping, running and hunting skills.

Fighting becomes tiresome and repetitious as you slap a joystick at your opponents. Also, movement is often inaccurate, resulting in many missed ledges or poles.

LITTER BOX

Catwoman is one of the most annoying games I have played since starting this column. It looks great for a few minutes, but I was soon tossing the controller and wanting to scratch out my own eyeballs in complete frustration as I tried many times to complete what should have been simple tasks.

This is a game even diehard comic books fans should pass over, unless of course you are seriously jonesin' to play with Halle Berry. And then, you're just a bit twisted.

Having a Madden or another game tourney? Tell me all about it at player1@cincinnati.com.

Catwoman: Game Boy Advance

After being thoroughly frustrated by the console version of this game, I was anxious to play what I hoped would be a simpler, easier to play GBA game.

I was wrong.

Though there are fewer controls to master and a more intuitive control scheme, it's often still difficult to tell where to go or what to do next. There are a few helpful cut scenes, but they usually fail to reveal the full path to follow.

Like its big box counterpart, Catwoman has pretty good graphics and the main character moves a lot like Halle Berry. Some of the attacks, though simplified, are also similar, and the plot follows a similar story line.

There is little control of the specific attacks you can use, so the game quickly becomes a button masher whenever you approach a small and easily defeated band of baddies.

Unfortunately the environments are at a 45 degree angle, so precision jumping between ledges or broken paths is difficult, which is unfortunate since there are several throughout the game.

At one point, after working my way up a skyscraper using the whip on poles, there appeared to be nothing to do, nowhere to go next. That meant trying every possible move, resulting in a splattered Catwoman on the pavement at ground level. Yeah, you are supposed to be able to use the whip and re-cling to a pole, but that rarely worked. And of course this was before a save point, so I had to restart from the beginning, which meant re-watching the less-than par comic book art frames used to tell the game's plot.

I would have tossed my GBA-SP to the ground in complete frustration, except I didn't want to scuff the classic design. Damn that GBA-SP looks cool. Odd, it doesn't do anything different than any other GBA-SP. It just looks friggin' cool.

I can't recommend this game. Kids won't be able to get through many of the levels, and older gamers will not want to waste their money on another poor movie-to-game translation.