'Batman Begins' a Great Game

With this summer’s release of “Batman Begins,” fans are reintroduced to Bruce Wayne’s origins and how Batman came to be the Caped Crusader. The movie was great on its own, but having control of Batman is even better.

Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (voiced by Christian Bale from the film) goes into hiding after his parents are murdered on the streets of Gotham City.

While away in the Himalayas, Wayne trains as a ninja in the League of Shadows with Ra’s Al Ghul (voiced by Ken Watanabe from the film) and Henri Ducard (voiced by Liam Neeson from the film). When Wayne finds the target of the league’s next strike is Gotham City, he destroys the monastery and returns home to begin fighting crime not as Bruce Wayne, but as a symbol - a bat.

Carmine Falcone (voiced by Tom Wilkinson from the film), a major drug dealer in Gotham, has started smuggling a new white powder that causes panic when inhaled. After taking down the drug lord, Batman finds that Falcone was working for a higher power - the head doctor at Arkham Mental institution, Dr. Jonathan Crane, (voiced by Cillian Murphy from the film) known by his patients as Scarecrow.

Some of the sets were changed and most of the story is told in flashbacks to a week ago or four hours ago. But, overall the same end comes to each character, even if it is in a different way than that in the movie.

What it lacks in exactly following the movie, the video game makes up for in cool game play.

Charlemagne said, “Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky.” That is what this game is all about- using the environment to scare people and use their own fears against them. If you are one of those people who are best at Halo, and your combat style is rush in, guns blazing and kill all enemies quick, fast and loud, then this game is not for you. For this game, you must know how to take your time, stalk your prey, sneak around them and strike when they are most vulnerable.

Instead of having shield percentages or having the focus on an enemy’s health, there is a heart-rate monitor to see how scared they are. This game from EA Games is the best to come out in a long time.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Charly Shelton is a junior at Crescenta Valley High School.