Backlog Project, Games 6 and 7: The Adventures of Batman & Robin and AH-3 Thunderstrike

 

Original Release: 1995 (Batman) / 1993 (Thunderstrike)
Platform: Sega CD (both)
Estimated Length of Time Owned: 6-7 years (both)
Estimated Amount of Previous Play Time: None (both)

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“Why would you keep playing a game that you didn’t like?” my fiancée asked after I told her I was about to sit down and play more of a game that I just told her was awful. “It’s for the blog,” I replied. “I have to play a minimum amount of each game, no matter how I feel about it. That’s the point of the Backlog Project.”

Well, it shouldn’t be. While this exercise was supposed to be about making me play games I may have never gotten to if left to my own personal choices, should the “point” of it be forcing myself to drudge through games that I’m thoroughly not enjoying? Or should I just dabble in the mediocre-to-bad ones just to say I’ve “played” them but only spend a measurable amount of time on the gems I stumble upon that would’ve otherwise been unfortunately overlooked? After all, I’m no longer 10 years old and relegated to only one or two new games on gift-giving holidays and have to make myself like those games no matter what since that’s all I’ll be getting for awhile. I have literally hundreds of good to great games sitting in my house right now, and all I’m doing is wasting my time by playing more of a bad game than I have to when there is probably a game more deserving of my time sitting just another slot or two down on my list. I’m still going to give every game at least one solid play session, enough to at least give a paragraph-length impression of it, but if the game is so bad that I actually dread having to play it again, well, then I’m not going to. Life’s too short to intentionally play and write about bad games (when I’m not being paid to do so).

Of course, that doesn’t give me back the time I’ve already wasted on the absolutely dreadful Adventures of Batman & Robin. The Genesis game of the same name was actually a decent beat-em-up, and as many Sega CD games were just slightly better looking versions of Genesis games with sometimes much better sound, I thought I might be in for a treat with this one. Well, not only is this a completely different game, it is a completely awful one. A game based entirely around driving the Batmobile isn’t a terrible idea in and of itself, but when that game ends up being less deep than the original Spy Hunter but nowhere near as fun or playable, then we have a problem.

After a nice little intro movie done in the same style as the cartoon series in which this game is based (ignoring the quality of Sega CD’s video capabilities, which looks like a VHS cassette that has been dubbed back and forth 9 or 10 times), I was put behind the wheel of the Batmobile and told to do something or other, I don’t even remember what, but it involved driving up a narrow three-lane street absolutely packed with cars – and lined with the same two blocks of scenery looped over and over again. There didn’t seem to be any real strategy to this other than awkwardly bouncing between them like bumper cars in the hopes that I reached some random, unspecified checkpoint before the timer runs out.

After multiple retries and a steadily rising blood pressure level, I managed to get past that first part, all the while wondering if it was the designers’ intention to make half the challenge of this game be in daring you to actually keep playing it. Anyway, my next objective was destroying - with my clunky slow-motion rockets - two other cars who were driving just ahead of me and hurling random, generic sprites at me, which I assume are supposed to be bombs or weapons of some kind but were impossible to make any sense out of. I managed to finish these two off, my reward being a five minute full-motion video sequence sequence where Batman must thwart Poison Ivy’s attempt to rob a bank. It’s fun to watch, but what it basically amounts to is a boss fight that you do nothing but watch. Rather than a cinematic showing you driving to the bank and then letting you play the part where you actually fight somebody, the developers thought it would be clever to reverse it, and let the traveling to the destination be the playable section and the action that takes place once you get there be the non-interactive movie sequence. How novel…and not at all fun! After Ivy got away, I hopped back into the car and got to actually play again…unfortunately.

Now it was time to stop Ivy from getting away. First, that involved trailing right behind her while she threw the same odd sprites at me that the others were hurling. After I hit her a certain number of times, she sped off, and I had to weave my way through the trees that she had planted in the road. The controls alone made this a frustrating proposition, but to make matters worse, there was a distance meter on the screen that showed me how far from you Ivy was getting, and if it gets to high, I lose her and have to restart the level. Well, I lost her. A lot. Because the only way to have any chance at all of keeping up with her is to constantly be going at maximum speed, but doing that makes the trees that much harder to dodge and slows you down that much more when you hit one. After several deaths, continues, and restarts, I finally got through this section, only to have to battle her up close again for a few minutes…and then have to chase her through trees again. Only this time, the trees had random branches that would shoot out to the left or right, meaning that simply avoiding the trunk wasn’t enough anymore – now I had branches to worry about. Some cursing and a very sore thumb later, I was able to catch up to her again, and finally finish her off…or, no, there she goes again, speeding off for me to pursue her. Now I’m weaving through bushes. Bushes instead of trees…this is the most “variety” they could muster up. God this game sucks.

Fast-forward a bit, and I’m trapped in some giant virtual reality game concocted by the Riddler. The setting is actually a little bit cooler than the generic streets of Gotham I’ve had to traverse up to this point, and for a moment I’m hopeful – until I have to maneuver an obstacle course of giant stationary O’s and sliding X’s with a time limit that demands nothing less than a perfect run to beat. After that, I am attacked by giant dice, and then I’m on a backgammon board, and then…oh screw this, I’m done. This game is terrible. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about it save for the brief video interludes, but the game sandwiched between them doesn’t make it worth the trouble. I understand by looking at the back of the case that I would’ve eventually got to fly the Batwing had I stuck with this game, but something tells me that is more of a threat than a promise.

Ironically, the other game in this twosome – AH-3 Thunderstrike – takes place entirely in the air. In a helicopter, to be precise. Truthfully, this game wasn’t half bad. It wasn’t especially great, either, but it was at least playable, which is more than I can say for a lot of Sega CD games. It plays a bit like EA’s “Strike” series, in that each level has you flying around a sectioned-off area completing objectives and taking out enemies. The game has decent “3D” visuals for the Sega CD, better than your average mode-7 or scaling trickery that the 16-bit systems pulled off but still extremely simple. The controls take some getting used to thanks to the lack of shoulder buttons on a Genesis controller, which makes strafing a tricky proposition – you can only do so if you press left and right from a dead stop. While moving, all you can do is turn. Other than that, the game plays pretty well, and shooting down enemy choppers and blowing up their camps and buildings is done with relative ease. The objectives are your standard fare: Destroy all the buildings in the enemy base, blow up the bridge, protect the convoy, etc. All in all, it is a functional if unremarkable game that would’ve been a decent, lengthy game to pick up if you were stuck with a Sega CD and desperate for something not terrible to play, but beyond that there is no reason to give this game another thought once you’ve finish reading this sentence. I don’t know what ebay auction I won that this game got thrown in with but I’m sure it has been re-gifted more often than it was ever actually played.

Now onto a game that I’ve actually wanted to play for quite some time, Banjo-Kazooie for N64. It somehow seems fitting to play this game just as Donkey Kong Country Returns is hitting stores. This is the first time on my list that a game and its direct sequel come up back-to-back so I’m not sure how I’m going to handle that yet. We’ll see how it goes.

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