Catwoman game far from perfect

By James Bregman
BBC News Online staff

Although a number of recent film tie-in games have been of a pleasantly-surprising high quality, Catwoman is a major disappointment that feels like a pointless cash-in that ought to have been far better.

Combat is laboured in Catwoman

The game puts you in control of the eponymous leather-clad, whip-wielding superheroine - but that control is monumentally flawed and causes everything to go downhill.

To its credit, the PlayStation 2 game it gets straight down to business, with the first of Catwoman's crime-fighting missions kicking off in the midst of a jewellery store robbery, which you view from a third-person perspective.

But it is not long before problems are apparent.

Getting Catwoman to perform her array of available fighting moves is an almost indescribably clunky experience.

The notion of feline elegance so intrinsic to the character goes straight out the window when the gameplay mechanics are so laborious.

Sluggish action

The control system simply falls flat. The right analog stick is used for striking enemies, which feels somewhat odd and distinctly unresponsive.

Halle Berry takes on the role of Catwoman in the film

As a result, combat is laboured, sluggish and a million miles from the flowing action of last month's triumphant Spider-Man 2 title.

Indeed, the timing of this game, arriving a couple of weeks after the webslinger's latest outing, is immensely unfortunate.

Whilst the Spidey game was supremely intuitive, fluid and energetic to play, Catwoman is painful.

The enemies are distressingly thick, loafing around waiting to be beaten up.

But simply doing them in is not enough - they generally have to be hurled into glass cabinets, dumpsters and doorways for the game to progress.

Having breakable bits of interactive scenery is a great idea when there is a sense of spontaneity.

But with the action so staid, it is annoying having to manoeuvre Catwoman into precisely the right spot from which the foe can be dispatched in the exact direction required.

Visual style

Running around and swinging from the whip is similarly unintuitive and again directly invites unfavourable comparison with the gloriously natural motion of Spider-Man.

Catwoman's moves are diabolically laboured, and bounding from rooftop to window ledge is headache-inducingly fiddly, not exhilarating.

The game features good graphics and sound

Compounding the situation further are the rigid camera angles, which fail to give you the view of the action that is needed.

Whilst games like The Return of the King have used a locked-off camera to hugely dynamic effect, Catwoman's viewing angles are troublesome.

The real tragedy is that the game clearly could have been top-notch. The graphics are phenomenally nice to look at, adding real atmosphere and making the standard backdrop of a rundown city interesting.

Animation is impressive, the sound is pretty good too. Even the introductory presentation suggests a treat is on the way.

If only similar attention had been paid to getting the gameplay right, it would all be a different story.

As it is, this is strictly one for Catwoman addicts only.

But with the film failing to set audiences' worlds alight, it is doubtful how many of those there will be.

Catwoman is out now for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, PC and the GameBoy Advance