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Catwoman Review - Xbox

Halle Berry is Catwoman - a movie and a game which should have remained a comic. Now that Batman, Superman and Spiderman all have their movie and game franchises, not to mention The Hulk and X-Men, it was time for Catwoman to take her stand in the scene. Join Patience Philips on her quest to find out and seek revenge for those responsible for her near-death incident resulting in the creation of Catwoman. With her uber strength, agility, speed, charisma, and most importantly, her cat senses, Catwoman shall back down to nothing and nobody until she finds George Hedare, owner of the mammoth cosmetics company known as Hedare Beauty.

Gameplay

So the storyline is set. You've most likely seen or at least heard about the recent movie starring Halle Berry and Sharon Stone, and now it's time to give the game a run for its money, and hey at a RRP of $39.95, it's nearly worth it! Catwoman will annoy the hell out of anybody. The control system is so messed up, that even when you master it after an hour or so, the camera angles will still screw up your moves. Catwoman involves a lot of climbing, and is very similar in a sense to Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, except nowhere near as good. Swinging from pole to pole, bouncing off and running up walls, whipping across the room, and hanging from mesh are all key parts of reaching areas of the map that would seem impossible to the average person.

What's most frustrating is when you get to the top, and then right at the last moment the floor breaks away and you fall back down to the start again, meaning another 5 minutes of climbing only to be struck by a dodgy camera angle when you get to where you were when you fell. The camera follows you around in almost a movie way, and you can slightly adjust it with the d-pad from side to side, but only a meter or so, and usually you're busy moving around, hanging on for your life. EA must have spent hours working out the health system; we'll leave it up to you to figure out how many lives Catwoman gets. The health bar slowly drops, and even when you fall from 20 stories up, you'll still only lose a small fragment of the long jewelry bar which represents your health. Catwoman is made up of about 85% climbing, swinging, exploring etc and 15% combat. The combat is pretty basic, hold R and press the right analog stick in whichever direction the bad guy is, which makes Catwoman perform a kicking move. The kicks look pretty sweet, but gets annoying when you keep missing. If you're not holding R then she uses her whip. The whip gradually gets more effective as you get money and buy tricks after each level. (continued next page)