Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame (DS)

Batman: The Brave and the Bold was a delightful cartoon that aimed to avoid the usually grim modern take on Batman and hearken back to the Caped Crusader’s more light-hearted earlier romps. While the clearly heroic and occasionally corny Silver Age Batman at the helm would already set it apart from the other Batman cartoons before it, it also had another unique angle, that being each episode would involve Batman teaming up with some other DC superhero, often drawing on the lesser known characters to give them their time to shine, and pitting them quite often against underappreciated villains. While later seasons would allow the bigger names to bleed in, Brave and the Bold still had a unique appeal, one that ensured a DS video game based on the series would also feel different from previous Batman games.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame seems fairly accurate to the show in that each level, rather than playing into some grander story arc save some loose connections, focuses on Batman, whatever hero he has teamed up with, and the villains they’ll be taking down together. Following an admittedly rather dull tutorial level that culminates in a fight with Batman’s long-time nemesis the Joker, the game opens up to a mission select where you can tackle the game’s scenarios in whatever order you please.  Each level has a distinctly different visual design behind it, with unique enemies to fight, different level arrangements, and obstacles that are usually overcome with help from your partner. The locales, much like the game’s tone, are pretty over the top, with levels such as Atlantis overrun by apes, a horror themed version of London, and a battle in space with no one bothering to wear spacesuits. Most levels will have two boss characters to overcome, one usually a more popular Batman villain like Catwoman or Bane but the game indulging itself with obscurities or characters that were a mainstay of the T.V. show, so fans can expect the weirdness of foes like Clock King, Babyface, and a surprisingly deep reach with Doctor Polaris.

When it comes to gameplay, Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame is an action platformer, setting it apart from the Wii title with the same name that was more of a beat ’em up. No matter which level you are in, you will always begin as Batman, our central hero packing some basic attack combos to fight off enemies with, a grappling hook to let him cling to special platforms, and a wall-jumping move unique to him. More importantly, Batman also has a slew of gadgets, starting off with just a typical Batarang but able to unlock more and upgrade his kit as the game progresses. Each level will give Batman some new gadget to swap to on the fly in the following levels, some like the beam sword incredibly strong in combat and others like the screen-clearing bat grenade or stunning flashbang more situational. In levels you collect little bat symbols that can be used to upgrade Batman as well, bolstering his health or making his gadgets more useful in combat. These upgrades and new abilities help Batman from being completely forgotten, because as you enter a new level, the appeal of playing as the other character you get for that level only is incredibly strong. At any time after you meet the level-specific hero, you need only tap their face on the bottom screen to begin playing as the likes of Plastic Man, Green Arrow, Blue Beetle, Red Tornado, Green Lantern, or Brave and the Bold’s glorious and outrageous take on Aquaman. All of them have unique skills to match their powersets, usually having different attack combos as well as a mobility advantage that Batman lacks like Red Tornado’s floating or Green Lantern’s ability to place down blocks as platforms.

Admittedly, most every character’s skillset is fairly limited. For example, Plastic Man’s ability to stretch and twist himself into new shapes mostly just manifests as some creative visuals for his basic attacks rather than meaningfully engaging the level design. That’s not to say the platforming is bad though, in fact, it’s designed to fit the two characters you have fairly well, often laying out areas to acquaint you with new skills before ramping up the difficulty a bit. It never gets all that hard though, the game’s intended audience clearly meant to be younger gamers, but it’s not so incredibly easy that an adult can’t find some fun in navigating areas that require some smart use of skills, and there are a few secrets hidden around the levels that, again, aren’t too hard to locate but add a little depth for those looking for it.

Fighting regular enemies is a fairly basic affair as well, having nowhere near the complexity needed to put it on par with its beat ’em up brother. Enemies are more like obstacles to the platforming, little challenges to overcome quickly and move on, and as such the usually have one trait to worry about, such as the mobsters with machine guns or the pterosaurs that dive in from above. There are definitely moments where a bit too much focus is put on the rather shallow combat, the game sometimes not letting you continue until you’ve beat up a few waves of generic enemies. While all the heroes have a few combos or skills to vary things up from tapping one button over and over and a team move they can do with Batman if they’re landing enough hits in combat, Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame actually seems somewhat aware it can’t rely just on the combat to make some of these encounters interesting. Every now and then you can expect an unusual twist to the fighting that proves to be its own special kind of challenge, such as when Batman’s prototype robot Proto tries to help at one point but is so strong and clumsy he’s also a threat to you by accident, or when Batman gets turned into an ape and Aquaman rides around on his back. Yeah, you read that right, and it is a wonderful change of pace that doesn’t stick around long enough to lose its luster. The game has other moments where it shifts up the gameplay like that, like parachuting with Plastic Man or fighting a flying robotic beetle with the Batboat and Blue Beetle, so even though it does have a few dull moments that can be found in most levels, they are sandwiched between exciting changes in pace unique to that stage.

The more I played Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame, the more I became convinced that it had some design inspiration from the SNES title X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, and I can say with some confidence that it might be intentional based on the other small video game references sprinkled through this game’s design. While comic book fans will delight to see the B-list villains and heroes, long time gamers might be impressed to see a boss that references a battle from Gunstar Heroes and the final boss manages to squeeze in a game reference and t.v. show reference that are better left a surprise for those who would recognize it. As for the X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse’s role in the design, that game was an action platformer that focused heavily on how each character’s powers can influence a level’s design or how challenging a boss is, this game just deciding to ensure that a character is always in the right level to do their job rather than giving any open-endedness.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame is definitely easier than its inspirations, death barely punishing the player when it happens and none of the level navigation getting too complex, but its boss fights still at least require enough dodging and puzzle-solving to be worthy of being in a more difficult title. Most bosses require you to figure out how to hurt them, many having large attacks to avoid or brief moments of vulnerability that you can’t just bumble your way through. Dying to them does just mean a restart on the fight, but most of the bosses are structured that the challenge is learning how to deal with them first and then the execution will come fairly easily after. If you are aching for challenge, there are some special missions back at the Batcave for you to play, many of them focused either on giving one of Batman’s superhero allies a gauntlet of their specific hazards to overcome or just placing a boss rush down where you can’t afford to be sloppy or you’ll need to restart from the beginning. Some are a bit simple (mostly as a result of the respective hero or bosses being too simple) but they are at least a step up from what you’d face in regular play.

THE VERDICT: The difficulty balance is definitely the thing holding Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame back from being more, with the hero skills and the levels being a bit too straightforward during normal play to let the game design truly shine. It is, however, packed with variety from start to finish with many breaks away from the typical platforming action and makes good use of special abilities for navigation and during boss fights. Unfortunately, it does feel like some creative ideas had to stop early to avoid losing the younger audience and the baseline enemy fights and platforming are a bit too abundant to just be acceptably basic connections to the more inventive moments of play. It’s definitely got the charm of the show and some of the strength of the great games that clearly inspired it, but it didn’t push itself as far as it could have gone.

And so, I give Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame for the Nintendo DS…

A GOOD rating. Saying that Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame is like X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse but easier is a double-edged sword. It means it’s got the interesting variety of playable heroes with different skillsets, but it doesn’t challenge them as well as the old SNES game. Combat isn’t too risky and the platforming is rarely complex, but the framing usually helps it avoid stagnation, especially since you’ll always have a brand new character with some new tricks to guarantee a baseline of new challenges, although the game is also generous in dishing out meatier shifts in gameplay so you don’t get tired of the new hero along the way either. While the game would feel better if the characters had a wider range of abilities or ways to interact with the platforming, the bigger improvement would just be testing the limits of powers more and the player’s ability to use them more intelligently or reflexively.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame is a game that can be enjoyed by those outside its young target audience, but the feeling that it’s held back by its need to appeal to them can’t be totally shaken. That doesn’t mean the game we are given is lacking in interesting and ever-shifting content though, matching the action and fun the show it’s based on deserves from a video game adaptation.