Holy mediocrity, Batman! Taking gaming back to the days of Double Dragon and Final Fight, Batman Forever revisits old territory and comes back empty. Players become either member of the Dynamic Duo, and then run around beating the hell out of Riddler's and Two-Face's thugs. The only really "new" feature is a completely skill-free combo system - one that comes down to pounding buttons fast and making enemies die. In other words, this game is really all about mashing buttons.
To successfully navigate the world of Batman Forever, all a player has to do is simply pick Robin and start doing fireball motions while hammering the kick button. This sends Robin into a kick and flip frenzy, thrashing anything in his path. Normal enemies die in a few hits, while bosses endure 15 to 20 seconds of relentless punishment from the Boy Wonder's foot before giving up the ghost. Players who can keep this up for the duration of the game, without becoming bored out of their minds, will find that besting this game is only a couple of sore thumbs away.
While Batman Forever looks and sounds OK, it doesn't deliver anything special. The graphics are slightly blocky, and sometimes the action is too thick to decipher exactly what's going on. The sound is typical of any movie game - complete with annoying quotes from the movie that are played way too much. The rest is a potpourri of thumps, thwacks, smacks, clanks, and all other types of sound effects one would expect from a side-scrolling beat-em-up such as this.
While Batman Forever carries on the tradition of Double Dragon, Final Fight, and Streets of Rage, it doesn't add enough new action to make it worthwhile. Fans of the arcade version won't be disappointed, but all things considered, it's just another uninspired game from the folks at Acclaim.
