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Technical Aspects
Graphically, Vengeance is what you would hope for in any cartoon game: it looks like the cartoon. Everyone looks like they should, although fans of the series should note that Vengeance takes the style of the newer version of the series: angular, unrealistic characters. The main story cutscenes are CG rendered and compare favorably to the series. What keeps Vengeance from looking truly spectacular is that it doesn't seem to use any of the extra power the X-Box has over its competition. There is one particular level that I thought looked fantastic. It's a level where's your only goal is escape and you're traveling along the rooftops at night (of course) in the rain. It's one of the best moments in the game, and looking around I couldn't help but think of how much I felt like I was living the cartoon. Batman and other characters are modeled and animated pretty well, and the frame rate is smooth throughout. During in-engine cutscenes, dialogue isn't synced very well with the moving of lips, but I didn't think of it as a major issue. I did have a problem with how Batman fights. While he's animated smoothly, his fighting looks awkward. If you're not sure what I mean, imagine a man walking. An artist drawing the man walking at 30 frames per second would be considered smooth animation. However, if the man was animated at 30fps walking as a chimp does, that would look awkward.

Aurally, Vengeace deserves solid marks. The score is good, but where the sound stands out is the voice acting. All of the major voice actors of the series are in the game, like Mark Hamill as the Joker and Kevin Conroy as Batman. Just like on the graphical side, however, Vengeance doesn't do much to distinguish itself with the tools the X-Box provides for developers. While supporting 5.1 sound, it's not used very well. It also doesn't support custom soundtracks, but there's no reason to. Again, like the graphics, the sound is good, but there's nothing here that makes it spectacular.

Gameplay
There are various issues that prevent Batman from reaching the heights that other comic book hero based games have. To use any of the Bat gadgets, such as the batarang or the batgrapple, you need to slip into first person mode. While this wouldn't be too bad if you could function normally otherwise (run, fight, jump), you can't. In first person mode, you can use an accessory and can look around and move, but that's it. There is no auto-aim help in first person mode or an option to adjust the sensitivity or inversion available. Try to fight with batarangs a few times, and you'll see that it's basically a practice in futility. This is a real shame, because a lot of the fun of being Batman comes from trying out all the cool stuff Batman has. There's really no reason for first person mode, and whoever at thought this was a great idea simply made a poor design decision. The inclusion of Batplane and Batmobile levels are similar in that they only serve to hinder gameplay. Again, the idea of them sounds fine. But the execution is horrible. They're easily the most frustrating levels of the game. They seem like filler material, where the designer's simply thought, "Hey, people like that stuff, we have to include it in." The Batmobile level is much better than the Batplane, but with both, you'll just want to get through them as soon as possible while you curse at the continue screen that will keep popping up every 10 seconds. Fighting in Vengeance allows only for 1 on 1 fighting. This is disappointing considering Vengeance seems like a perfect candidate for a street brawler type of game, like the Streets of Rage series and Batman Returns for the SNES.

Anyone familiar with Batman knows that while he has no superpowers, he is a martial arts expert and thus can take down hoards of common thug with ease. If you were to play Vengeance, you'd never guess that. Each fighter you face has the ability to take you down if you don't play carefully. What does "carefully" mean? Towards the latter parts of the game, you will find yourself holding the block button until you think you "might" be able to sneak a combo in before he resumes. If you guess wrong more than once, you might find yourself dead. Also adding to this lovely mix will be cheap shots from other thugs if they're close enough to you, even when you're already in your 1 on 1 fighting mode. It is impossible to stop this from happening and you can only hope to defeat the thug you're currently facing so you can take out the next before you get double-teamed to death. Adding to the many game sins is the ultimate sin, and the most common sin (with 3rd person perspective games), bad camera. While you can center the camera behind you, the camera will get in your way and absolutely kill you on the jumping portions of the game. For the most part, you can deal with the camera, but 10% of the time, it is absolutely frustrating and you should consider it a credit if you haven't thrown your controller at the wall at least once by the time you finish the game. As with the Bat-vehicle levels, you will find yourself fighting through these parts and just hoping to get by. The actual playing of Vengeance can be described in one word: CHEAP. Not hard, CHEAP.

Other (Story/Replay/Multi)
There's no multiplayer in Vengeance, so there's nothing to be covered there. Story wise, Venegance isn't too bad. I may be a bit biased since I'm a fan of the comics, movies, and animated series, so perhaps I have higher expectations. While nowhere near the quality of an actual episode, it compares very favorably to other video games. The game will probably take players around 7 hours to complete. The only reason to reply the game is to unlock special bonuses that enable cheats like invulnerability or unlimited batarangs. One nice option to have is that after for every part of the game you have beaten, it unlocks, for later viewing, the cutscene that you have just viewed. That way, you won't need to play through the game again to revisit the story.

Wrapup
Technically, Vengeance does a fine job of recreating the animated series atmosphere into a game. Gameplay, however, is where GAMES need to make their mark. Despites it's many flaws on the gameplay side, I simply can't find myself hating the game. I enjoyed it, but I think that a lot of this was because the game was so short. If the game had been 10-15 hrs long, I probably would have trashed the game long before completion. As it is, Vengeance is a sometimes fun, but usually frustrating game. At a discounted price ($20) or if you're a hardcore Batman fan (if you can discuss, in detail, all of the versions of the Huntress, you're hardcore), it warrants a purchase. Otherwise, if you like Batman at all, definitely give it a rental and if you don't, then, obviously, spend your money elsewhere.