4. Batman Begins (2005 - Xbox)
As with most Batman games,
the first level is usually the best. Batman Begins probably doesn't make a lot of lists focused on good games. After its 2005 release, both the PS2 and Xbox versions were practically jumping off the shelves, riding a wave of new found Batman Fever (a phrase I am ashamed to admit I googled). Yet once out of the box, most critics found the game about as exciting as the results for a google search of "Batman Fever". Meaning, they started out quite thrilled, but quickly found out that the result was just tired overuse of one good idea, and that they weren't all that excited about it anymore, because honestly no one wants to read
800 crappy news articles with the words "Batman Fever" in them. So after being criticised as oversimplified and repetetive by the larger audience, Batman Begins died the death that most movie based games die (the kind that no one cares about). However, repetitive as it was, the game took a solid and innovative approach to the stealth action genre, that added new levels of gameplay beyond "sneak up and break his neck" to the "action" half of stealth-action. Rather than just hiding in the shadows, the player used environmental traps and tricks to cause fear in opponents, making them less combat effective. With the fear system dictating your combat strategies, the game felt like actually being Batman, because rather than just hopping in and throwing batarangs at everything, the player spent most of their time setting up bad guys and swooping down for the kill once the thug was so freaked out he could barely hold his weapon. The point is that Batman Begins might have been a fairly repetitive game, but the repetition was engaging and innovative enough that it didn't matter. But the batcake had baticing on it. On top of being a well put together game, Batman Begins featured the voice talent of.........the entire damn cast of Batman Begins the movie. With 'A' list actors voicing the cutscenes and a plot that followed the movie quite closely, it was really difficult not to feel pulled in. Not too many people were concerned with the voice action compared to the gameplay, but any hardcore gamer can tell you that if the voice acting is good enough to pull you in, it's going to increase the enjoyability of a game tenfold. But the most important aspect of the game wasn't something that the developers intentionally included. In fact, it had more to do with the movie than the game. The aspect that made this game stand out to me, was that it was the first Batman game to take a realistic approach to things. True, it was on the heels of the first Batman movie to do the same, but that doesn't make it any less true that this was the game in which Batman games finally grew up; helping it to earn the number 4 spot in this list.