Bats teams up with a new hero each episode with their own special abilities and equipment, those heroes being Robin, Blue Beetle, Hawkman and Guy Gardner, one of the Green Lanterns. The game is divided into four episodes, each with eight stages and multiple boss fights. It really does feel like you’re playing episodes of the show. Characters are even played by the same voice actors, including Paul “Pee-Wee” Reubens doing a stint as Bat-mite. The animation is rich and gorgeous, and the funky music is the same as that of the cartoon. From the beginning teaser fights to the opening ripped straight out of the cartoon, WayForward did a commendable job capturing the look and feel of the show. Anyone who is will instantly recognise the beats this game hits. You don’t need to be intimately familiar with the show or the DC universe to appreciate the characters, but it certainly does help. The premise of the show is to team Batman up with typically lesser-known DC heroes and square off against lesser-known villains like Catman and Gentleman Ghost. It's also a universe with villains devious enough to transform most of the population into cats. It’s a universe that takes Batman seriously without wandering too far into crime drama territory. It’s nowhere near the cheese party of Adam West’s bizarre stint as the caped crusader, but the vibrant colours and sense of humour nod to the cult 60’s show. Based on the Cartoon Network show of the same name, WayForward’s game captures the Dark Knight in one of his lighter moods. Then there’s the silly parody of a man who is so obsessed with bats that everything around him gets a Bat-prefix, short of his butler and sidekick (then again, Bat-Robin and Bat-Alfred do have a certain ring to them).īatman: The Brave and the Bold falls somewhere in between. One is the gritty, serious Dark Knight that’s been Chris Nolan’s Hollywood blockbuster success of late and the star of Rocksteady’s excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum. As far as pop culture is concerned, there are two types of Batman.

Batman the brave and the bold