If there’s a universal constant in gaming it’s that superhero games are universally bad. Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu (BRST) can at moments be enjoyable enough that you may see the beginnings of a glimmer of hope that it will buck the longstanding superhero curse. Unfortunately, you’ll soon find that BRST is just another disappointing Batman game.

Batman & Robin, together again.

In BRST you can select to play as Batman, Batgirl, Nightwing, or Robin. The game is the same from all four perspectives, the difference being in the combos used by the characters. There is also a slight difference in style, with Batman and Nightwing being slower but stronger and Robin and Batgirl being faster and weaker. Each character begins the game with a few basic attacks and combos, but as you progress through the game you’ll have the opportunity to trade points earned by completing levels for new moves and combos. The nice thing about this system is that you have your choice on which attacks to buy, the downside is that it doesn’t really matter which ones that you buy. The problem is that in BRST you can pretty much finish the game by just using the basic attacks – on everyone who you face. Actually requiring you to be strategic in your choice of combo by making enemies susceptible or immune to certain attacks would have added a lot more depth to the game and it’s disappointing that this is not the case.

Play in BRST has you moving from brawl to brawl along a very linear path. Move forward to a new stretch of the path, fight off the attackers, and move to the next section. You can’t even run ahead if you want to because the game places good old invisible barriers across the road that won’t be passable until you kill every last attacker. That’s about all there is to the gameplay – BRST is a pure fighter that doesn’t want to be bothered with gameplay elements such as puzzle solving. To be honest it can be fun tackling foes that keep coming at you from all sides, and it can be cool to watch your character unleash different moves. However, this is fun best taken in small doses since extended play sessions serve to reveal how repetitive the gameplay can be. And this feeling of repetition is further driven home by the game’s bland and repetitive urban locations. It wouldn’t have hurt the designers to throw in a gargoyle or two – this is Gotham City after all.

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