Have you ever seen a great action movie and thought “hmm, I bet that would make a great game”? Well, after years of being bombarded with mediocre, and just flat out bad, movie licensed games I would not be surprised in the slightest if you have completely given up on the notion of a great game coming from a motion picture. On that note, Batman Begins is the best Batman game we’ve played, and it is a solid action-stealth game.

For those of you who don’t know, Warner Brothers and DC Comics recently released a new motion picture called Batman Begins. It was a very good movie, and made a ton of money at the box-office. There are two more new generation Batman movies on the way and with any luck they will maintain the level of excellence that began with Batman Begins.

With that said, Batman Begins the game doesn’t have many new tricks when it comes action-stealth, but it does find new ways to make the old bag of action-stealth tricks feel new. One of my favorite gameplay elements was the fear meter. You spend a lot of time lurking in the shadows trying to scare your enemies. The more scarred they are the easier they are to defeat. In fact there are a couple of weapons that you can only use on scarred enemies. You scare your enemies by throwing bat-a-rangs and blowing stuff up, or making the stuff fall down.

You should also monitor the level of fear in a certain area. If your reputation is high enough then some of the hench-men will run into a corner and cower until you bring the fight to them. Also at key points in the game you will encounter enemies that must be interrogated in order to move on. This is relatively simple, and at times rather amusing.

Every once in a while you forget about stealth and just fight. The fighting system is adequate for what they were attempting to make. You have a decent combo system, the ability to block, and the ability to throw your enemies. Some of your foes have guns and some of them have swords or knives or even nothing at all. You should always take out the enemy with the weapon first, and then teach his bodies what it means to cross paths with the Batman. There are also times when the enemies have automatic rifles. Those areas are more like puzzles than actual combat. You have to figure out how to scare your enemy enough to make them drop their weapons so you can attack them head-on. Or in some cases you just sneak by.

If you saw the movie you’ll notice that the story is similar, but not exact. They keep some of the one-liners, the Batmobile mission, and then add what happened in between each scene in the movie. You play as Batman sneaking past the security, and mowing his way through the minions to reach the various villains. Also the game has some decent production values, that don’t exactly follow the movies storyline. If you’ve seen the movie your going to get a different prospective on a similar story. And if you have not seen the movie then your not going to completely ruin the movie. But you will spoil just about every major event the movie has to offer.

On the technical side, the graphics never disappointed me. There was little to no slowdown, and very little clipping. The character models have a high polygon count, and look crisp and sharp. The levels have that lived-in feel, and are relatively realistic with chipping paint, beams falling from the ceiling, and a little trash thrown in to make it feel more like Gotham City.

Now my biggest gripe was the camera. I couldn’t stand it at the beginning. It has a third person view, and is at an acceptable distance from the character. You can control it with the right analog stick, which I found myself doing a lot. But one good aspect about the camera is that its completely customizable in the option menu. Once I adjusted its controls to fit my personal taste, I didn’t have many problems besides it getting stuck in a wall from time to time.

Now the reason your reading this is to know if you should buy Batman Begins. Well, that’s a question that you will have to answer for yourself. There isn’t much in the way of replay, but there are a few extras you can unlock. You can unlock Batmoble mini-games accessible from the main menu, and extra Bat-Suits. You also get to read bios on many of the games noteworthy enemies. On the first go around you have a decent amount of gameplay, maybe even more than a single rental. Batman Begins may not have the freshest idea, but it is presented very well and worth playing for Batman fans, stealth fans, and action game fans alike.