Full Review: This is one catfight you don't want to see!
It sounds like a match made in heaven, uh? Take a big Hollywood movie about the tough but super sexy heroine (Catwoman) and have one of the biggest developers (EA Games) do the video game! EA Games has done a great job with other movie licenses like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, plus they were even able to get the rights to use the likeness of the film's star: Halle Berry in all her half naked glory here. You have to love that, eh? Catwoman the game has all the makings to be great, with its cool character and sharp graphics, but see why this cat doesn't land well on her feet.
After playing through the basic first level, you get to see a quick origin of Catwoman. Cat lover Patience Phillips was just a mild mannered fashion designer looking to make it in the business, but the company she gets involved in has a dark secret. Patience accidentally saw how this company's new product had a deadly side effect, and she gets killed in order to keep the story from going public. Patience's dead body washes up on a shore, but her cat was able to find her and bring her back to life complete with new feline powers. Instead of being the shy and quiet women she was before, she is now aggressive, very light on her feet, and is good with a whip. She now becomes Catwoman. It's a unique - if a little far-fetched Ц storyline, that's for sure.
Although she is looking for revenge from the people who tried to silence her, like a lot of main characters these days she's a bit of an anti-hero too. Instead of using her powers to fight crime, Catwoman also loves to steal expensive jewellery (which can be used to purchase a handful of new moves) and if some one like a cop gets in the way, then you have beat them up to escape. This could have been a great excuse to go wild in the game, but there is this stupid rule where until you knock them out in a closet or dumpster, you're just wasting your time. The game play also involves a lot of climbing and jumping too but for a cat, she really can't jump and scale all walls that well. Compared to other games like Spiderman 2's where you can do cool things like full wall climbing and have web-swinging abilities, Catwoman's powers are not too impressive.
Going by the graphics alone, Catwoman is one outstanding looking game. Each stage has a great deal of lights and shadows, plus Halle Berry has some excellent animations. The main problem is that EA didn't really care about what happens to the camera during some of the fight scenes, and sometimes it's too easy to lose sight of what's going on all together. Like the graphics, the sounds are also pretty good, but I wish there was more of it. There are a few cheesy one liners now and again, and the tension-like music is great when it's playing during a fight scene or an escape, but for the rest of the game there is nothing playing in the background at all.