Catwoman Review

Speaking of Halle's virtual iteration, the main character is beautifully animated and quite curvy. So the fighting scenes will look pretty good, as you'll get to use your whip to flick objects from the environment at your enemies as well as use Catwoman's array of standard and special fighting moves (which you can purchase in between levels) to dispatch them without actually killing them. If you eject an enemy from the scene, you get special bonus points, and reaching cat eye tokens will give you even more diamonds to buy more special abilities.

The levels are OK for the most part, though they do border on becoming repetitive at times. The game successfully employs the bloom effects (like so many other console ports), as well as a great number of particle effects to dazzle you at the start, but that's really its crowning achievement in terms of the visuals. Overall, this is a true and true multi-platform title with ugly, low-res textures and not a lot of polys per scene. Not to mention that there's no trace of such advanced PC features as Normal Mapping, Specular Lighting and the likes.

As for the sound effects, they are good but don't leave any kind of lasting impression, while the music does a nice job of adding a greater cinematic feel and atmosphere to the onscreen action. Halle Berry's sexy taunts give some personality to the main character, but most of her flamboyance and charisma comes from the way she's animated. For a computer character, she does move very gracefully and the leather suit and sharp claws give her that extra edge that just boarders on looking a bit like S&M material.

In a nutshell, even though Catwoman offers a feisty and stylish superheroine, some neatly designed platform puzzles, coupled with fluid animation and fighting action, the game ultimately takes a nosedive by making the very thing it focuses on the most frustrating to the point of wanting to strangle small kittens. And it does so by basically not taking extra care of the camera, controls and other important design aspects that would've made the game play a lot more enjoyable. This is not a good PC port, and I only recommend it to die-hard fans of Catwoman. As it stands, they would pay to see her swing her hips in a game, comic, or indeed a video game anyway.