Batman & Robin

***Batman & Robin*** is the fourteenth episode of Just Bad Games. It was released on February 19, 2020.

## Transcript

**Shane**: *Batman & Robin* is an action-adventure title developed by Probe Entertainment and released to the PlayStation in 1998.

**Adam**: The game is based on the 1997 *Batman & Robin* film, the final chapter in a popular run of Batman flicks started in 1989.

**Shane**: These four films saw a rotating cast of actors, writers, and directors that resulted in huge creative shifts, from Tim Burton's dark and mature take on the classic comic book series, to Joel Schumacher's neon-infested cartoon fever dream.

**Adam**: The *Batman & Robin* movie is notorious for several reasons.

**Shane**: It was the lowest-grossing live-action Warner Bros. Batman film.

**Adam**: It made the studio cancel a planned sequel.

**Shane**: It won Worst Picture.

**Adam**: It had Bat-nipples.

**Shane**: And yet, somehow, and I can't believe I'm saying this, somehow, this game is worse.

**Adam**: Let's awkwardly glide into *Batman & Robin* on the PS1.

**Shane**: Upon starting the game, we're treated to an intro cinematic.

**Adam**: We get a swooping scene of Gotham City, with Mr. Freeze driving his Freezemobile out from the bowels of the streets. He destroys city property and causes several cars to explode, likely injuring loads of people in the process. Freeze exits his car, stares up at the Batsignal, and laughs.

*(Mr. Freeze laughs)*

**Shane**: Where's Batman during all of this, you might be thinking? Well, surely Bruce Wayne is miles away, only now glimpsing the Batsignal in the sky, and is quickly pulling on his Bat-pants to assist people in the street and take on Mr. Freeze.

**Adam**: Uh, no, actually, I'm pretty sure at the beginning of the cutscene, we saw Batman just standing on a nearby rooftop.

**Shane**: He's just watching people die? Wow! Ten seconds in, and Batman is colder than Mr. Freeze.

**Adam**: But suddenly, the scene is over. The game begins in the Batcave, with our hero Batman standing in front of the Batcomputer.

**Shane**: A dialogue box pops up noting that Mr. Freeze is looking for "power", whatever that is, and that it's up to Batman to decipher the clues to find the exact time and place that Freeze will be committing his next crime.

**Adam**: We're told to press "do" on the PlayStation 1 controller to start up the Batcomputer.

**Shane**: Okay.

*(A finger presses an added-on "DO" button on the controller"*

**Adam**: And in a few seconds, we'll find ourselves using one of the most high-tech crime thwarting databases ever in the history of cinema and comics.

**Shane**: It's a Mac.

**Adam**: What?

**Shane**: It's a late '90s Apple Macintosh. The Batcomputer is a BatMac.

**Adam**: And the Batcomputer has an icon called "Batcomputer".

**Shane**: You know, so you can access the Batcomputer while on the Batcomputer?

**Adam**: So you, as Batman, check the computer, look at some clues, and by combining and analyzing these random objects, the Batcomputer comes to the conclusion that "obviously" Mr. Freeze is going to steal the Sudan Diamond from the Gotham Museum.

**Shane**: Where do these clues come from? Why does Mr. Freeze want a diamond? Why didn't Batman just follow Mr. Freeze after watching him maim Gotham citizens at the start?

**Adam**: Great questions. We have no answers. We jump into the Batmobile and drive off. Guided through the city streets, we're told by pop-ups exactly where to go. Helpful.

**Shane**: And upon our arrival at the museum-

**Adam**: We press "do" to enter.

**Shane**: Oh. Okay.

*(A cat paw presses an added-on "DO" button on the controller"*

And once we're in, we find that heh, we're kind of early!

**Batman**: Hello? Crime? This is kind of awkward. Huh. Little echoey. (wails a song) It's *Halo*.

**Adam**: Oh don't worry though, the game expected you to be here early, so it gives you an option to fast-forward time to when the crime is committed.

**Shane**: Once the alarms go off, Batman rushes into the museum and takes on hordes of Freeze's henchmen, shattering them into pieces because they're ice people, I suppose. After many a low-level lackey fight, Mr. Freeze himself makes an appearance to steal the diamond.

**Adam**: We rush up to face him, and-

*(Mr. Freeze shoots Batman and he falls, triggering a cutscene)*

**Shane**: What just happened? Did- did we lose?

**Adam**: We did! There are no lives or continues in this game. When you die, you're treated to this grim cinematic, and you restart all the way at the main menu.

**Shane**: Okay, clearly we must've missed a tutorial or combat training or something. Let's head back to the Batcave and explore it a bit more to see what we can do and learn.

**Adam**: Welcome to the Batcave, where you can-

**Shane**: Practice your Batarang skills with moving targets.

**Adam**: Take on virtual baddies using advanced hologram technology.

**Shane**: Switch characters between Batman, Robin, and Batgirl.

**Adam**: Use a magic healing chamber.

**Shane**: Use a magic energy replenishment chamber.

**Adam**: Use the famous Batcomputer.

**Shane**: Access your many vehicles.

**Adam**: Use a glowing, blinking staircase to enter Wayne Manor.

**Shane**: Explore Bruce Wayne's homestead that is filled with combat training holograms and more target practice sections.

**Adam**: And most important of all, in the house of Wayne, you get to use your rocket boots-

**Shane**: -that awkwardly propel you stiffly up into the air with very little controls.

**Adam**: Speaking of control, all three of the characters you can play as in this game don't exactly handle the same way. In fact, some of them just outright don't function properly, like Batgirl.

**Shane**: You'd think that it's a simple cosmetic swap and that all the characters in this game that you can play as are treated equally, but in a section like this, where Batman easily jumps over this ledge here and smashes through this window-

**Adam**: Yeah, for Batgirl? She doesn't seem to be able to quite make the jump. Anyway, we spent tons of time in the Batcave and around Wayne Manor. Here's what we learnt about movement and combat.

**Shane**: The magnifying glass at the top left represents exploration and platforming. When you have that selected, you can interact with objects in the world, jump, or use items like your Batarang. However, you can switch that magnifying glass to a fist, which represents combat. When that's selected, it changes all of your buttons to combat buttons like punching or kicking, but in this mode, you lose the ability to jump or use items like your Batarang, so you need to strategically switch between both during every single battle.

**Adam**: Okay, that's not the greatest.

**Shane**: If you push one of the attack buttons with the magnifying glass activated, it will trigger an instant heal option that you can not activate when the fist is selected. And because every enemy in this game drains your health very easily, you'll have no choice but to switch constantly, on the fly.

**Adam**: Oh, wow. That sounds really-

**Shane**: There's also a second set of symbols to the right of the magnifying glass and the fist that can be switched from one triangle to three to represent the speed of your general movements. Combined, this gives you a total of four possible modes of movement just for Batman to functionally Batman! This is what you gotta learn.

**Adam**: Okay? Take that all in, and understand that basic movement in this game is centered around tank controls. That means stilted movements are added onto the already-finicky action control setup that will have you pressing the wrong buttons. In a game like this, with no lives and no continues, that means you're gonna be playing chunks of game over again.

**Shane**: Speaking of playing whole sections over again, let's try fighting Mr. Freeze just one more time.

**Adam**: I mean, we're ready. We trained, the controls are awful, but we know how they work.

**Shane**: Yeah!

**Adam**: Yeah!

*(Mr. Freeze shoots Batman and he falls)*

**Shane**: F\*\*K! The controls are tough, the enemies hit hard, and the combat feels broken, but that's not the only problem here. The game features a non-player-controlled camera that's always jumping around, making fighting that much harder.

**Adam**: Eventually, we got past Freeze, but how did we do it?

**Shane**: We spammed the kick button.

**Batman**: Batkick! (x5)

**Adam**: That works?

**Shane**: Not every time.

**Adam**: We wanted to get into the next mission, but as soon as you complete the museum stage, you're on your own. The game no longer gives you any hints. In fact, we need to collect our own clues to find the next possible crime location. We found three; now we have to head back to the Batcomputer and put these clues together.

**Shane**: Did you say "put clues together"? That sounds like it's time for everyone's favorite segment-

**Shane and Adam**: Clues Blues!

**Batman**: Hey, kids. Batman's kind of stuck here. Can you help me find out what Mr. Freeze's clues mean? Okay. We've got alarm schematics, a walkie-talkie with no power source, and a picture of Mr. Freeze. Hmm. Could this mean that Mr. Freeze is alarmed that he doesn't have batteries for his walkie-talkie?

**Children**: No!

**Batman**: Yeah. Probably not. What do you think?

**Yellow**: (barks questioningly)

**Batman**: No.

**Yellow**: (barks questioningly)

**Batman**: That's probably not right.

**Yellow**: (barks questioningly)

*(Batman drops Yellow off at the pound, then speeds off)*

**Adam**: It became apparent real quick that the clues we had didn't actually add up to anything. I guess we have to look for more?

**Shane**: Mr. Freeze is defeated, but now we need to stay in the museum and find clues before we leave so we can get to the next mission.

**Adam**: Where could they be? Well, here's where the game gets a little bit dirty.

**Shane**: Every level you'll play may have clues hidden behind or inside objects that you might not know about.

**Adam**: I love this. Batman is in a museum surrounded with priceless artifacts, and he has no choice but to destroy everything he sees to be sure he doesn't miss a single clue.

**Shane**: And if you're not frustrated with the most unfair scavenger hunt ever put into a digital world, you'll also find that some clues require specific abilities to get. Like on top of really tall objects that require you to use your iconic rocket boots.

**Adam**: Rocket boots, that by the way, have limited use and can run out while in a mission, so if you trigger them incorrectly and fail at using them, yeah, that can result in some clues never being grabbed.

**Batman**: *I'm leaving in my Batboots! I don't think I can reach that clue!*

**Shane**: This clue system is a part of every single mission you play, and it leads to utter confusion. Clues that seemingly serve no purpose will stay with you forever, mudding your attempts to find other mission locations. And unless you are very, very lucky, there's always the chance you've missed clues, which the game doesn't tell you.

**Adam**: Oh, and if for some reason you do figure out that you've missed something and try to go back to a mission location you've already left, the clues are gone! They disappear the moment you leave a location.

**Shane**: So all of this creates a pretty bad time, but the developers were like "hey, let's make it worse! Let's leave clues randomly on the sides of city streets"! You might see them, you might not, and maybe they're useful, but maybe they're not.

**Adam**: Maybe you wanna check out the clues that you've collected to see if you should still be scrounging around Gotham, but guess what? You can't!

**Shane**: You'll need to return to the Batcave or find a Batcomputer somewhere in the streets of Gotham to look at the clues you have.

**General Pepper**: Good luck!

**Adam**: Anyway, after our fight with freeze, we were lucky enough to find the right clues to lead us to our next mission location: a jewelry store.

**Shane**: Right. So, we go to our map of Gotham City and- woah. This map is big!

**Adam**: It was at this point that we discovered that this game is actually a fully-realized 3-D open-world experience. This was years before other developers would master this concept.

**Shane**: It can take full-on real-world minutes to travel from one point to another in Gotham. It's seriously impressive, something that the developers likely spent a really long time on creating.

**Adam**: Yeah! Real shame it sucks, though.

**Shane**: Batman drives his famous Batmobile.

**Adam**: A vehicle that is obviously far too large for the city streets.

**Batman**: Excuse me! Pardon me. Oops. Uh. Okay! Nope, nope, stop! Okay.

**Shane**: You constantly run into oncoming traffic or obstacles, which is only made worse by having a super short viewing distance.

**Adam**: The PlayStation likely wasn't capable of displaying much further than what you're seeing right here.

**Shane**: Yes, the world is big. Yes, it's highly detailed. Yes, this is impressive.

**Adam**: But no, good gameplay this isn't.

**Shane**: Enemies are tossed at you incredibly fast with virtually no reaction time. Even when you're getting Batman out of the car and onto the street, the villains keep pouring over you.

**Batman**: Batman & Robin. Batman & Robin! Stupid people keep crashing into my legs. Batman needs his Boy Wonder.

**Robin**: Alright Batman, I've arri-

*(Robin gets hit by a taxi and takes damage)*

**Batman**: Robin? Robin? Hello? I wish he was here. He could help me figure out why all these cars keep crashing into this wall.

*(A car crashes into the pharmacy in front of Batman and explodes)*

**Onlooker**: Holy shi-

**Adam**: Back to the Batmobile, it has very few defenses, and in many cases when you're surrounded by enemies, you'll likely kill innocent people.

**Shane**: Oh yeah. Did we forget to mention Batman straight-up MURDERS people in this game.

**Adam**: The Batmobile fires bullets and blows up vehicles. You can also use that weapon to destroy anyone you see in the city streets.

**Shane**: Funny enough, that shattering thing we talked about earlier, where Batman punches people to pieces- yeah, the same thing happens out here with everyone. Goon, citizen, it doesn't matter. Everybody breaks like they're made of ice. It looks really strange.

**Adam**: Overall, car combat is wildly unresponsive and punishing. Just the act of driving the car is insanely hard. You'll hit everything.

**Shane**: Enemies peel back your health like wrapping paper, putting your chances of survival at near-zero.

**Adam**: Oh, and don't think you can outrun your enemies. They're all way faster than you are and they always catch up.

**Shane**: And yet, you must drive, because this is an open-world game. To get from one mission to the next, you'll have no choice but to drive to that location. Fast-travelling to a crime is not an option.

**Adam**: Let's pull up that Gotham map again. When you select a place you need to go, it gets pointed out at the bottom right radar you see while you're driving.

**Shane**: Problem is, the mini-map is a mess! Lines that represent streets are sandwiched together without a gap, causing massive confusion when you're trying to navigate the insanely complicated maze that is Gotham City streets.

**Adam**: You'll never be able to know when you need to turn anywhere.

**Shane**: It's a completely non-functional map system in an open-world game! Great!

**Adam**: Now, perhaps by this point, after hearing all the flaws of this game and barely getting past the very first mission, you'd assume that the game couldn't be any harder.

**Shane**: Well, here's one more layer of complexity that will keep you in a constant state of panic.

**Adam**: This whole game? It's TIMED. Timed. Everything is timed!

**Shane**: If you let the game sit idle, Mr. Freeze will commit all of his crimes and destroy Gotham, leaving you with a game over and once again visiting that awful, awful end cutscene.

**Adam**: You saw that museum? You thought we could take our time carefully fighting every enemy? You can't. Wait long enough, and Mr. Freeze will get away.

**Shane**: Thought we could spend a long time hunting for clues? You can't! If you take too long looking for clues, the next crime will have already started.

**Adam**: You may have noticed a "save" option on the Batcomputer earlier on. Well, it's true you can save your progress, but you need to be near a Batcomputer to do that. So, you'll waste in-game time driving to a computer, which, by the way- some are just out in the wild!

**Shane**: You know, the most high-tech crime thwarting database ever in the history of cinema and comics? Yeah, it's just sitting there like a freakin' ATM, with no password protection or anything. Someone could just go up to it, try to get gas money, and instantly learn all of Batman's secrets.

**Batman**: What? Oh no! My bat pics!

**Adam**: So, you can save at a Bat-ATM, but they're sparsely placed and often take plenty of time to get to.

**Shane**: Let's not forget that if you finished a chunk of gameplay and haven't found these needle-in-a-haystack save spots, all that progress will be lost.

**Adam**: Load game, drive to mission, beat mission, drive to bat-ATM. Can't find ATM and die. Reload right from the start of that loop. That sounds like fun, right? Right?

**Shane**: You do have the ability to fast-travel to one location in this game, though.

**Adam**: And that's to the Batcave, the furthest point from anything in Gotham. And they give you a five minute penalty for having the audacity to want to quick-travel to save. Alright, everybody. You get it now. This is a huge game with a wall of difficulty that is unlike almost any other game we have played.

**Shane**: There is no way anyone was prepared for what this experience was actually like.

**Adam**: Wait, where were we supposed to be going again?

**Batman**: To the jewelry store! How is no one paying attention?

**Shane and Adam**: Ohhhhh. Right. Yeah. Okay.

**Shane**: There are several jewelry stores in Gotham, and your clues point to all of them. But, you have to find out which is the correct one to go to. Once you get to that one, you again have to wait for the alarms to go off before you can start thwarting crime.

**Adam**: Each of these jewelry stores are filled with annoying enemies, tight hallways, and tons of terrible level design. But you must traverse them all to find diamonds that the criminals are trying to steal.

**Shane**: They don't even look like stores after a while. They just seem to eventually devolve into complicated mazes.

**Adam**: Every door in these stores needs to be broken apart instead of just being opened. So Batman will punch them to pieces, I guess.

**Shane**: Moving forward, you've got false floors that break apart when Batman walks in them, having him fall into hidden pits and rooms.

**Adam**: Sometimes there are hallways that are just filled with them!

**Shane**: Now Batman needs to hop like a bunny to get through!

**Adam**: Also, the holes are invisible until you fall through them. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes.

**Shane**: Wait, this is a public store, right? Do customers just randomly fall through floors when they shop here?

**Batman**: I smell a lawsuit!

**Adam**: There are hallways that just end and have massive drops into terrible platforming sequences where you need to awkwardly position Batman to jump in just the right way.

**Shane**: Now, in this hidden room, beneath the floor there's a button. See that texture on the wall there? Button! You can walk right past it without even knowing what it was!

**Adam**: These buttons need to be pressed in multiple instances to open areas where diamonds could be.

**Shane**: Interacting with level elements just like this is really important in this game, but don't think you can just walk up to anything and interact easily.

**Adam**: See this vent here? Well, you can go through vents in this game to find other rooms.

**Shane**: Okay Batman, go into that vent.

**Batman**: Okay. That shouldn't be hard.

*(Attempts: 11)*

Yeah! I did it! Wait, who's that?

**Adam**: Well, at the end of each jewelry store section, you have a miniboss fight with Frosty, Mr. Freeze's right-hand man. We spent so long trying to get into that vent that Frosty successfully got away with the diamond you were supposed to protect!

**Batman**: Guano!

**Shane**: When you do successfully take out Frosty, you then have to go to another jewelry store in time to take him out again, and then to another jewelry store in time to take him out again, and then to another jewelry store to take-

**Batman**: Wait! I've got a plan!

**Shane and Adam**: What's the plan?

**Batman**: Here here here, watch: I go to the jewelry store early, see? I avoid the laser grid with my wicked Bat-moves. I go up an elevator, jump from one balcony to another, find a special hidden switch to unlock the vault, glide down to the vault, and save the diamond.

**Adam**: You just robbed the jewelry store.

**Batman**: No! I just helped the jewelry store.

**Shane**: You stole their diamond!

**Batman**: I SAVED their diamond!

**Adam**: What? But wait, you can't do that! Unless you wait for the alarm to go off, the doors won't even unlock in this game.

**Batman**: No, not at this jewelry store. They were pre-unlocked!

**Shane**: Do the owners of the jewelry store at least know you took it?

**Batman**: They will tomorrow.

**Shane and Adam**: Put the diamond back!

**Batman**: The game lets me do it!

**Adam**: Well folks, he's right. It might've been an accident, but by going to this one jewelry store early, you can totally pre-steal diamonds.

**Shane**: Does that make the level easier?

**Adam**: No, because Mr. Freeze will still show up, and you'll still have to beat him.

**Shane**: And then, we're on to the next sequence of the game.

**Adam**: Or we would be, but we hit a police barricade. They don't let Batman through.

**Batman**: I thought we were friends!

**Shane**: So now, we have to plan another route through the city blindly.

**Adam**: That's another ten minutes where we had to reload the game to make up for lost time. The clock's always ticking here, people.

**Shane**: So, now we find ourselves at the botanical gardens.

**Adam**: Let's take a little break here to point out how the art team replicated the visuals and locations of the film.

**Shane**: The Batcave is a near-replica. The museum is also faithfully rendered to match just how it looked in the movie, lighting and all.

**Adam**: Same here at the botanical gardens. It's actually very impressive.

**Shane**: But even though this level is near-identical to the movie version, they added one stupid thing that unless you were very closely paying attention to can end your game right on the spot:

**Adam**: **Blue lights**.

**Shane**: These stupid lights randomly turn on. If Batman happens to be near them, his health will silently drain away.

**Adam**: Batman is fighting a whole crew of bad guys that keep spawning all over, including another Frosty boss fight. All this, while the blue lights slowly hurt Batman. There's no visual indication that this is happening. No sound to notify you that you're being hurt. You need to look at your health bar to know anything was up.

**Shane**: Defeat all of these obstacles, and Mr. Freeze appears and runs into the mouth of whatever that thing is there.

**Adam**: You pop out on the other side next to a bridge and a giant metal hand. the bridge is slippery, and very broken.

**Batman**: Uh, hello? I don't think this is physically possible. Wait. (groans while falling)

**Shane**: When you eventually make your way to the palm of the metal hand, you engage in battle with Mr. Freeze.

**Adam**: Lose this fight, and Mr. Freeze will use his special spinning balls thing to cast Gotham into a perpetual state of winter, killing everyone. Not sure why Mr. Freeze is trying to do this.

**Shane**: We got no explanation of what is happening. This doesn't even follow the movie's plot at all.

**Adam**: But of course, Batman, our brave hero, does what Batman does best:

**Batman**: Batkick! (x5)

**Shane**: And Gotham's famous Caped Crusader saves the day, defeating the coldhearted Mr. Freeze and sending him to jail.

**Adam**: Huh. Well, that was a tough one, but hey, we finally finished the entire game.

**Shane**: Oh.

**Adam**: Oh?

**Shane**: Oh no! We completely forgot about Poison Ivy and Bane, the other villains from the movie who also appear in this game!

**Adam**: Folks, we've just experienced the **first day**. There's more.

**Shane**: Welcome to Day 2.

**Adam**: What's the difference?

**Shane**: Not much, only this time, you start off with NO CLUES at all, so you'll need to randomly hunt through the streets to hopefully find some. This is a slog, as is most of Day 2, so you know what? Let's just speed things up and talk about the HIGHLIGHTS of Day 2.

**Shane and Adam**: Highlights!

**Adam**: We fight Poison Ivy and Bane for the first time. She poisons you and inverts your controls, causes your character to stay still, and sometimes you can't attack.

**Shane**: You fight a horde of janitors.

**Adam**: We visit Axis Chemical, a location from the '89 *Batman* movie, where Batman jumps into random toxic chemical vats.

**Batman**: This feels tingly.

**Shane**: We fight Mr. Freeze in Axis Chemical when he's supposed to be imprisoned! This is an error in the game. How do we know this? When we beat the level, it says we beat Bane. That's not Bane!

**Adam**: Batman taints Gotham's water supply at the Gotham water plant by swimming in the drinking water. Side note: Batman can't swim.

**Shane**: We visit Arkham Asylum. It got weird.

**Adam**: Highlights over. Now we're at the lowlights: Poison Ivy's lab, which in the *Batman & Robin* movie, wasn't located in Gotham. So, the game developers just flew the whole building smack-dab in the middle of the city.

**Shane**: Here, Batman fights zombies, ghost zombies, and giant tarantulas, all things that never appear in the movie.

**Adam**: Ivy doesn't have henchmen in the films, so they just made up stuff they thought would fit. Cause, of course, when I think of Poison Ivy, I think of zombies.

**Shane**: You first enter the stage into a greenhouse surrounded by doors you can't open.

**Adam**: So, you kill one of the giant arachnids and it drops Batman's vine cutter. What is a random creature doing with this secret, sophisticated piece of technology that only Batman should have access to?

**Shane**: Who knows? Better question: do you see vines in here?

**Adam**: No.

**Shane**: Correct! There are no vines in this room. Do you know what you need to do?

**Adam**: Uh, no?

**Shane**: Take your vine cutter and aim it at one of the green doors, shoot a green laser at the green door to turn it not green, and bam, it opens with a punch.

**Adam**: How would you know to do that?

**Shane**: You wouldn't. It took us over **an hour of gameplay** to randomly try every item in our inventory on everything in the room just to discover that this is what you needed to do.

**Adam**: At the center of this simply awful location, Batman gets lost in a hedge maze that has no map or identifying features.

**Shane**: What it does have is specific walls that Batman can walk through that happen to look like a solid non-passable wall. This totally breaks the form and function of a maze, so you'll need to try to run into every single maze wall you see just to find your way out.

**Adam**: And be careful, because one false step could lead you falling into a pit that causes fall damage. But it also holds a secret lab that you need to go to, so you gotta fall.

**Shane**: Once in this secret lab, we find ourselves in the birthplace of Bane, pulled right from the movie. And as the game has taught us up to this point, we smash and poke everything we can looking for clues and items.

**Adam**: Once we found everything we needed, we left the stage, where-

**Shane**: We lost.

**Adam**: Okay? Let's go back to the secret lab and look around some more. Maybe we missed a clue or didn't hit a lever or something?

**Shane**: Sure! Back to the lab, search search, smash smash, leave the level, and-

**Adam**: Lost again!

**Shane**: Okay, back to the secret lab. Let's try and just touch things before we smash things.

**Adam**: Oh, look! A key item has appeared from a shelf that if you punched and destroyed would've also destroyed the item without letting you know.

**Shane**: Any indication at all that the item was there or that we shouldn't be punching things for the first time ever in the game?

**Adam**: Nope!

**Shane**: That's okay! We got the thing. Let's just leave the level and-

**Adam**: NO! How have we still not beaten this level?

**Shane**: Okay, back to the maze. Let's get real good and lost, and- oh look. Another secret lab.

**Adam**: Oh, great. How did you find this one?

**Shane**: I found a tree in the middle of the maze, that had a knot that once pushed, revealed some doors that now might be open. I ran to one of the doors and found myself in a room. And remember how we decided not to break things because the game just seconds before taught us not to break everything? Well now, you need to break certain things that can only be broken with a Batarang, which reveals a secret room. Once in that secret room, you need to punch a brick wall that has ABSOLUTELY NO HINTS that it needs to be punched, which opens a completely separate secret lab from the first secret lab you found that has another key item you need to beat the level.

**Adam**: This whole stage is a madness-inducing roller coaster, where you collect antivenom items to beat Poison Ivy later, but- I guess they're not really necessary because we already beat Poison Ivy in another battle early on.

**Shane**: For the keen-eyed of you out there, you probably noticed that our health wasn't depleting through the last batch of levels we played.

**Adam**: So, folks, we're gonna let you in on a little secret that we stumbled on that few people know about.

**Shane**: We found a random building that housed a secret room that had a bunch of computers all over. These computers, once clicked, revealed creepy faces.

**Adam**: These are the faces of the developers of this game. You can see these exact same images shown off in the credits as well. Some players of this game have found this room and dubbed it "The Developer Room".

**Shane**: You can tell it's the developer room because a whole bunch of developers are still here, writhing in pain on the floor after having spent years making this game.

**Adam**: So, you turn on the monitors, punch these developers, and eventually you'll find a key on a desk.

**Shane**: What does the key do?

**Adam**: We didn't know, because the game doesn't tell you anything.

**Shane**: But, if you go back to Wayne Manor from the outside- typically, this is a place where you can see and not enter- and you use this key, this happens.

**Adam**: Welcome to the SECRET Batcave, where you can-

**Shane**: Use the cell recharge room, but this time, it turns into a disco room where Batman dances!

**Batman**: *Danananananana Batdance!*

**Adam**: And use the health recharge room, that now turns into a- slower disco room where Batman also dances.

**Batman**: *Dubbadubbadubbadubbadubba Macarena! Dubbadubbadubbadubbadubba Macarena. Dubbadubbadubbadubba-*

**Shane**: You can also touch this computer to activate Bat-*Galaga*, a space Batman shoot-em-up that starts up with this single sound recording that we did not make:

**Batman**: I want my medication.

**Shane**: I don't know. It's just there, he says it a lot, and I think it's the only time Batman says anything in the game.

**Batman**: I want my medication.

**Adam**: Use another computer terminal, and you activate a Bat-RC car, where you control a tiny Batmobile and drive around a really strange destruction derby-like race.

**Batman**: (high-pitched) I am the night!

**Shane**: This is a really strange thing to see in the game, but what's even stranger is that Batman can exit the car and become full-size again, and return back to the car and become small.

**Batman**: Batman big, Batman small. Batman big, Batman small. Batman big, Batman sm- *Dubbadubbadubbadubbadubba Macarena! Dubbadubbadubbadubbadubba-*

**Adam**: Back to the secret Batcave, this one, unlike the original, is broken. Batman can jump into the air, and- well, I guess he can finally practice his swimming.

**Shane and Adam**: Looking good!

**Shane**: But what matters most is that under the stairs right over here is a special place. If you walk here, a gas sprays Batman, turning him invincible.

**Adam**: That's right. This is built directly into the game if you know how to find it.

**Shane**: It's not a cheat code, but it is very hard to get to.

**Adam**: And you know what? Maybe it might not even be worth getting, because this game is somehow still incredibly difficult.

**Shane**: Invincibility doesn't make you totally invincible. You can still die in a number of ways. Remember, everything is timed, and when the clock stops, it's game over.

**Adam**: You'll still have to hunt for those same stupid clues, piling up useless information that eventually leads to a lack of understanding where to go next. Then the clock runs out of time, and well- you know what happens.

**Shane**: So folks, here is our patented, tried and true way to find out where you need to go next without clues:

**Adam**: Find a Batcomputer, save at the Batcomputer, exit the Batcomputer. Let time advance until an alarm goes off. Wait a few minutes for the alarm to ping your map. Reenter the Batcomputer and the location of the alarm will be blinking. Now, reload the game from that earlier point and head on to the location before the alarm has a chance to go off.

**Shane**: This is a cheap method, but boy, does it work when noting else in this game does.

**Adam**: This method helped us finally make our way to the Turkish baths, where we fight Ivy for the very last time. She's eaten by her own flower, which I guess she can't control anymore. That was in the movie, but it still doesn't make any sense. Who cares? The game is finally, finally-

**Shane**: DAY 3!

**Adam**: NOOOOOO!

**Shane**: In Day 3, all of Gotham has been frozen over by Mr. Freeze. Even the hapless residents on the sidewalks are covered in layers of ice and are unresponsive.

**Batman**: It's okay, citizen! I'm Batman! I can help!

*(Batman punches the man and he shatters)*

Oh no!

*(Batman flees in the Batmobile)*

**Adam**: Batman is led to an ice rink, which Freeze's men are using as a hideout-

**Shane**: -Which you can't enter.

**Adam**: So, you wait for an alarm to go off- at the ice rink.

**Shane**: Okay, sure. So, instead of going through the doors of the ice rink, we need to solve a mind-bending puzzle where you-

**Adam**: Walk on the ice to form a giant letter F.

**Batman**: Gasp! Incredible! How did Mr. Freeze know my grade average in middle school?

**Shane**: So, you like, draw the letter and then Batman just sorta sinks into the ice.

**Adam**: What's even happening here? Is he gonna drown?

**Shane**: No, he appears in an ice world underneath the rink that is one giant maze. In fact, it's similar to Ivy's maze level that is filled with trick doors, walls, and puzzle platforming.

**Adam**: Here, you need to use your Bat-laser to laser ice walls so that they're slightly melted enough to punch them to reveal whole new, secret areas.

**Shane**: We don't know how any of this even works. Nothing has been stolen here- we're not even in the actual building for the ice rink. We can't explain any of this.

**Adam**: And the game gets real lazy after this point, recycling levels from earlier on, like the museum and one of the jewelry stores. Now they're frozen and have ice everywhere. Some of them are like, extra slippery and hard to walk around in. Great idea! Cool! Wonderful.

**Shane**: You can really tell that any passion or love for making this game was totally gone by this point.

**Adam**: This is where we introduce the three computer stores, because now Mr. Freeze needs computer chips to do something. We don't know. He needs them.

**Shane**: Each store uses the exact same level layout and design. The only difference is that each store enters from a different door somewhere else on the map. They didn't think we'd notice, but we did!

**Adam**: The best part is that to hide what they did, they placed countless walls that you need to break down that have no visual identifiers that they need to be broken down.

**Shane**: Get ready to punch everything, and usually find nothing.

**Adam**: There's one part in the level that was so bad, it managed to merge several terrible elements at once: a hidden room that you access by punching a wall that reveals another room you access by punching a wall that reveals a hidden vent that you need to know exactly where to stand that leads you through a tiny passage that has a specific wall you need to hit to reveal another hidden room!

**Shane**: This isn't a game, it's a torture device.

**Adam**: When you save the computer chips, or whatever the heck you were supposed to be doing, we finally go to Mr. Freeze's lair, Snowy Cones, just like in the movie.

**Shane**: Only instead of it being a simple room, it's a full-on massive factory with another huge, complicated maze requiring Bat-lasers and punches, and just so much more awful.

**Adam**: There's a room with a bunch of boxes you've never seen in the game before that need to be destroyed with a unique missile weapon. Once blown up, they trigger a door to open somewhere else in the map. How do you know to destroy the boxes? How do you know to use that one missile weapon you might've run out of already? It's one of the great mysteries of the game.

**Shane**: And after fumbling around for what seems like forever, you fall from the maze into a fridge with Mr. Freeze.

**Adam**: They have a very awkward boss fight up a flight of stairs that was about as complicated as it looked.

**Shane**: Once he's defeated, we find ourselves alone in a freezer.

**Adam**: Now this part is special. There's a hidden room here, one the game does not in any way inform you of.

**Shane**: But if you watched the movie, you would know that there was a hidden button behind a frozen dinner that revealed-

**Shane and Adam**: Mr. Freeze's inanimate wife in a tube!

**Adam**: She's a flat layer, not a 3-D model, which makes her look super-realistic.

**Shane**: So we've gone through virtually all of Gotham, taking on countless enemies and saving countless diamonds and foiling plans.

**Adam**: It's time to finish it. We're going to Gotham Observatory, the climactic end scene from the movie, and the final stage of this wretched video game.

**Shane**: This stage is long, winding, and it needs to be completed in one go because just like we said all the way at the beginning, no lives, no continues.

**Adam**: We arrive and are immediately met face-to-face with Freeze, who you fight off. And that's the first boss battle.

**Shane**: You make your way to a sprawling section of cliffs with countless bad guys who have freeze cannon weapons that can hit you from a great distance and push you back.

**Adam**: Why is that a concern?

*(Montage of Batman falling to his death)*

**Batman**: why does this keep happening to me?

**Adam**: Each time that happens, you need to reload all the way to the start, BEFORE you first defeated Mr. Freeze.

**Shane**: Now, if you happen to pass Freeze and get through the cliffs, you'll fight people through the observatory until you get to a room housing a telescope that Mr. Freeze has turned into a giant ice ray. Why does he need a giant ice ray now to freeze Gotham when he had a weapon earlier that could already do it? Who knows, but now we're here.

**Adam**: You'll encounter Bane, who seems to be stronger than ever before. You'll also need to attack other enemies who spawn randomly around you throughout this fight.

**Shane**: We got very close to beating this, but when we finally took out Bane, we were hit by a freeze cannon blast randomly that pushed us into the 3-D model of the telescope, locking us into place with no escape. You know what that means?

**Adam**: We had to restart the game and the entire level all over again.

**Shane**: So, we did. We beat Mr. Freeze, got through the cliffs, fought through the observatory, beat Bane and countless goons, and suddenly, Mr. Freeze spawned again because he would, leading us to one final battle: taking on that giant cold dolt once and for all.

**Adam**: After all of this, ALL OF THIS, we finally beat the stage, unfreezing Gotham and saving countless people- except this guy.

*(Replay of shattering man)*

**Shane**: After the final, uninspiring cutscene, it immediately clips back to the main menu, as if you had done nothing at all. And if you manage to actually accomplish what we did right here, it feels like you had completed the impossible.

**Adam**: *Batman & Robin* may well be one of the most impressive and visually-striking disasters we've ever played. It singlehandedly demonstrates advanced game design mechanics that are complex, interesting, and perhaps borderline revolutionary.

**Shane**: But the whole game falls apart with not a single aspect working as the developers likely intended. Or heck, maybe they did intend this. We don't know. It's the video game equivalent of having an ice cream headache for three days straight. It's unacceptable, unrewarding, and downright vicious at what it requires you to accomplish to beat this game.

**Adam**: Oh boy. Could this be worse than *Batman: Dark Tomorrow*, the game that we both called "the worst Batman game ever"?

**Shane**: Could it be worse? Easily. But know that these two games are not just linked by Batman alone. Probe Entertainment, the company that made this game, had a founder. He left to go make another company called HotGen, and they were one of the developers that helped make *Batman: Dark Tomorrow*.

**Adam**: So, it's linked to another terrible game as well as a movie considered by many to be one of the worst films ever made. But if you ask both of us, *Batman & Robin* on the PS1 is something that stands completely on its own as an icon, a bastion of pure tedium. The movie might be dumb, silly fun, but the game?

**Shane**: **IT'S JUST BAD.**