Burton's Bytes: Claws out for Catwoman

AT one time a big movie hit our cinemas months before the video game arrived. These days all the marketing paraphernalia is in the shops way ahead of the film itself.

Film boffins like to think the games, posters, dolls etc all serve to build anticipation for the main event. Being a cynic I also tend to think the companies that have created the tie-ins don't want to be left with thousands of discs or dolls they can't sell if it turns out that the film they are based on sucks.

So here we have Catwoman Electronic Arts' game of the film of the comic book (still with me?) that's hitting the streets about the same time as the movie starring the delectable Halle Berry.

Unfortunately for Warner Brothers, the film itself has played second fiddle to Spider-Man 2 in the United States this summer. Despite opening after Spidey and boasting Berry in a very fetching catsuit, the film pulled in less than a tenth of Sam Rami's touching love story. Warner must be hoping for better things in Europe.

Having heaped praise on last week's movie tie-in The Chronicles of Riddick, I had high hopes for Catwoman, even if I always thought of her as a bad guy from the comics I read in my youth.

Unfortunately superheroes haven't tended to fare very well on games platforms. Batman, Superman, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and The X-Men have all endured some pretty duff outings on everything from the Sega Mega-Drive right up to the PS2. Ironically the only exception to this rule seems to be Spider-Man whose PS1 games were jolly good romps indeed and a object lesson in how to bring a comic character to life on screen.

Unsurprisingly, you play the Catwoman of the title - formerly known as Patience Phillips - on a mission of revenge. The screen grabs on the back of the box make Catwoman look a bit like Prince of Persia with a sexy walk and claws. If only that were so.

Slap the disc in your PS2 and boot into the training tutorial and the flaws become painfully obvious. For despite the helpful on-screen prompts, your Catwoman character is infuriatingly difficult to control. You move her with the left analogue stick and use the L1/R1 buttons to do things like climbing the sides of buildings or kicking bad guys into next week.

Unfortunately, the well-animated character seems to have a mind of her own and sometimes it's virtually impossible to see what she is doing as police or thugs pour gunfire onto her.

Some of the acrobatics are nifty, like the ability to swing from handy poles to escape your foes but all-too-often, too many functions are mapped to the shoulder buttons, making it hard to figure out what to do next.

Worse, so many moves rely on split-second timing and if you get it wrong Catwoman is dumped right back at the start.

The lack of a mid-level save is a real problem, especially later on when the difficulty level ramps up. Persevere and you'll get it - but there will be several 'fling the controller at the screen in frustration'-type moments before it all clicks into place I guarantee.

As you'd expect with a big movie tie-in the cut scenes are of a high order and Halle Berry has recorded a few corny quips for the soundtrack but all-too-often I felt as though Catwoman the game was simply going through the motions.

The decision to use movie-style camera angles is another bad idea. They may look good but sometimes they leave your character dangerously exposed by making it too hard to spot oncoming danger.

You can switch to first person mode to find the trail if you get lost (it's a scent Catwoman can pick up) and the confusing level layout means you have to resort to this device again and again.

One of the early levels tasks you to follow a cat. Naturally it runs off like the proverbial scalded moggy and you lose it. The only way to keep up is to switch to first person and follow the scent.

Catwoman relies on her athleticism and a handy whip to stop the bad guys. She can also disarm enemies and you are awarded points depending on the dexterity and audacity of her fighting moves. Points can be traded for new moves and attacks at the end of a level. And yes, there is a Matrix-like moment or two in this game (when will programmers start to realise this is a really tired thing to do now?)

It's not a bad game, Catwoman. Fans will appreciate some of the design and it's nicely animated but, despite a sop to younger gamers that sees no bad guys actually die, it's rated 12, so a large part of the potential buying audience may have been disenfranchised by the certificate.

A bit like the film itself, there's nothing too special other than the sight of Halle in a leather costume - and the game doesn't even have that.

Virus Watch

MyDoom.Q

Another new version of the MyDoom bug is spreading, and like last month's varinant it uses Yahoo web site as part of its infection routine.

MyDoom.Q is similar to earlier MyDoom variants. It arrives by e-mail, with a spoofed sending address and a subject line designed to make it look like the message is related to one that the recipient sent.

Among the subject lines in the e-mails are "SN: New secure mail," "Secure delivery," "Re: Extended mail," "Delivery Status (Secure)," "Re: Server Reply" and "SN: Server Status."

The body of the e-mail contains random sentences, some of which refer to the attached zip file. Once opened, the file copies itself to the Windows system directory as "winlibs.exe."

The executable contains a list of dozens of common first and surnames that it puts through Yahoo's 'People Search' function in an attempt to find more e-mail addresses.

The previous version MyDoom, released last month, used a similar ploy, plugging domain names into Yahoo, Google, AltaVista and Lycos search engines in an effort to find valid e-mail addresses. This caused slowdowns and outages at several of the targeted sites.

However, Yahoo's People Search appears to be responding normally.