Introduction

The Dark Knight Rises: The Game was created as part of a bad adaption contest celebrating RPGMaker.net's 5th birthday. As part of the rules of the contest the developer's had only five hours to create a game based around a popular franchise such as a book, movie, TV show, and so on. As such all of the game created for the contest are rather lackluster in terms of quality, but I'd be amazed if anyone could design a quality RPG Maker title in under five hours.

Story

Your goal if you choose to accept it is to rise to the occasion by getting to the top of a tall building. You can either chicken out and take the elevator to the top for an easy victory or you can man up and climb the stairs and deal with all of the foes that stand in your way. And since this is bad adaption your final opponent won't be Bane, but Gotham's clown prince.

Gameplay

If you choose to play the game on hard mode it features non-random encounters with turn-based combat. And while most of the battles are relatively easy if you are patient and take advantage of the fact that you heal if you utilize the guard command the final boss battle can be rather frustrating. The Joker is rather relentless at times in his use of techniques that cause the normally unflappable Batman to lose all sense of control and enter a berserker rage. On the plus side this does increase your attack power rather significantly. On the downside you can't heal while in this state and the Joker has several attacks that are highly damaging. So, it is possible to lose the final boss battle no matter how careful you are about watching your health. And since the game doesn't include a save feature you'll need to start from the beginning if you fail to defeat any of your opponent's. Even so I'm not sure I'd call the final boss battle unreasonably hard. As long as you approach it intelligently you do stand a good chance of coming out on top.

I do have a few minor gripes with the game though. There is no in-game explanation for what the annoyed status effect does. Though I do get a chuckle out of the fact that you cure this status effect by leafing through some adult entertainment. Another issue is the lack of available skills. Batman seems to carry around every useful tool in existence on his utility belt so I was expecting the character to have access to flash bangs to blind enemies or at least smoke bombs to obscure himself from view. And one final issue with the game is that the effects of summoning Captain America doesn't appear to wear off.

Graphics

Considering the short time frame in which this game was made I don't have any real complaints. About the only issue I could complain about is that the second and third floors of the building your climbing are blatant copies of each other, but since this is utilized to setup a joke my complaint is easily negated.

Sound

I can't say that I have strong feelings either way when it comes to the sound effects or background music in this title. It doesn't feel inappropriate per se, but it does come across as rather unremarkable and forgettable.

Conclusion

The Dark Knight Rises: The Game is a rather difficult, but enjoyable little game. And while I wouldn't recommend it to more casual players because of its difficulty. It is easy to recommend to people looking for a challenge.