Rumors have been circulating amongst videogame sites, and here at Ripten we have even added to the cacophony of the gamer journalism echo chamber.

We sought comment from Pandemic regarding their involvement in the Dark Knight game a few weeks ago and were told “Hey, who knows [laughter].” It’s safe to say no one is laughing now.

According to undisclosed sources, The Dark Knight game is currently being held due to its absolute failure in execution as a title. In essence, it is the “suxzor.”

In this last decade there has been a rise of movie to videogame crossovers – and vice versa – that when a movie of certifiable pop significance launches you can be sure the game tie-in isn’t far behind.

Yet when The Dark Knight dropped, racking up sales that put it in second place for the second-highest opening weekend gross in history, the videogame adaptation was nowhere to be seen.

Thespian Gary Oldman, who plays Commissioner James Gordon in The Dark Knight, already spilled the proverbial legumes when he went on the record at a press conference saying that he had already done the voice acting for the game.

Unnamed sources say that Pandemic has been working on the title, yet somewhat inexplicably, the game was pulled from release by its new corporate owner EA.

Why? Because according to Kotaku, the game is “terribad,” the eldritch gamer-jargon for a game so both terrible and bad that its very presence can devour your soul. As in Spiderman 3 terribad. As in Evil Dead: Hail to the King terribad. As in Jaws Unleashed terribad.

For the uninitiated, the Spider Man 3 videogame tie-in, developed by Treyarch, was panned as a dismal failure, nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the movie.

According to Kotaku sources, the game is a sandbox platform a la Grand Theft Auto that has the Caped Crusader driving around in the Batmobile or swinging about using his grappling gun. Unfortunately the game has more bugs than my flatmate’s goatee.

Evidently a host of problems are currently besieging the title, including a wonky camera and combat being more of a display of break-dance fighting. And while that may be fine for a Zoolander fighter feature the ridiculously good-looking, I’m thinking it’s not going to work for the Batman.

Speculation abounds that parent company EA big-footed the project in an effort to release a quality product, rather than the usual rote of puppy-mill titles that follow movie tie-ins. This, if nothing else, could be one of the smartest things EA will do this year.

Better that the game remains in developmental limbo than be released unto the masses as an unfinished, half-baked piece of pop afterbirth.

Source: Kotaku

Tags: Batman, EA, pandemic, The Dark Knight

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1 Comment » greeneggsnsam on August 12, 2008 1:46 pm It’s always such a shame when movies become awful games. They ought to remove the story of the movie completely and just set the game in the ‘universe’ of the movie. RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.