Review #761: Daredevil

 It can't be worse than the move, now could it?

 Back in the day, every crappy movie deserved a crappy licensed game, and Daredevil ought not be the exception. Thankfully, it's actually a pretty decent beat'em up that reminded me a lot of old Genesis games, thanks to how it looks and plays.

 I'm not sure if the game is a retelling of the movie or a follow up or what have you, but it ends just like the movie. Sorta. The game both begins and ends with different showcases of movie stills that make no sense, at first I wasn't sure if the game was telling me that the movie took place before the game or whatever, and after I finished it and got the ending reel... I was just as confused. When it boils down to it, it's a 23 stage long beat'em up that'll have you facing bosses from the movie, such as Elektra and Bullseye, as well as other enemies exclusive to this game, like Echo and a green... troll-thing. There are a ton of extras to unlock, such as Daredevil's original yellow costume as well as Elektra, Bullseye and Kingpin's comic sprites instead of their movie-inspired ones, which is pretty neat. The entire game runs on passwords, so I just found the Master Password and played the entire game as Yellow Daredevil. Sue me.

 A jumps, B is your standard three-hit combo, R attacks with your billy club and pressing R after a two-hit B combo will end the string with a club attack, double tapping either side and pressing B performs a sliding kick. Daredevil also gets a double jump, and the L button allows you to tap into his senses to reveal hidden power ups, be it health restoring items, temporary double damage, temporary invincibility or temporarily turning your club into a projectile that stuns enemies. Different enemies are more vulnerable either to punches or club attacks, and sometimes, in order to better deal with waves of enemies, it's important to figure out how best to deal with the situation at hand.

 Most of the levels and challenges are your standard beat'em up/platformer hybrid fare, and stages aren't too bad, every now and then mixing up things with vertical movements in order to progress as opposed to a straight zip line from left to right, not that the game is lacking on those type of stages either. That said, bosses are very poorly designed, particularly Elektra, the first boss, since plenty of times there seems to be no way to defeat them but to take damage. Elektra took me out 3-4 times, so I gave up and looked up how to defeat her... and the game's only guide tells you that you need to get hit in order to beat her. Eventually I retried her fight again, since I wanted to see how her movie sprite looked, and I defeated her on my first try... even though I had to get hit in order to do it.

 Considering this is pretty much Daredevil's only videogame, I'd say he got off pretty leniently, since this is actually a pretty decent, albeit unremarkable beat'em up. Plenty of things could've been better, but they could've done so much worse, just look at the poor Power Rangers, so I'll gladly take what we got with this game.
 6.5 out of 10