Over the past 15 years, the legendary comic book antihero known as Batman has, much more often than not, been treated by video-game developers the way Ike Turner treated Tina. The most recent insult to the Caped Crusader's fans, Kemco's Batman: Dark Tomorrow, runs a close second to Titus's Superman as the worst superhero game of all time. Enter Ubisoft, which published the best Batman game in forever with the 2001 release Batman: Vengeance, and which looks to once again restore respect to the Dark Knight with Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu.

As with Kemco's experiment in terror, Rise of Sin Tzu has a couple of creative big-wigs involved in its construction. Beloved (by his parents, at least) comic book artist Jim Lee crafted the ugly mug of Sin Tzu, a "cunning master of strategy and martial arts" who will apparently be part of the Batman mythos henceforth. The game's storyline and dialogue were written by Flint Dille, a journeyman screenwriter whose interactive credits include 1997's Nuclear (and don't you dare pronounce it "nu-cu-ler") Strike and last year's Dead at Retail -- er, Dead to Rights. Dille has done a fine job of establishing Tzu as a worthy adversary for Batman, and he even manages to mold third-string villains Scarecrow, Clayface, and Bane into interesting characters.

Rise of Sin Tzu offers four swanky options at its main menu: story mode, challenge mode, trophy room, and bonus features. Let us first discuss the one- or two-player story mode, which has you choose from a cast of four characters: Robin, Batgirl, Batman, and Nightwing (the crime fighter formerly known as Robin, which has apparently become the Menudo of super-heroic identities). You also choose one of four difficulty levels, the hardest of which is initially locked. Playing through the story mode at different difficulties allows you to unlock different items in the trophy room, about which more later.

Rise of Sin Tzu initially seems to offer standard-issue beat-'em-up gameplay. You walk forward until a group of thugs assault you; you give the thugs a thorough beating and an admonition to abandon their careers in petty crime, and you walk forward until another group of thugs in desperate need of job counseling attacks you. In several levels, you're also given a secondary incentive and a time limit: rescue several hapless civilians who could stand to take some self-defense courses, defuse a series of bombs, et cetera.

Sho-Robin-ken!
The controls are the same for each of the four characters: one face button to punch, one to kick, one to grab, and one to jump (although it's a low-altitude leap -- Rise of Sin Tzu doesn't have the action/platform elements that have sneaked into several recent beat-'em-ups). Your character starts with roughly half a dozen fighting moves and combinations, but you'll eventually possess several dozen combos, grouped into five levels of strength and complexity. Every time you land a move or combo, you add a little juice to your combo meter; when the meter tops out, you can use extra-special "power moves" for a short amount of time.