A BATMAN WHO FEEDS ON FEAR.

Byline: Redmond Carolipio Staff Writer

``Batman Begins'' takes the Dark Knight out of the action spotlight and back to where he belongs - the shadows.

Clutching the cape-tails of Christopher Nolan's summer film, this title from Electronic Arts eschews the superhero's bam-and-pow gaming past and gives us an experience that evokes memories of stealth titles like ``Tenchu'' and ``Splinter Cell.''

It's Batman, ninja-style.

Stealth action games ask players to elude or at least weaken the enemy before striking from the darkness. In the case of Batman, ``weakening'' the enemy really means ``scaring the hell out of them.''

Just as in the movie, the game play revolves around the concept of fear. Instead of running around and laying the smackdown on every thug in sight, players are asked to make sure the anticipation of the attack is worse than the attack itself. If you do a good enough job, this can lead to some serious ``I'm Batman'' moments.

Manufacturing fear can be done in several ways. For example, tossing a Batarang at a cluster of kerosene tanks will cause an explosion, leading several stunned bad guys to drop their guns and wonder where the explosion came from.

In swoops Batman among the scared and confused group to serve up some pain. The end.

The game also factors fear into the combat. If the ``area fear'' and ``reputation'' meter are high enough (thanks to Batman's engineered theatrics), enemies will either run away or at least fight while constantly backing up.

Players can check out a bad guy's heart rate to gauge how frightened he is. If he's freaking out, you can ``finish'' him off with a click of a button and get a short cut scene from the thug's point of view, where Batman looks like a huge, foreboding beast from hell coming to get him.

Other cool tricks involve the ability to hang from the ceiling and snatch unsuspecting thugs for interrogation.

All of these fear-based elements could have easily turned the game into a $40 gimmick, but Eurocom, the developer, handles it with care.

The game's presentation of Batman attempts to conjure up the Dark Knight seen in the new film and in graphic novels instead of the goofy action figure fans were subjected to in the Joel Schumacher movies.

With Eurocom's fear-and-stealth-based system, Batman becomes what many purists have always seen him as - a creature that preys on Gotham's underworld under the cover of darkness. He's the Boogeyman for the bad guys.

This direction is helped by the game's visuals. This is the best- looking Batman game in existence, strengthened by the fact that the game's path takes you places the movie only visits.

The experience truly takes off when Batman confronts the denizens of Arkham Asylum, which combines the dark atmosphere of Gotham with sights and sounds you would hear in a survival-horror title.

Also worth noting is that much of the movie's main cast was assembled to do voice work for the game, which automatically makes ``Batman Begins'' one of the most star-studded titles of all-time.

Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine and others recorded original content for the game, in addition to many of the lines from the movie, such as ``He's here ... the bat man'' from Cillian Murphy (The Scarecrow).

However, not all parts of the game share the movie's quality.

First off, the game follows the path of the movie very closely, which means it's quite short. This could put off superhero fans spoiled by the open-ended ``Spider-Man 2,'' which focused on crime fighting as a way of life.

The game almost adheres to the movie too closely. It's not in the ill-fated ``play the movie'' category, but it's not in the league of ``The Chronicles of Riddick'' or ``Spider-Man 2'' in terms of being looked at as an independent title.

If anything, it feels like a companion piece to the film - but given the movie's success, that might not be a bad thing.

From a game play standpoint, the game's fully manual camera gets in the way, as you are constantly having to make on-the-fly adjustments, even in battle.

You can easily lose sight of an enemy, only to get clobbered in the back of the head by some pipe-wielding henchman.

The game is also a little too simple to play, always spelling out which items to hit with the Batarang or when to exactly counter an enemy's attack. Casual gamers will love this, but an experienced gamer will peel right through it.

BATMAN BEGINS - Two and one half stars

Platform: All consoles.

Price: $39.99.

Rated: T for Teen.

In a nutshell: Best-looking Batman game but a few things come up short.