In every stable of Derby winners, there's always that one horse that seems destined for the glue factory. Catwoman is that horse. Given EA's recent string of top-notch titles, especially those based on movie licenses, there was bound to be one stinker. Catwoman attempts to bring a stylish action game to the PS2, but manages to falter with every step.

A nice lighting system and sexy Catwoman model help to really push the game forward in at least one area. Unfortunately, it also seems that this was one of the main priorities of the game. Like the movie, which comes off as just an excuse to get Halle Berry in a skin-tight, strategically-cut leather outfit, it seems that most of the development time was spent making the Catwoman model look great. Case in point, whenever left idle for a few minutes she begins a gyrating grind-fest that is best left for a Girls Gone Wild video. Really, is this necessary? The rest of the game suffers from boring textures and repetitive designs.

The biggest plus in the sound department is that Halle Berry reprises her role for the game. The bad news is that she phones in the performance. The dialog is bad, poorly written, and filled with nothing but one-liners that break the limits of campiness. Music is decent and adds a fun mystery to everything, but it is just not enough.

Catwoman loosely follows the plot of the movie, which loosely follows the comic book. Patience Philips is a shy artist with low self-esteem. After she discovers a dark secret that her employer, a cosmetics firm, is hiding, Patience is caught in a corporate conspiracy and killed. She is then brought back to life as Catwoman. From here, the story is not very clear. Even the intro is chopped up and doesn't really explain things clearly. In fact, if I hadn't seen the movie, I would not have known what the hell was going on.

Catwoman tries to combine the puzzle-solving, platforming of Prince of Persia with the combat mechanics of Rise to Honor. To its credit, the game manages to do a fairly good job of capturing Prince's platforming, and features some tricky rooms to navigate through. Using her feline-like prowess, Catwoman can climb certain walls, dangle and flip from high wires, and even use her whip to perform some Indiana Jones type swings. While I thoroughly enjoyed this mechanic in Prince of Persia, it doesn't seem to work in Catwoman, and comes off as frustrating. Yes, the designs of the rooms you have to navigate are interesting, but they feel too complicated. Even the in-game help does a terrible job of letting you know what's going on. For example, I spent nearly 20 minutes trying to figure out how to escape from the very first room in the game because the in-game help was giving me the "tip" near the wrong wall. This was soon followed by 30 minutes of trying to make my way to the top of a nearby building, only to fall all the way to the bottom because of a terrible camera angle. Instead of going for the useful angles, the camera tends to go for "better looking" angles. When combined with labyrinthine level layouts, this makes for a very frustrating experience.

Combat is poorly done. As in Rise to Honor, all combat is handled by flicking the right-analog stick in various directions for hours on end. When crouching, Catwoman will perform a variety of kicks. When standing, she'll either whip or punch (depending on how close she is to the target). Rise to Honor already proved that this mechanic has a ways to go before being useful, and Catwoman only furthers that case. The system rarely works the way you want, and it is not uncommon to have Catwoman kicking or whipping at empty air.

Another interesting aspect of combat is that no one dies as a result of combat. Not that I am advocating a gore-fest, but the lengths that Catwoman goes to in order to show that no one is really hurt is just silly. After being pummeled, enemies begin to glow yellow and stop attacking you. I even had one guy run and jump into a dumpster after a thorough ass kicking. Even knocking someone off a rooftop results in them walking away unharmed.

Most of the challenge factor in Catwoman comes from its level designs. As stated previously, the designs are generally good, but at times can feel a little too confusing and frustrating. Switching to first-person mode, which activates Catwoman's cat-sense, helps by showing you the general path to take. However, even this is not the most helpful of things since the camera tends to obscure certain elements. The game is more frustrating than it is hard.

The decision to have combat mapped to the right-analog stick proves to be both a poor and unnecessary choice. All other in-game commands are crammed into the shoulder buttons, which means that you'll have to hit them in numerous combinations in order to pull off some moves. As a result, the game never feels comfortable. Instead of pressing one button to perform some actions, you will also have to press an additional button and will sometimes have a flick of the analog stick. The in-game help that tells you how to perform these moves isn't very helpful either. The text is usually long and will only pop up when you hit a certain area. If you move from this area (which is usually pretty small), the message quickly disappears. There had to be a better way of doing this.

When in combat, the analog system feels like its thrown in to be "cool" rather than useful. Personally, I think the system has potential. As much as I hated it in Rise to Honor, I still saw that it could be useful in the right game. Catwoman is not that game. Combat is rarely intense enough to warrant having the ability to attack in any direction -- especially when most enemies will come at you from the front, and you are rarely fighting more than two at a time. Maybe if the combat were more intense, such as in both of the Lord of the Rings games (which offers the option to use the right-analog stick for combat), the system would have been useful. However, this just is not the case.

Pulling off combos nets points, which can then be spent on upgrading Catwoman's moves between levels. Other than the disarm move (which is the first move she can buy), few moves are actually useful. The game even manages to squeeze in some bullet-time effects, which do nothing to help out the action.

True to other EA movie licensed games, such as The Lord of the Rings and James Bond, Catwoman manages to capture the movie perfectly. Sadly, this is a bad thing in Catwoman's case, making it hard to even suggest this one as a rental.