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By Timothy Guy
By Timothy Guy
Trying to capitalize on the popularity of comic books and comic book films Activision brings us the “Fantastic Four” video game for the PS2. Although the end product is more nap time than clobberin’ time.
This game tries to hard to accomplish what X-men Legends did, bring the comics to life. The gameplay is like a poor man’s X-men Legends. Sure it has cooperative gameplay, but it is lacking so much more that in the end it leaves the gamer with a bad taste in their mouths.
The one strength of the game is the inclusion of the voices of all of the main cast of the movie, although Kerri Washington who plays Alicia Masters is missing from participating in the game (even though her part in the game is bigger than in the film.)
Michael Chiklis and Juilan McMahon stand out as the Thing and Dr. Doom. They both get more depth to play with in the game and allow the characters to shine a little more than in the movie.
Since the movie has one villain and one villain (or boss) in a video game just doesn’t fly, Activision has included some of the best Fantastic Four villains to fight against like; Puppet Master, Dragon Man, Diablo and Blastaar. We even get to see Nick Fury agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. athough this is the Ultimate-Samuel L. Jackson version.
On the bad end of the spectrum there are these annoying mini-missions you can complete like “Don’t use supers”, “Don’t lose a life” or “Protect the lady in the red dress” which is a game term for escort mission, words that sends shivers down the spine of any gamer. Think an escort mission is the only bad video game cliche included?
Do the words “button mashing” mean anything to you?
At first there are just a few button pushes to get your attacks across, but after a while you are just mashing the heck of the out of the X, Square and Circle buttons and hoping for the best.
When will video game developers learn?
I still have the scares from previous butting mashing accidents.
The combo system, however flawed, stays true to the abilities of each character like an invisible force shield for Sue, fireballs for Johnny and strech attacks for Reed.
The graphics are good, each character looks like the actor and new characters don’t look out of place at all (even though one is a big dragon man that breathes fire…)
Oh yeah, don’t beat the game until you see the movie. Considering the entire end of the movie is exactly the same as the game it might ruin it for you, even the surprise during the end credits. You would think a spoiler warning might of been helpful considering the game came out a week before the movie did.
That also brings up another point, it didn’t take long at all to finish the game on either easy or medium difficulty. Its replay value is very low with single player action.
I would advise you to rent this and make sure you have at least one other person to play with. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and want a great game, go buy “God of War”.