"... a
competent, if somewhat unremarkable, beat 'em up."
Time has not been kind of the
beat 'em up genre. The likes of Double Dragon, Final Fight and Streets of Rage just haven't aged well - gaming has actually
moved beyond the "move forward and punch things" mentality. Still, it's nice to see developers attempt
to resurrect this old art form. Someone at Activision must've been playing the old Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles arcade game, and figured, "Why not combine this with the Fantastic
4?" And here we are, just in
time for a movie tie-in.
For a brainless brawler, there's at least some depth
within the Fantastic 4. You have two attack buttons of varying strengths, which can be used to create a
small handful of combos. The B button will pick up and toss enemies, while various special attacks can be
executed by holding down the R trigger. There are also rare super maneuver that lets your characters go
berserk momentarily. Beating up bad guys yields blue orbs, which can be used to unlock new moves or upgrade
current ones. There are scripted moments throughout each level where you can use your super powers to save
bystanders or beat bosses. These are politely indicated with a glowing spot, where you play a quick
button-tapping or analog-swirling mini-game. Similarly, there are locks to hack, which leads to
more mini-games. I suppose they're done to break up the action, but they're so easy that they end up
feeling pointless.
In order to keep some narrative cohesion (and perhaps follow the plot of the movie), Fantastic Four forces
you to use particular characters in each level. Sometimes you'll be fighting alone, sometimes you'll
be fighting with a partner, which can either be controlled by a friend or AI, and you can switch
between any of them at any time. Each of the characters are quite distinct - Mr. Fantastic can
reach foes from a distance with his stretchy limbs, The Human Torch flies around with ease and toasts
baddies, and The Thing is more about
picking up police
cars and using them to bash everything in sight. There are also some attempts at stealth with the Invisible
Woman's transparency power, but it's not put to any good use. Each level is filled with hidden goals,
which in turn unlocks some bonus goodies, so there's an incentive to really do well.
So it's clear that the developers realized that brawlers need variety in order to succeed, but
ultimately, the fighting still never advances beyond button mashing. Occasionally, you'll get surrounded by
enemies, you'll use a special attack, and then you'll keep mashing until
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your
power meter regenerates. On
the easiest difficulty level, you can take huge doses of damage without dying, so it's not like the game is
very hard, but it does get consistently frustrating. And in betraying its namesake, the game only supports
two human players at a time. Believe it or not, this is actually preferable. At the times when all four
heroes are on the screen simultaneously, the game trembles and stutters at all of the onscreen chaos.
It's hard to really see where all of that horsepower is going. The environments look passable, but they're
insanely repetitive, and the characters models look awful in both the in-game action and
pre-rendered cutscenes. In an attempt to be authentic to the movie,
all of the actors provide their real voices for the cutscenes, but the script is so god-awful, you begin
to wonder why they even bothered.
Like most games rushed to the market to coincide with a movie release, the
Fantastic 4 is quite buggy --
polygon clipping, missing animations, and objects falling through the floor, for instance. These are all
pretty harmless, but the more relevant issue is the shoddy hit detection. Certain bad guys need to be hit
on the backside or knocked on the ground before you can damage them, but this is rendered needlessly
frustrating. The same thing goes with the instant-kill move that can be executed when you've damaged a boss
character enough -- it doesn't seem that hard to pull off, but the game
seems to randomly decide whether it works or not.
In spite of all of the complaints, Fantastic 4 is a competent, if somewhat unremarkable,
beat 'em up. Fans of the comics who weren't angered by the movie will definitely find enjoyment out of a rental, but there's
not much more than an a few hours of brainless fun to
be had. In the end, you'll want to stick with the new Incredible Hulk game for your dose of comic
book-influenced smashing.
