
	Platform Playstation 2 Genre Fighting Publisher Electronic Arts Developer Nihilistic / EA Canada ESRB T (Teen) Released September21, 2005

- Great concept, but... - Multiplayer is quite enjoyable - Good animations - Solid boss battles

-…poor execution - Awful storyline - Graphical glitches - No cooperative multiplayer

Review: Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (XB) Review: War of the Monsters (PS2) Review: Tekken 5 (PS2) Review: King of Fighters 2002/2003 (PS2)
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Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects

Score: 6.0 / 10

Recently we've seen the release of many Marvel-themed games including Ultimate Spiderman, X-Men Legends 2, and Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects.

Marvel Nemesis (MN) is quite a unique game, in terms of the approach the developers took. MN combines some well-known Marvel characters against a single enemy named the Imperfects. You’ll be given the chance to play a wide range of Marvel characters including Wolverine, Spiderman, The Thing, and Electra. While the basic idea is quite good, the storyline is extremely awful.

Each of the game’s characters has their own separate campaign. The campaigns don’t vary too much in the way of gameplay. Most of the levels require you to eradicate a number of enemies within a given time. Each of the character’s campaigns has a final boss battle. While each character has their own unique moves, the levels grow to be rather repetitive.

Like I mentioned above, the storyline is quite awful. The game doesn’t really follow a set storyline for all the characters. The storyline is disjointed, uninteresting and unclear most of the time. The trade-off for playing through the disappointing storyline, is the chance to unlock more characters, levels, character cards and comics.

The actual fighting mechanics quite solid. One of the most noticeable things about the game, are the interactive environments. Various objects can be used against your opponents and different parts of the levels are destructible. The most common occurrence in the environments are explosive barrels. You can pick up the barrels and use them against your opponents, but one thing you’ll become annoyed with is how frequently your character is injured by the barrels. Usually when your character is injured by a barrel it will set off a chain reaction of explosions. The chain reaction of explosions occurs much too frequently.

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MN features a fairly impressive multiplayer mode. Unfortunately you cannot play MN with a friend cooperatively. Instead, you can play competitively either offline or online. The environments you’ll square off in are replicas

of the single player levels, so there is a fairly large area to play in. There are some character balancing issues in the multiplayer modes as some characters are far more effective than others. (Wolverine is practically neutered.) Most multiplayer battles are won by engaging your enemy from a safe distance, rather than up close.

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MN visuals are a mixed bag. The character animations are excellent, but there are some noticeable graphical glitches. Most of the graphical glitches occur during the in-game cut scenes as you’ll frequently see pop-in issues and some strange lighting bugs.

With a plenty of other Marvel based videogames out there this holiday season, it’s difficult to recommend Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. The single player mode is quite bland and lacks a much needed punch, while the multiplayer provides some excitement. Overall, MN is worth shelling out money for once a steep price crop occurs.

- Siddharth Masand

(November 24, 2005)