Fantastic Four

Written by Nick Doukas  on September 06, 2005

Review: Sucktastic Whore...

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Let's cut right to the chase Ц Fantastic Four is not a good game. The Fantastic Four of comic book legend? Now those guys (and gal) are alright. The FF have always been one of the more appealing superhero teams to me (all props to The Avengers of course, both east and west coast). That said, this game does them no justice. I won't comment on the movie as I'm not a film critic, but as a gaming journalist, I'll say FF the game pretty much reeks from the get-go.

You play as any one of the 4 heroes during the game - Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm, The Human Torch and Ben Grimm - aka The Thing. Unfortunately, you can't just take control of the team at will, instead there will be certain times that you'll use certain members, as dictated by the game design. Each hero is used to the best advantage depending on the task at hand. Reed Richards can stretch himself to reach otherwise unattainable goals, and also attack adversaries from a distance. The Thing is just a tremendous monster that deals out brute force and does insane damage. He can also take quite a beating. Johnny Storm has speed and agility, and that whole I'll light your ass on fire thing going for him, while The Invisible Woman canЕwell, turn invisible, and perform a few other useful tricks. Most of the game has the team separating to attain their objectives, so you'll generally only control 1 or 2 at a time. You can switch between them using the D-pad, and whichever character is not under your direction is controlled by the AI.

Each of the heroes has 3 cosmic powers (i.e.: special attacks) and a fair amount of combo moves performed by various strings of button presses. While cosmic powers are more easily accessible, using them costs stamina (or energy) which does recharge, though it does so slowly. You can also grapple enemies, but overall, the move-set for each character is neither deep, nor very varied, and it quickly turns this title into a boring wash, rinse, repeat style of fighting that's just not very involving or fun. You can upgrade your character's abilities with points earned from defeating foes, but upgraded versions of powers that were rote and boring to start with doesn't add any sort of incentive to play. Each character's special abilities will come into play with various context sensitive mini-games that are dependent on the level or environment you're faced with.

Story-wise the game is nothing special, and simply moves you from level to level without much real coherence. The graphics are pretty sub-par, particularly for an Xbox game. Bland environments and by-the-numbers character models (both the FF and their adversaries) are the order of the day here, and the controls simply don't allow you to feel like the powerful superhero you should, instead their imprecise nature makes your interactions painful and unimpressive. With fantastic (yes, pun intended) superhero games like Spiderman 2 and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction out there, this kind of failing is inexcusable. The whole idea is to truly capture the fundamental feeling of being a super powered being. If you haven't got that, you've got nothing.

There's very little interactivity in the environments either, which seriously detracts, and all the levels are similar and boring. The sound effects are weak, and the music is strictly second rate. While the actors from the film represent here with some decent voice acting, it doesn't really do anything to elevate this mess any higher. The Fantastic Four does offer co-op and arena mode, but again, while it's marginally fun, it doesn't do much to save the game from pure mediocrity.