Level Up: Fantastic 4

I find that the media is not fair to the great super hero team of the Fantastic Four. Unlike other Marvel creations like X-men, Spider-man or the Hulk, they get less than flattering TV shows and generally very little exposure (which is why I honestly don’t know all that much about them). However, they did manage to get a movie out in 2005. This gets me on my subject of the day: there was a Fantastic 4 video game based off the movie. It was available for the GameCube, Play Station and PC, but I’ll be playing it on the X-box.

I’m just gonna come right out and say it: this game has almost nothing to do with the movie and seems based on the comic books. This causes some big problems for me, but the one I want to address now is that it just causes the plot to fail. Granted the turmoil of heroes having to deal with this drastic change is really hard to recreate in a video game, but what we got was a disjointed mish-mash of villains coming and going quite randomly. The individual appearances aren’t too bad, but as a whole it’s really weird. You’d think that, since I like Freedom Force, I would like this, but in Freedom Force it was well pulled off with a good underlying story. This game has the underlying story (mainly just trying to return Ben back to normal) but it’s so weak, it just can support the game.

Being based on the Fantastic FOUR, you will often be controlling more than one character at a time. Though you can only directly play as one person, you can press a direction on the control pad and change to another character. You will need to do this somewhat often since each character has their own unique inherent skills needed to get farther in the game. This gets me to the Super Powers. To use them, hold R and press one of the colourful lettered buttons. This uses some of the cosmic power meter, but that refills automatically over time anyways. The only button that is different is the Y button; to use this attack, you must fill up your super bar by executing combos or find a golden letter 4. This lets you do an epic move that will leave you invincible for a short while and damage the enemy a lot.

The graphics in this game aren’t all that good. Like with Gun (btw, this is another Activision game) things seem flat, blurry and have some random jagged edges, but it’s a LOT worse in this one. Being based on the movie, they tried to make the characters look as much as the actors as possible, and I have to say they succeeded… which is bad thing. Remember how I mentioned the plot had nothing to do with the movie? Well having it look like it should is weird. I think if it were of a more cartoon or comic bookish look, this game would feel a lot better. The only time I think the realistic stuff would fit in is in the cut scenes, but that’s when the graphics are at they’re worse, looking like a really bland Reboot episode.

Now that I’m on the subject of the cut scenes, I gotta mention something that caught me by surprise: like in Ghostbusters the video game, the voice actors in this game are the movie actors. HUH!? How did they get them to do it, it’s not like they wrote it like GB crew did? I have to say though, that probably makes the voice acting in this game its best feature, though they forgot the reverb on Dr.Doom. Here’s what it sounds like in the movie (movie clip) and here’s what he sounds like in game (game clip). The music is also pretty cool, with each member of the FF having their own original theme song. But really, how DID they get them all to voice this thing?

This game is based on a movie which is based on a comic book, but more like the comic book then the movie. Man, just saying that feels weird. The plot works in short term and the graphics are passable, but they were both poorly chosen. The audio and game play are pretty cool though, so it’s probably enough to get by for most people. Some might call this a “mindlessly fun” game, since it’s inspired by classic brawlers and you can just smash people all over the place. While this is true, “mindlessness” isn’t always wanted or a good game feature. The collectables in this game are a bit cool though, which include interviews with Stan Lee (that was enough to make me play some levels again). Still, while playing, I had this slightly dirty and unfitting feeling, kind of like wearing someone else’s underwear. Though I know it’s not bad, I think this is one game Activision published that you can skip. I give Fantastic 4 for the X-Box 5.5 levels out 10.