Film licenses, gotta love 'em, eh?
Being a beat-em-up first and foremost, there’s a big advantage in playing the stronger characters for the majority of the time. So you’ll find yourself playing either Mr Fantastic or The Thing whenever you have access to them and only switching to the Human Torch or the Invisible Woman when the level demands it to progress. With the emphasis being on fisticuffs, you’ll soon figure out that the cosmic power thing is generously unbalanced. Being able to replenish your cosmic energy from objects and enemies means, that with careful timing, you’ll be able to use that and pretty much nothing else and still finish the level. This makes the combat woefully easy as after a few levels your powered up attacks wipe out pretty much everything with a couple of hits at the most.
The slight puzzle elements in the game are limited to figuring of your character’s powers will help you get past the next obstacle. Again, this is dead easy as the areas where a character’s particular ability is needed are highlighted for you, so it’s not exactly a taxing problem. You have to wonder why those bits are there at all… unless it’s just to force you to use other characters than Mr Fantastic or The Thing. Sometimes you’re required to use each character’s special powers in a particular order to progress but with just a few characters to choose from, it’s hardly taxing stuff.
Now, these little niggles could be forgiven if the core of the gameplay, the combat, was any good. Sadly, this is flawed too. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s really bad, but I’ll settle for saying that it’s not very good and, compared with other ‘team’ beat-em-ups, it’s not got much going for it. The main problem is that it’s just doesn’t feel like you’re fighting… it feels like you’re going through the motions of pressing buttons to make a computer generated image do stuff. Part of the problem is the clipping, which constantly reminds you you’re playing a video game. Characters and enemies alike will walk through objects (not a skill I knew the Fantastic 4 had), float in mid air on invisible ledges or get stuck in corners. The clipping during fights is just as poor with hits either registering whilst barely even touching the bad guys, or missing completely when it was an obvious hit.
