Captain America and the Avengers

"Better than X-Men."

Marvel games try hard to create a world in the video circuit that makes the comic books look good as well as the game itself. We’ve all seen or heard of the other Marvel game that didn’t quite make it that far in the form of X-Men, and then there were other attempts in Wolverine. While the genre of comic book video games has come a long way since the day of X-Men in this day in age. There was another game out there that attempted to be something hardcore and ended up just like the rest by the name of Captain America and the Avengers. Featuring Captain America and a handful of Avengers, you come into a world that is side scrolling to the extreme, with a few flaws along the way.

The story is unimportant, and rest assured that it falls under the ‘evil forces taking over the world’ part that we have all come to know and love. Battling through the various stages, you will be able to take control of Captain America, Hawkeye among others, all of which have their own unique abilities that will help you conquer the stages. While there isn’t much more to the game than smashing the bad guys and trying not to get yourself killed, there are a few interesting points in the game play that are worth mentioning. For the comic book fans, this game is key in showing that something can be done with the comics and while it’s not the most impressive, it’s still a lot of fun.

Side scrolling action is what Captain America is all about and you have plenty of stages to do this in as well as some characters to pick up on in the process. Through several different stages, you’ll have to use your character and the powers they contain in order to defeat the enemies. What you will find in the first five minutes of play on the other hand is that this game falls short of depth and revolves around finding an exit gem, killing some enemies and then exiting the level into the next stage. While this might be fun for the first half an hour, the entire game is like this with little or no variation aside from the environment.

As you progress through the stages, you’ll find different pods that are littered on the landscape and there for the taking if you can hit them. Some contain gems that give you more points to add to your overall score while others contain hearts for health and the exit orb which unlocks the stage exit. If you happen to hit the pods more than once, small bars fall out which give you more points on top of your score, but there isn’t anything else than that. The most interesting piece of the game play is that if you happen to die in any of the stages, you can go and rescue your fallen comrade from the action by finding their icon.

Something that I found to be rather annoying was the fact that the collision detection here in Avengers is way off with certain enemies. If you’re trying to kill something and you hit it, it flashes for five seconds and you can’t hit it again which causes you to take unnecessary damage in the process. This is an unfortunate part of the game and something that could cause you to grumble and possibly throw the controller at the floor. Again, the rescue portion of the game tends to help you with this and allows you to get your comrade back which allows you to continue the game without too much grief.

By today’s standard, this is nothing great, but playing through a game this old, it spells the difference between finishing the game or having it end. Control isn’t much of an issue and you’ll have to learn which of the Avengers has powers that use the directional pad and an action button. Another part of the control is the amount of jumping that you’ll be doing and I have to say that there is more jumping and timing needed here than in Super Mario. With that aside, selection of different characters require you navigate an easy to use menu which can be accessed once you’ve unlocked that character for that stage.

Visually, Avengers is somewhat appealing and appears to me to be something along the lines of GI Joe in terms of the character size and what the sprites do as they move. Your characters actions are based on their powers and you’ll find that they are true to the characters that they represent. Captain America throwing the shield across the screen to hit an enemy and Hawkeye shooting his arrows is faithful to the comics and they look as well. Environments are your standard cities and woods with some caverns thrown in for good measure, but like most games from this era, when the action gets too intense, the images tend to break and disappear.

The music of Avengers is pretty much the same from stage to stage with an action tone attached to it that keep you company through the various stages. While I can’t say as though I remember anything important or memorable from the game, the first couple of stages set the mood with upbeat and lifting tunes. The sound effects are limited almost to the point of not being there and you won’t hear anything too impressive. Captain America’s shield swishes just slightly, but Hawkeye doesn’t make any noise with his bow which is a little disappointing in the long run. Something that would have been a little sweeter is to have some explosion effects or even gunfire, none of which I heard anywhere in the game.

Captain America and the Avengers is leaps and bounds above X-Men, but only because the play interface is a little more player friendly and helps ease into the game. Some of the more interesting elements with the character swapping is nice and even the rescuing is great, but the execution of it is off in which you have to return several stages in order to rescue them. Enemies are fairly straight forward to defeat, but some of the jumping is a little off and the fact that you have to find the exit orb is a nice diversion from the straight forward run and jump game play. For those of you looking for something worth playing from the comic book world on the NES, it really doesn’t get much better than this and puts X-Men to shame.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/03