Fantastic 4

"On the whole, it's a more positive experience than watching the movie its based on."

The first thing that comes to mind when I play this game is, “It looks like the movie.” They've captured the essence of the film, for better or worse, and extended it by giving them extra adventures. Actually, to be fair, playing this game is less embarrassing than seeing the movie.


Graphics – 7/10

There's very little to complain about here aside from the character designs on some of the foes being sillier than I'd have liked. Moleman's raggedy sweatshirt makes him seem more like he's crawled up from a basement after an all night D&D session than from the bowels of the Earth. The graphics are clear for the most part, except in some of the darker areas where cliffs can be difficult to perceive. I tumbled off an unseen precipice in the Aztec Temple level numerous times. The Four themselves are all very expressive, speaking as a fan of the comic book series, their special attacks can be pretty cool to see go into effect.

Gameplay – 6/10

Name the first thing you expect in a game called Fantastic Four. If you said “Four Player mode” you've already figured out something that Activision didn't. It would take an adaptor to do it, but the game doesn't feel quite right without one. Not only that, the game often puts only two of the four onscreen, reserving the entire team for mostly bosses. There's a two player co-op mode; however it has a few fault. You both have to fight for camera control and the second player is really punished during the intro stages where only one of the Four is active, as they have to control a generic robot and don't get to practice their moves (which is where the move practice arena you can select from the main menu comes in, I suppose.)

For most of the game you go through various stages separated by cutscenes (which do an adequate job of representing the movie despite in-game scenes wanting you to press X to advance them constantly) and pound on the minions of various Fantastic Four foes, such as the Moleman, Diablo, and Doom himself (There's even a couple unlock, although fairly short ones). Each of the Four has various special moves including a couple of ultimate specials, and you can execute a couple of simple combos with button pushes. All of these are fairly simple to pull off, and further simplified by having each character use the same input sequences. There are a lot of foes thrown at you, so the efficient controls are really needed. Mowing down enemies with Thing or tossing fireballs with Human Torch feels consistently smooth and workable.

There's also a cosmic meter that goes down when you use special skills (Think: MP) and refills slowly when you don't (or grab blue items dropped by defeated foes) and you get a general idea how battle works. It leaves Sue as weaker, however, since she depends on her moves for combat and they use so much cosmic; on the other hand, the Human Torch could throw fireballs all day without a significant cosmic decrease. If any of this sounds familiar, it's because the Xmen Legends games have been reviewed as quite similar to this game; in short, it doesn't innovate much, but it chose a good game to crib off of.

While the fighting works well for the most part, whenever platforming elements are introduced, it breaks down some. The jumping is imprecise, and the camera fights you the entire time, spinning towards walls and refusing to move towards the center. And don't even try to do this in co-op mode; you both have to jump simultaneously or risk being so far apart you can't progress. This ironically means that I had a more fun time playing the unlockable Survival arena levels than the stages themselves; in these arenas just bash wave after wave of spawned opponents. It's too bad you have to unlock this and other bonuses by finding the “F4 secrets” hidden in the stages themselves, because it was easily my favorite part.

The final thing of note is how, as you go further, you earn points that can be used to upgrade moves that have been unlocked (as you go along, moves unlock on their own) and acquire pictures, interviews with the movie cast, and “sample” comic pages (IE: the first 6 or so pages of the first 5 issues way too small to read on most TVs), giving you a reason to replay the game if you're so inclined. While you can replay worlds to earn more of the secret items, you can't select individual stages in each one, making more backtracking necessary than is strictly fun. Even the way you unlock bonuses is strange: you have to pause an active game and use a menu there to do so, yet you can only use your bonuses from the title screen menu.

There are also brief mini games that activate when for certain events. For example, Reed hacks into a console, or Ben lifts a heavy door or other such events (noted by glowing panels on the ground). Sometimes they can have fun effects like pulling down a fire escape a foe is hiding on, but most of the time they just feel like busy work. The hacking game is so simple, and any game involving rotating a control stick ends so quickly I found myself wondering why they even bothered to add it.


Story – 7/10

The story here is basically the story of the film with more villains thrown at you; if you liked the movie, you're going to see it represented here, if somewhat piecemeal. The cutscenes try to summarize the film, but it feels compressed and bends over backwards sometimes to fit in the new levels; Moleman just sort of appears, for example. They do have the actors from the movie playing their respective roles, which helps you get into it . I've always been partial to the Fantastic Four, as noted above, so I still enjoyed watching the video game introduction of more Fantastic Four foes. One question worth noting is: How many times can one woman get in trouble? We must have saved Alicia six times during the course of the game.

Sound – 7/10

The music was mostly forgettable, but I enjoyed when the characters spoke to one another, and the battle noises were effective. Obviously, the cutscenes were fully voiced; it's good to see how far we've come even in movie-licensed games with them.

Overall-

Even with the minor RPG elements like getting new moves and increasing your cosmic bar, this game is basically a 3D brawler. It has far more in common with Final Fight than Zelda, and doesn't really add anything to the genre. However, it does help show that movie licensed games can be decent: even if it does borrow most of it's positive elements from other games; making this far from an essential purchase for anyone but extreme fans of the four. It's a 7/10 for a serious Fantastic Four fan like me, and 6/10 for anyone else. I recommend taking a friend into Survival mode and competing for kills; it's easily the biggest time killer in the game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/06/08

Game Release: Fantastic 4 (US, 06/27/05)