Fantastic Four

"Yet another bad comic book to video game translation"

This has got to be one of the worst games I ever played on the PS. How in the world did this game ever pass any quality standards? Acclaim's Fantastic Four plays like a water downed Final Fight. There are 5 characters: Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, Thing, Invisible Woman, and She hulk. All the fighters are a bit different in term of attacks, speed, and strength but not by much.


Graphics:
The graphics are decent, you can recognize the characters easily and the pseudo 3D look is nice. The animation is a bit stiff and the enemies you fight are far too repetitive. 6/10

Music and Sound:
The music is tolerable for the first few minutes in a stage but it gets really annoying fast. 5/10

Gameplay:
Alright, you pick a FF member and punch and kick your way through the streets to stop the Mole Man. At first it's pretty fun, by the second stage its torture. Beat-em ups have always been on the repetitive side but this game is ridiculous! You will fight the same the 2 or 3 versions of enemies over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until you just can't take it anymore. What's worse is that moves that have become standard in these type of games, like grabbing enemies and comboing them, aren't available here.
The good news is that since the load times are so long you can play fun little mini-game where you race around a track against three other racers, each representing players 1-4. The control is great, you can easily turn corners and you can shoot a bullet (or something) to stun your opponents. You keep racing until you someone hits start to go to the main game or you complete a certain amount of laps. This is actually more fun than the main game!
Fantastic Four 3/10 Mini-game 5/10

Replay Value:
I can't lie, this game can be fun for a quick few minutes of gameplay its just that the game becomes so repetitive that it makes you wonder if the developers actually cared what they put in the game. 4/10

Story:
I think Dr. Doom is assembling all these super villains to take over the world, I don't really know. You won't notice a story anyway. 4/10

Overall:
This game is really bad and that's a shame because this could have been an excellent arcade type brawler like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but somewhere along the line Acclaim messed it up. Not worth a purchase, even for die-hard Fantastic Four fans. 3/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/16/00, Updated 04/26/01