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IGN Review of Marvel Super Hero Squad
THQ's Marvel Super Hero Squad hit shelves this week, and while all the attention is on developer Blue Tongue's Wii/PS2/PSP release, there's another game out there that holds the same name and general design. Super Hero Squad for DS, developed by tiny third party developer Halfbrick Games, is one seriously odd package, and while there's a laundry list of odd choices and wonky mechanics, I can't help but love the game for what it is, and what it's trying to pull off. That doesn't make it a must-buy product or anything, but for all the strange issues there's also some potential, and I'd bet a few gamers out there will find that glint of charm as well.
The best way to describe Super Hero Squad is to liken it to Treasure's own Tiny Toons: Buster's Bad Dream for Game Boy Advance; it's a game that shouldn't be good, in the end really isn't that good, but has an undeniable level of inherent fun in it . Halfbrick's game is all about a few core concepts, and it embraces them even when it means turning a blind eye to an insane amount of faults. Tiny Toons had that same strange quality to it – it was a game that shouldn't be good, had a fun vibe to it, but then ultimately felt low budget and extremely rough – and the same feeling comes when running through Super Hero Squad's main adventure mode. The entire experience is almost some kind of bizarro world with the Wii/PS2/PSP game. On the other systems, Super Hero Squad has sketchy gameplay, but great presentation. On DS, presentation suffers seriously, but some of the gameplay concepts and combat start to take shape.
The biggest downfall of Super Hero Squad on DS is the extremely basic front end and overall presentation of the package. The interface is extremely ugly – it looks almost temporary – there are loads all over the game, even going as far as to have multiple five second loads mid-mission, and the transitional screens themselves are simply strange. Whenever a load happens, the bottom screen displays straight gray color, and the top screen says "Loading" with a small postage stamp image inside it. These images are either black and white, or extremely low color. To go along with it, music that sounds like a mix of retro themes and actual Game Boy Color chip music plays. It breaks up the experience, but I can't tell you how many times I ran the game around to other editors here in IGN LA just to show them how strange (and oddly entertaining in its own way) it was. These tiny art icons are just so basic, but they've got this odd retro charm that – intended or not – has an almost tongue in cheek feel. You expect certain color sets, art styles, and pacing in DS games; this pushes forward without following any of them, and while there's obvious technical problems to be had, it's impossible to hate it.
Super Hero Squad is also extremely short, offering just a handful of missions that last about two hours or so. It again pushes along in its own eccentric way though, as combat is a mix of Smash Bros and pop-up 2D brawler controls. You've got a "special" button that can perform all your character specific attacks, guys like Magneto can hover jump, Wolverine can double jump, and everyone has different throw and brawler properties. All the mission are amazingly simple, having you make your way from left to right through timed lasers or break apart crates to find the ever-sought-after "red key" (I'm telling you, this game marches to the beat of its own drum) but it works for the younger crowd. And while it's again not necessarily a strong core experience, there's elements of a great game in there, and it had me interested in pushing forward. The pop-up system, for example, works very well. In addition, the character-specific supers are pretty entertaining too, using the touch screen to change them up on the fly, allowing you to tweak the range-vs.-intensity of Magneto's super, aim SpierMan's web sling, or pick the direction of Hulk's huge smash attack. There are some great ideas here, even if the final product is less than impressive.
Where Super Hero Squad really shows its strength – or potential – is in the battle mode. On consoles this arena play style was far from appealing, but on DS the team literally remade Smash Bros. as well as they could. The game only allows for two players at a time (human or computer controlled) but the move sets from the main game all of a sudden make sense. The different supers, throws, jump behaviors, pop-up combos, and muti-directional specials make for a surprisingly fun (but very limited) Smash Bros. experience, complete with item drops for added weapons, instant special attacks, health boosts, and more. You can even throw held weapons and smash out characters just like in Nintendo's own brawler. The game includes three modes of play in battle mode, including regular one-on-one, a mode called Super Weapon where one player tries to destroy a huge world-ending machine while the other defends it until countdown is complete, and King of the Fractal, which has both players battling over an area of the map that awards points for amount of time spent in the zone, similar to king of the mountain. And for all the odd loading issues, amateur presentation and oddball art in the main mode, battle mode is pretty entertaining, and should have been the whole game. If THQ knows what its doing, the company will go back and hire Halfbrick immediately for a sequel, and let the team go full-force at making the Smash Bros. clone. Toss aside all the story mode crap, and let the team do what it apparently knows pretty well; arena-based 2D combat.
©2009-10-21, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The best way to describe Super Hero Squad is to liken it to Treasure's own Tiny Toons: Buster's Bad Dream for Game Boy Advance; it's a game that shouldn't be good, in the end really isn't that good, but has an undeniable level of inherent fun in it . Halfbrick's game is all about a few core concepts, and it embraces them even when it means turning a blind eye to an insane amount of faults. Tiny Toons had that same strange quality to it – it was a game that shouldn't be good, had a fun vibe to it, but then ultimately felt low budget and extremely rough – and the same feeling comes when running through Super Hero Squad's main adventure mode. The entire experience is almost some kind of bizarro world with the Wii/PS2/PSP game. On the other systems, Super Hero Squad has sketchy gameplay, but great presentation. On DS, presentation suffers seriously, but some of the gameplay concepts and combat start to take shape.
The biggest downfall of Super Hero Squad on DS is the extremely basic front end and overall presentation of the package. The interface is extremely ugly – it looks almost temporary – there are loads all over the game, even going as far as to have multiple five second loads mid-mission, and the transitional screens themselves are simply strange. Whenever a load happens, the bottom screen displays straight gray color, and the top screen says "Loading" with a small postage stamp image inside it. These images are either black and white, or extremely low color. To go along with it, music that sounds like a mix of retro themes and actual Game Boy Color chip music plays. It breaks up the experience, but I can't tell you how many times I ran the game around to other editors here in IGN LA just to show them how strange (and oddly entertaining in its own way) it was. These tiny art icons are just so basic, but they've got this odd retro charm that – intended or not – has an almost tongue in cheek feel. You expect certain color sets, art styles, and pacing in DS games; this pushes forward without following any of them, and while there's obvious technical problems to be had, it's impossible to hate it.
Super Hero Squad is also extremely short, offering just a handful of missions that last about two hours or so. It again pushes along in its own eccentric way though, as combat is a mix of Smash Bros and pop-up 2D brawler controls. You've got a "special" button that can perform all your character specific attacks, guys like Magneto can hover jump, Wolverine can double jump, and everyone has different throw and brawler properties. All the mission are amazingly simple, having you make your way from left to right through timed lasers or break apart crates to find the ever-sought-after "red key" (I'm telling you, this game marches to the beat of its own drum) but it works for the younger crowd. And while it's again not necessarily a strong core experience, there's elements of a great game in there, and it had me interested in pushing forward. The pop-up system, for example, works very well. In addition, the character-specific supers are pretty entertaining too, using the touch screen to change them up on the fly, allowing you to tweak the range-vs.-intensity of Magneto's super, aim SpierMan's web sling, or pick the direction of Hulk's huge smash attack. There are some great ideas here, even if the final product is less than impressive.
Where Super Hero Squad really shows its strength – or potential – is in the battle mode. On consoles this arena play style was far from appealing, but on DS the team literally remade Smash Bros. as well as they could. The game only allows for two players at a time (human or computer controlled) but the move sets from the main game all of a sudden make sense. The different supers, throws, jump behaviors, pop-up combos, and muti-directional specials make for a surprisingly fun (but very limited) Smash Bros. experience, complete with item drops for added weapons, instant special attacks, health boosts, and more. You can even throw held weapons and smash out characters just like in Nintendo's own brawler. The game includes three modes of play in battle mode, including regular one-on-one, a mode called Super Weapon where one player tries to destroy a huge world-ending machine while the other defends it until countdown is complete, and King of the Fractal, which has both players battling over an area of the map that awards points for amount of time spent in the zone, similar to king of the mountain. And for all the odd loading issues, amateur presentation and oddball art in the main mode, battle mode is pretty entertaining, and should have been the whole game. If THQ knows what its doing, the company will go back and hire Halfbrick immediately for a sequel, and let the team go full-force at making the Smash Bros. clone. Toss aside all the story mode crap, and let the team do what it apparently knows pretty well; arena-based 2D combat.
©2009-10-21, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved