It is your destiny to be disappointed....
posted by IllogicalJ (BROOKLYN, NY) Sep 30, 2011
Member since May 2005
11
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14
gamers (79%) found this review helpful
Mike Carey's a terrific and dark comic book writer, and Silicon Knights have produced some envelope-pushing games, from the bloody good Legacy of Kain to the groundbreaking Eternal Darkness. Their collaboration here, however, is a cheap game, akin to the little-known Fantastic Four film from 1994 which was created simply to maintain the rights to the licensed property.
Aside from extremely outdated graphics and laughably second-tier voice acting, the gameplay itself is awful -- a beat-em up with a heavy and light attack, neither of which appear to work in tandem with the sluggish dodge or wonky jump buttons. You can "modify" your character by equipping X-Genes, and you can level these up with experience earned from the traditional "orbs" you collect from enemies and side-missions, but even when blatantly borrowing from, say, God of War (the original), it's still a step backward.
There are also tons of unforgivable design issues: challenge missions can be undertaken only once, X-Genes are "hidden" down forkable paths that you cannot return to collect if you've explored the other path first, and dialogue cannot be skipped or sped-up (especially troubling for replay as one of the other three characters, or if you're attempting to retry a level). This, coupled with an auto-save, locks you into a frustratingly linear game -- one that's as easy (on the hardest difficulty!) as it is short.
Such a release is shamefully derivative and unoriginal, particularly in the age of Batman: Arkham City and Spider-Man: Edge of Time. It's still better than the unforgivable Superman 64, but that's a pretty dubious honor and about as backhanded as I can get.
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