Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Wii) Review
Posted by Jay Bryant on 07.31.2007
Not so fantastic...
It is summer time again which means the floodgate of mostly mediocre summer flicks opens on the anxiously awaiting public. Along with these movies come the video games loosely based on said movies. We’ve already seen the disaster which was Spider-Man 3: The Game, and for round two we’ll travel back into the Marvel universe with the super hero celebrities known as the Fantastic Four.
First Impression
2k studios presumes that if you’re playing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer you have either watched the movie already, or at least know its plot. Why do I say this? Because the opening sequence has the FF team talking about events that the game does not show. Once the dialog ends you begin the in-game tutorial. The tutorial is a nice introduction to what seems to be pretty good controls, and once it’s over, the real game begins. When you meet up with your first hoard of enemies it gets really hectic, that coupled with learning new controls for each of the four main characters (only two of which share the same controls for their basic power move) makes the beginning of this game slightly overwhelming. You’ll die (all four of you) a few times before you make it past the first level. It’s just that difficult.
Graphics
This game is has mediocre graphics at best. The character models are just o.k. on the Wii, nothing spectacular. There is a lot of in-battle dialog, and when they start talking, portraits of the characters appear at the bottom of the screen. Johnny Storm has never looked so bad. It’s like they put a red tint on his model and added random burst of yellow for a flame effect. The environments are nice. You begin underground and travel around the world, but none of the levels are exactly vibrant.
Sound
No one, absolutely no one from the movie reprises their role in the game. The voice actors they hired, of course, sound enough like the cast that it isn’t very obvious that it is not the movie cast. I read that Jessica Alba didn’t even allow her likeness to be used for the game, but the model they used looked a lot like her so I don’t know if that’s true or not. They use a lot of dialog in the game. Each character stays true to their on film persona. During battles you’ll hear whichever character you’re controlling spew out random lines of combat dialog. The random combat dialog can get very repetitive and at times doesn’t make sense. Outside of combat the FF team will speak to each other in order to further the story, so for a game that doesn’t feature the movie cast you hear a lot of talking.
Controls
Fantastic Four has less than fantastic controls. I have to give 2k studios their credit, they did try to incorporate the motion controls in a different way than any other game I’ve played on the Wii, but what seems like a good idea at first comes out to be a big headache later. You control your characters movement with the control stick on the nunchuk of course, the “A” button is the attack button, you switch characters with the directional pad of the Wii remote (or you can hold a directional button and point to the character you want to use which seems like it’s just an excuse to point at the screen during the game), the “C” button blocks, and the “B” button along with various motions is used for your power moves. The thing I liked about the controls was the combo system. All you do is repeatedly press “A” for a combo, but at the end (When you’re controlling Mr. Fantastic or The Thing) you have the chance to enhance the damage you put out by making motions with the Wii remote and nunchuk. With the Human Torch and the Invisible Woman, all you do is shake the Wii remote and the nunchuck like you’re playing the drums which will start their respective attacks and after about three seconds it will end with really fast fireballs or a big focused force field attack respectively. As you see the combos aren’t that hard at all and will be used more than anything else throughout the game. Things take a turn for the worse once you level up and get more attacks. The higher the level of the Fantastic Four, the more motion controls you have to memorize for each team member. I found myself wanting to pull off a power move, but once it came time to do the motion, I had to ask myself, “Do I push forward with both controllers tilted towards each other or away from each other? Do I make a clapping motion or a drumming motion? Do I throw the Wii remote at the TV or the nunchuk?” With enough time you can eventually memorize the motions, but with such uninspiring gameplay you won’t play the game long enough to memorize them. My biggest disappointment of the game is trying to pull off the fusion attacks. The way the tutorial explains it, once an enemy is airborne one of the portraits of the Fantastic Four will light up and you switch to that character and make an uppercut motion with the Wii remote which will start the fusion attack… that never happened once while I played the game.
Gameplay
2k Studios did a great job making sure every member of the team is used throughout each level. The most evident example of this would be the different ways you can open doors. In some levels you even have to use 2-3 characters to open one door. 2k Studios dropped the ball when it came to the difficulty. Since you have a team of four you’re always going to be going against 10 or more enemies at once. The AI is okay about attacking other enemies, but will often die with at least two teammates in any given battle. With the way the levels are designed you can’t afford to be without any member of the time for any period of time, so after any particular character dies, they will first transport to the Baxter Building then eventually rejoin you in battle. You would think the fairly quick respawn of characters would make the game easier but it doesn’t. It’s almost like they don’t come back fast enough even though they’re not gone long at all. Besides the difficulty, the repetitiveness of each level makes the game get boring quickly. 2k Studio’s did a fantastic job in giving the team a variety of moves and personality. It’s just a shame that they couldn’t apply that kind of variety to the levels as well.
Lasting Appeal
Just like most other movie games Fantastic Four has a few extras you can unlock including comic book covers and different costumes. Outside of collecting coins the extras, you’re not given much reason to play through the game more then once. In fact the only thing that will get you to finish the game is not wanting to feel cheated out of the $50 you spent on it.
The 411
Avoid this game, plain and simple. It is definitely one of the worst movie games I’ve played. While there are moments where it glimmers a little bit, they are few and far between. I’d tell you to save $20 and buy Resident Evil 4 on the Wii, but I’m sure you’ve already done that. If you’re just itching for good movie based games on the Wii though, I’d suggest The Godfather: Blackhand Edition, or Scarface: The World is Yours. They’re fantastic games based on classic movies as apposed to a bad game based on a barely mediocre movie.
Graphics
4.0
Everything is pretty bland from the characters to the levels
Gameplay
5.0
Repetitive levels and a pretty hard difficulty are a bad mix
Sound
6.0
Nothing special, but I can appreciate how well the dialog is incorporated into the levels
Lasting Appeal
4.0
You'll only play it until the end if you like the game, and considering you won't like it...
