Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects User Reviews

The Writer
from , ,

Jun 4, 2008

THE GOOD:
The Imperfects are a decent cast of characters, fun to play when bored, good storyline, good party game, not much of a learning curve, extra content is entertaining.

THE BAD:
Button-masher, AI is cheap, story mode is biased against the player, a lot of the characters are either broken or cheap, you'll probably stop playing before you even finish the game, repetitive bonus matches, not much fun in playing Solo Versus, Online play is useless because EA nation is down.

SUMMARY:
Ahh, Marvel Nemesis. The idea of this game- a superhero fighter in the same vein as Power Stone- sounds like a good idea on paper. But when it is utilized, it quickly becomes a test to see which player can press the square button the most.

Let's start with the story. Just like the gameplay, the story mode is a novel contest at first, but about halfway through the story mode, it begins to take increasingly desperate measures to prevent you from passing the stages. The boss fights aren't very different. They usually have some kind of inane catch added on to them that will leave you throwing your controller at the TV by the time you complete them. The plot in itself, however, is very good.

Now on to the actual gameplay. Like I've said above, the gameplay is quite shallow. You get one button to attack, one to guard, one to grab, and one to jump. There are also power and agility buttons added in for extra gameplay mechanics. They only slightly deepen the gameplay though, because there are few context-sensitive attacks, and there are only two basic combos. One juggles the opponent, one blows them back. The aforementioned agility button only serves the purpose of getting around (as you can tell), but attacks can be done out of that as well. However, they do not extend beyond simple lunge attacks.

I realize that so far, I've only been mostly pointing out the game's negatives. However, there is good in this, as well. The graphics are good (not exactly Gran Turismo 4 quality, but good), the game is good to play with friends, and the comic books are fun to collect and read, especially if you're a Marvel fan. I haven't gotten to the online yet, because EA Nation is down.

All in all, this had a chance to be a good game, but the frustrating gameplay and story, and the faulty character roster (The Thing doesn't even say his classic "It's clobbering time!" line, what's up with that?) really killed the game for me. Really, I recommend renting it over buying it.