G4TV

To the person who stood by thinking hopefully that any games based on the already middling Fantastic 4 movies would be good, we extend our condolences. To everyone else, we shrug and heave forth a hearty, “Well, what else is new?” 2K Games has the reins of the latest movie-based license, and if nothing else, it’s clear that they put just as much thought and effort into the Rise of the Silver Surfer games as, say, Activision put into the Shrek movie-license spinoff games.

Rise Above the Beatings!

The Rise of the Silver Surfer is clearly trying to take after the X-Men: Legend and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games, yet somehow manages to miss the mark almost entirely. Where those games had a great array of characters and interesting levels, villains, and storylines, Fantastic 4 just feels asleep at the wheel. The game takes the general overall plot of the movie and expands on it, as the team travels all over the world to find the cause of the global disturbances. At first, optimism arises for a merely standard and possibly even vaguely entertaining game, but the flaws set in fast.

Apparently, all super heroes can do is beat stuff up, despite the fact that Reed Richard’s true super powers are his incredible IQ and scientific abilities. Ever wanted to run around bland levels and punch stuff for about six hours straight? How about pointlessly switching between four characters who all just… punch stuff? Calling Rise of the Silver Surfer a mindless brawler is an understatement. All you do is trudge through rooms, beating up hapless stupid bad guys, find a switch, and move on.

Stupor Heroes!

Regularly, you’ll have to switch to a specific character to use their special power to overcome a hackneyed obstacle. Another problem is that you’ll really only need to use The Thing and the Human Torch for the grunt work. Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman simply aren’t useful thanks to limited strength and moves in combat. Strangely, on the Wii, the Human Torch is more playable than on the PS3, since he’s always in flame mode, flies around above the floor, and shoots fireballs constantly.

Another major issue is the AI of your teammates. Although the Wii version has noticeably more aggressive team AI than the PS3 version, these guys are seldom a step above useless. If they die, they’ll just respawn in 30 seconds, so it’s hard to make a fatal mistake because of their stupidity. There are also not enough checkpoints. If for some reason the entire team does perish, you’ll have to slog through the same territory again. A further throwback to the old days is an inability to save your progress midway through a level.

Team Work

On the plus side, you’ll have access to the whole team through most of the game. You can switch between them at will, or when you need a specific character’s powers, and better yet, up to four players can play cooperatively. The game also throws in some quick and dirty Wii controls, by letting you perform super moves with motion controls.

Although the Wii version follows essentially the same plot and general design as the PS3 version, they aren’t the same game. Both are similar, but on the Wii, the game has a more isometric look and feel—and the overall gameplay feels even more out of date. Although each level has a specific theme—underground volcano lair, Shanghai, the Himalayas, and more—the actual level designs are painfully lacking in variety. The visuals are muddy and uninspired, but there are some decent flame and other special effects. Character designs are unimpressive and sometimes outright unattractive, and the entire game looks like a weak PS2 game. Reasonable facsimiles of the film actors were used to do the voice work, though most of the actual dialogue is amazingly lame.

Un-Fantastic

This is a simply another lame attempt to attract young fans and unknowing parents to buy something based on the license. Rise of the Silver Surfer has all the gameplay value of a bad Streets of Rage clone.

Article by: Jason D’Aprile