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Fantastic Four
By Chris
Green
Have you ever dreamt of fighting
alongside a super hero? Better yet, alongside one of the members
of the Fantastic 4? Your dreams have been answered by Activison
in the form of its new video game, based on the Marvel-sanctioned
Hollywood movie.
Fantastic 4 is structured like a traditional action game, meaning
you'll progress through a series of stages, facing enemies, mini-bosses,
and end bosses as you progress toward the ultimate boss.
The main game is split between 10 story missions, each of which
is made up of a series of sub-missions.
At any given time, you'll either control one, two, or all characters
of the group. This all depends on the mission or sequence.
Boss fights usually feature all four heroes, for example, while
less intense situations will feature only one or two. You can switch
between available characters dynamically using the D Pad, with the
CPU handling fellow team-mates in your absence, not unlike the X-Men
Legends RPG.
During the course of play, you'll have control over as all the
characters from the comic books, including Reed “Mr Fantastic”
Richards, Sue “The Invisible Women” Storm, Ben “The
Thing” Grimm or even Johnny “The Human Torch” Storm.
And the best part? You can take advantage of all of their abilities.
Check it out:
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Mr. Fantastic (Intelligence): Use your ability to stretch
in order to attack from a distance, squeeze into tight spaces
and reach places no one else can. Use your brainpower to hack
computers, override security systems and take control of your
enemy's weapons.
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The Invisible Girl (Stealth): Become invisible and perform
stealth moves with ninja-like speed or immobilise enemies through
telekinetic powers and sneak into areas not available to others.
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The Human Torch (Fire): Create walls of fire and supernova
fireballs as you hover above the ground, or shoot fire from
your fingertips and bend flames as you ward off enemies.
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The Thing (Strength): Use brute force to pick up heavy
objects or tear them apart, break through walls and obstacles
and to obliterate your enemies.
This system actually works very well and never gets in the way
of the action. Switching heroes is fast, easy and intuitive, just
as it should be. This is one of the features which I really had
a lot of fun with. For instance you could be using Mr Fantastic
to pummel an enemy from a fair distance away with his stretcho arms,
and then you can switch to The Thing to finish him off with a devastating
flying elbow drop.
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The four major statistics - strenght,
intelligence,
stealth, fire - combine well in situations like these
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Not a small game by any means, each sub-mission requires you to
complete tasks in three categories – Main Goals, Bonus Goals
and F4 icons.
The main goals are the tasks which you have to complete to finish
the levels; if you don’t do one then you will fail the level
and will have to start again. These goals include things like opening
a door to the next sub-mission, killing the boss, activating switches
and even saving prisoners.
The bonus goals are tasks that, if completed, will help you gain
more money for the bonus items that you can unlock and gain more
health for the next missions. It doesn’t matter if you don’t
complete these goals, because they don’t affect the main story
in any way, they are just extra goals to make the levels more interesting
and challenging.
Personally I preferred to try and complete these bonus goals because
it meant I could then stay in the level for a longer time and take
more pride in completing the game.
After earning points and money for moves, passing of levels, etc,
you can upgrade each characters' moves to make them more powerful
than before. This feature is quite cool, as it can ensure that even
a little fire ball from Johnny the Fire Freak is powerful enough
to destroy an opponent in just one or two shots.
In addition to the special move upgrades, if you land enough blows
and manage to avoid losing any health for a period of time, you
will be permitted to use one special move at a time, and you may
choose which character will use it.
When these moves are initiated the character becomes super-human
and can destroy any opponent in one or two blows. If you use Reed,
for an example, he will roll around in a wheel-type design and smash
through opponents like a wrecking ball, destroying them outright.
You only have about 30 seconds to use these special moves, which
is enough time to plough through 20 or so enemies.
Also there are Ultimate Moves. Usually, you get to use one move
at the end of a level that is useful in the taking down and finishing
off that levels main boss. But rather than just initiating this
Ultimate Moves, you must actually best a mini game, where you have
to press buttons in an allotted space.
Though combat is a major part of this action game, there's more
to Fantastic 4 than just brawling. In between the fighting (and
sometimes during) you'll need to solve puzzles and play mini-games,
both of which are imbedded into the main game. These can include
Reed’s “Create the F4 icon” mini-game where have
to move three sets of lines together to create the F4 icon in about
20 seconds.
You then have Johnny’s “Tap and Hold X” mini-game
where you have to fill up a bar in 5 seconds by pressing and holding
the “X” button numerous times, which does wonders for
gamepad longevity. Then Sue’s “Rotate Left Joystick”
mini-game, where just like Johnny’s, in 5 seconds you have
to fill up a bar by rotating the Left Joystick. Finally there's
Ben’s “Tap X” mini-game. Just like Johnny’s
and Sue’s you have 5 seconds to fill up a bar by tapping the
“X” button.
There's also a nifty co-operative 2-player option that can be a
lot of fun, assuming you play with someone of equal or better skill
levels than your own. The boss fights are memorable too, with villains
such as the Moleman, Blastaar and of course Dr. Doom making for
some fun finales.
I would recommend this game to people who love beat 'em up games
based on comic books or cartoons - it has a certain smoothness to
the graphics that really makes it stand out. And if you feel like
some clear cut, no nonsense action gaming, you won't be disappointed.
Game: Fantastic 4
System: PS2
Players: 2
Online: No
Developer: 7
Studios
Distributor: Activision
Rating: 75%
(Ratings
Key/Explanation)
Fantastic Four is on the shelves now.
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