CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL REVIEW

I’m sure that you guys are tired of me bitching about terrible games so I thought I would give you a break. This also gets me away from playing the terrible games with some awesome Marvel characters that most us nerds have grown up with. The Marvel games have come a long way since the original x-men (1989) game on the NES (yes, I have played that too). Its view is still top down but, game play, story line, and graphics have come a long way.

This is a party game for sure. It’s good that you can play this online as well. The only problem is that if you really want to have fun with the game you do want to try and unlock as many characters as possible although you do start off with a bunch of characters that you would almost always never say no to. But, they do give you enough characters from marvel to choose from so you can customize your own team. On to the game!

When you start the game you go right to a cut scene just like any other game that wants to get you hooked. Thor, Spiderman, Wolverine, and Captain America show up and CA starts issuing orders. Wolverine tells him to stuff it and starts owning his attackers in his own psychotic way. Thor spends too much time talking for my taste but easily owns whatever he touches. Spiderman keeps his smart-alec comments going the entire time with awesome acrobatics. CA keeps his wits about him while he is outnumbered but, turns the tide quickly with his skills. The cut scene ends with wolverine laughing while he flies his hi-jacked craft into another bunch of enemies. While they all consider him psycho, Wolverine thinks they are all being pansies. Yeah give me you’re healing factor and indestructible bone structure and I’ll start doing the same. Show off!

Now for story line and game play they dumb down a lot of what the heroes can and can not do as well as what the enemies can do to the heroes. I mean really, Thor could probably take out Bullseye with his pinky. Enemies that should not be able to hurt certain heroes (Hulk and Thor come to mind here) or not be touched at all (Spiderman)

You start off as a 4 man team consisting of Spiderman, Wolverine, Captain America, and Thor. To me it is not a bad set up and if you want to play this team go for it, I will be changing characters as soon as possible though. This is a top down game so most of the fights you will be viewing from above. I keep wolverine (cause lets face it, he is a bad ass) and Spiderman (one of my favorites). I add Deadpool for the one-liners and boost that he gives the team. Also a good backup to wolverine for my play style since they both have healing factors and it helps me stay alive a little longer when needed. I also add a strong man and boost his focus. Since I did not spend the $8 up front and buy the heroes and villains pack right away I went with the Thing. I ended up purchasing it later which I should have done in the first place since I like the Hulk way more and it gives up Cyclops and Nightcrawler (2 of my favorite x men) so I don’t have to play Storm (yes Hale Berry ruined her for me and anyone of you cum gobblers that think X-Men 3: The Last Stand is a good movie go jump off a cliff) to complete an X-Man team.

You also have the ability to find out existing hidden teams in the game. New FF4, Assassins, X-Men, Avengers, New Avengers, Fantastic 4 and other teams are there when you put together the right bunch of characters. As you can probably tell just by the names you can get away with wolverine in almost all of the teams. Too bad his movie sucked too. Yeah that’s right I said it, what are you going to do about it?

You can also create your own team and even have a back up roster. So the first thing you do, when you get a chance to, is to set up that team roster. That way you get passive bonuses to your team such as increased XP, Striking, and health increases. If you want you can round out your crew pretty nicely (flyer, energy user, tank, and bruiser) or just stack your team how you want to. I did the do what I want route.

The missions are all the same thing. Go to the end of the level and kick the crap out of the end guy there. Usually you have 3 or 4 minor bad guys in-between. For those that follow the Marvel universe you see a LOT of selection throughout the game of where they picked their bad guys from. There are a ton of enemies from Spiderman’s crew: the Scorpion, The Shocker, The Rhino, and Mysterio but, no major ones like Doc Oc, Green Goblin, or Venom (Carnage would have been GREAT in the story line). Same thing with the X-Men maybe an enemy or two from their story lines (gladiator and Deathbird) but not squat for enemies in there: Magneto, Apocalypse, Omega Red, Mojo, or Mr. Sinister. All of these would have been great additions to the story line.

Don’t get me wrong, the story line is great. Dr. Doom has set up this super villain team called the Masters of Evil. Loki, Ultron, Baron Mordo, and Enchantress make up the brains of the operation while they hire out to the saps like Bullseye, The Shocker, Arcade and even misdirect you to Mandarin. I just think they could have had some better Saps if not some more decent enemies to knock around and would have given more of an excuse to get the X-Men in the fight (not like there was not reason enough but still . . .).

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL REVIEW

To start off I am not a huge Star Wars fan as far as games go. There are very few of them out there that can catch my eye but, the ones that do are usually good game play and a good story line (Bounty Hunter (GC) and The Clone Wars (XBox). The good news is that this game is nothing different to report on game play or story line although some things are predictable.

Probably the best part of this game is when it takes place. The rebellion has not started but, the empire is slowly spreading their iron grip across the universe. Darth Vader is going around wiping out any and all Jedi that he knows of. . .and he starts at the Wookiee home world of Kashyyk. Now for those that have not played the game I will be telling all so if you just want my rankings just go to the end. Of course after you whip though the army of Wookies that throw themselves at you (don’t forget to kill 200 of them for your achievement) you arrive at an unknown Jedi’s hut and commence beating him down. Vader senses that he is not the Jedi he seeks and wants to know where his master is. Of course the Jedi tries to protect the identity of this unknown Jedi and then dies. Vader then gets surprised by none other than a kid about 2 years old. The troopers come in to dispense of this kid and Vader saves him! Ok ruthless, heartless Vader: are you going soft on me?

Years pass and this kid is twisted! He thinks that he is going to take out the Emperor with Vaders help where Vader is just using him to take out Jedi’s he does not want to face. Vader sets up some missions for him, so of course Vader lets the kid know that if he is captured he is on his own. He is not to let anyone live, Clones or Rebels. He also must prove his worth and is sent to go kill Jedi. The First one being General Rahm Kota.

Now after you (Starkiller) get jumped by Obi Wan (who is really your sparring partner (PROXY) who is programmed to kill you when it does not interfere with a mission) on your way to your ship and to meet your new pilot. you know the 7th pilot that Vader hasn’t killed yet. This time it’s a woman, Juno Eclipse. And of course he is a little intimidated by her and really doesn’t know how to talk to her without sounding retarded (you know like all men get around women they want to impress). She of course walks in when PROXY is imitating her. Embarrassed he puts on the tough guy act and they get to work. She is left out of the loop on most things. Starkiller gets his orders by Vader (through PROXY) and she gets told where to go. Of course with her background it does not take a lot of skill to know that they are hunting Jedi.

Here after going through Wookies and watching some cut scenes you get your first break and get to train. PROXY narrates commands that you are supposed to do with the force push or pull which is pretty normal. But later on in the game you get to combine actions that make the game fun to play while finding new ways to dispatch your enemy. Force grab getting you down? Try force grab over the edge bitch!

The missions are pretty much predictable. You find the Jedi hiding at the end of the level and kill him / her. Each mission you get new ways to fight and combine your powers into lethal combos. That guy shot you from so far away, get him back by throwing that 1 ton box on his head. That will make him think twice. If you are not fighting Jedi or Cannon fodder you are meeting people that you recognize from other movies, saving planets from enslavement, having a button sequence for mini bosses, or pulling down star destroyers.

As you continue hunting down the Jedi you find characters that you know from other movies (Shaak Ti), Jedi that you might know of (Maris Brood), and unheard of Jedi (Kazdan Paratus), and thanks to PROXY you get to see and fight Darth Maul.

Back to the story line. As you guess by now you take down your first Jedi General Kota and present his saber to your master Lord Vader. He sends you on another mission to take down Kazdan Paratus and then to take on the Jedi Master Shaak Ti. Of course with all of the excitement Starkiller has gotten sloppy and the Emperor finds out and pay you and Vader a surprise visit. You, being incredibly naive think that now is your chance to take down the Emperor. Unfortunate for you because you end up with a saber in your back and tossed out the window into the blackness of space. “AW, how sweet Vader, and I thought you didn’t care.”

The story doesn’t end there and neither does the missions that Vader has for you. wait a sec, this guy who raised you to assassinate the Emperor abandons you at first chance and kills you and you are willing to go on more missions for him?!?! You agree but, you save your pilots life before going on. Your mission now is to form a rebellion of the strongest opposer of the Emperor’s rule.

The first thing you do is look up a Jedi you might not have destroyed. Turns out you were right and you employ General Kota as your new mentor. You continue your missions by either saving people like Bail Organa and Princess Leia or destroying Imperial manufacturers. Here is where they are trying to save space on the disk because you are now fighting in the same places (like Felucia). Right before you get together the Rebel leaders you are contacted by Vader. you let him know when and where but, this time Juno catches your broadcast. She then speaks for the gamer letting him know that he is out of his mind and someday he will have to decide between the two.

Yeah well no words ring truer there is what happens next. Vader shows up with some clones to capture the leaders and make examples of them, and, for good measure, tries to kill you again. This time PROXY tries to save you by imitating Obi Wan and Vader makes short work of him and leaves you for dead.

It’s time to prove yourself. Vader has betrayed you more than you care to remember, tricked you, used you, and killed you. Are you going to let him get away with that? That’s right its time for you to pull down some righteous judgment on him and free the rebel leaders. With a good luck kiss from Juno its time to go. Of course when making an entrance you need to do this with style and what says style than dressing yourself in some noble Jedi robes and free falling into a Fighter bay full of Clones?

Finally after going though the constructing death star you get to Vader and get to work him over. After beating Vader down you start feeling pretty confident about yourself you decide to take the Emperor on too.

***Spoiler*** seriously, if you don’t want to know the end skip this part ***
After beating down the Emperor, Vader shows up with a bunch of troopers to take you down. You have of course freed the prisoners and are the only one that can put up a fight to make sure the Rebel leaders get out alive. Of course by this time the Emperor has regained his strength and now you face him again. The second round with them proves fatal for you but, the Rebel leaders make it out. Now, I can understand that he frees the Rebel leaders then fights the Emperor and dies but, if I were to take out the Emperor, I would take his head for good measure while I could. But, you let him live for you to die. Out of the entire story that is the worst part of it.

Gameplay throughout the game is awesome. The skills seem to build upon one another and you seem to unlock new ways to dispatch your enemies every level; from stopping a flying TIE Fighter and throwing it into troopers or other TIE Fighters, to charging your light saber with electricity and throwing it into some Rancor’s skull.

This game is really easy to run and gun through. I would suggest taking your time, check out the scenery, and find some secrets before you run your light saber through that trooper your are force grabbing (yes, you can grab a trooper, throw your light saber into them, then toss them into another trooper).

The Graphics are pretty smooth and it should be for how short the game is. They do use 3 different game engines to effect the environment though so, just because you throw a box at a trooper does not mean the next trooper is stupid enough to stand in the same spot. It also causes the game to be huge so that means the game play will be short.

There is not too much to report on sound. The music is the normal stuff you expect from a Star Wars and the sound placements are good.

Replay is excellent. After you beat the normal mode you have the option of going to hard, then to Jedi and I think to Jedi Master but, I like my 360 and I am content with beating it how I did. I would not mind at all to pick it back up when I need a break from other games just to change around how my saber looks and go kick the crap out of a few troopers. This is defiantly a game worth keeping just for the replay value.

Story was good. The reason it is not great is because of the simple fact that this guy did not bring Vader or the Emperor down when he had a chance and it looks like he was written so he would fail, not actually beat them and let them live.

You can play this over every consol so even you PS jockeys have your choice of how you want to play it: PSP, PS2, and PS3 are all available to you. Even the Wii gets in on the action but, I don’t know how it would play out. I can suggest to the reader to get this game. Here are my scores:

Graphics -9.0

Sound – 7.0

Gameplay – 9.5

Story – 8.0

Replay – 8.0

Overall – 8.5

This was the first year in 4 that I was able to actually use my Christmas bonuses on me so I thought what better way to do this than to treat myself to a new system (Xbox 360) and a few games.

Now, I am the kind of guy that collects games so I play, beat, then put away to play another day so I usually have a game in mind that I want. This time I did not. I went to find some RPG’s to get ideas for things I like and don’t like in a game. When picking out the games (oblivion, Marvel Alliance, and Last Remnant) I almost did not get this game. I had another game I was looking at but, after taking a closer look at the game it looked more like a Pokémon RPG than a decent game so I took this one.

At first glance at the back of this cover you could easily mistake this for a street fighter type game. There is a huge bar at the top of the screen that looks like health and a character that is fighting another character. After closer inspection and a tip from the clerk I was eager to try this game. I don’t know how far I am in the game; I just know that I am not yet to disk 2. So this review is based off of what I have gone through so far.

There is not too much going on when you start this game. You get a title screen and decent music. You start the game much like any other and it goes right to a cut scene that gets you involved right away (OH NOES! MY SISTER HAS BEEN TAKEN!!!). Even though the plot is decent there are still times that you want to reach up and slap the screen writer since there are parts that do make you question what the hell he was thinking. At one time you mistake your young sister (17 maybe) from far away and who has never seen battle for a 41 year old veteran woman warrior. And because of it you throw yourself into the fray of the battle in hopes of rescuing her.

So far there hasn’t been more of the dumb story line twist where you mistake your sister for a 40 year old woman, and the game has a really good story line. So good in fact that it keeps me playing. The game did not go with the typical races that you see in a RPG but, created their own which are unique and sometimes gay (I got my ass beat by a bunch of mutant rabbits). Of course with custom races come custom names and even specific weapons that these guys can use. All races are humanoid (meaning arms, legs, heads, opposable thumbs) and it looks like there are at least 3 more humanoid races (could be 4 but, not playable. at least from where I am at). One looks like a cross between a human, rabbit, and a frog. another looks like a cross between a lion fish and a human, and the other looks like a cross between a bat, cat, and human but, has four arms (which they don’t do much with the other set of arms, they just keep them crossed unless fighting).

Graphics are good in the game too. Even when you are running around the environment is pretty enough to stop and take a look at. As far as customization of characters, the only thing you get to choose is if they are holing a 1-handed weapon and shield, a 2-handed weapon, or 2 1-handed weapons. You don’t get to change the look of you armor or anything so your toon looks the same no matter in battle or out. They didn’t do much with the customization of the NPC’s (non playable characters) even if they are in your party. Most all races have about 3 different platforms for which they look like, male and female. Even your victory stance will be the same as one of the toons in your party if you are equipped the same.

The game did an awesome job expanding how many people you can have in your party. Of course they control how many you can have at any time (which sucks). So sometimes you can be really out-gunned by the mobs. When you are finally maxed out you can have around 25 people in your party. None of the game set up makes for good multi player which they have left out all together. You are playing this solo.

The controls are nice. Not too hard to get use to and easy to get around what you need to do. You can also save at any point which is also nice and very much needed in this game. The weapons are not based on finding the newest and greatest but; it’s to find the components you need to build your current weapon better. You can still change your weapon type but, there is a smaller selection to choose from. This is about all the nice stuff I can say about this game and its starting to make me sick.

Game play SUCKS. Not just oh, it can be decent if . . Stop right there, it plain flat out is the worst game play I have ever experienced. Despite the fact that you can organize your crew into certain formations and choose if they attack with magic or combat arts: YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER WHAT YOUR CHARACTERS DO!!! Out of 25 people you would think that it would be impossible to kill you but it happens. You usually get to choose 4 types of attacks when you fight and unless you kill your opponent your moral for the entire team goes down. Which means: you miss your attack all together, you don’t hit as hard as you should, or you get jumped without being able to counter attack.

Right now in the game I am limited to 3 groups of 3. Out of those groups all people have combat arts, and magic spells at their disposal. Unless you KNOW how much energy each attack will use you do not know what will happen. You could get the “end all bitches” spell or you could get the “piss them off” hit that will cause them to turn around and END YOU! It is very random and you cannot even control if you are going to heal the group that needs it the most.

When you choose what your group will do you are actually choosing what your group leader will do. Others might follow suit but, usually just try and tickle the enemy; leaving you open to counter, flank, and rear attacks.

No matter what you do, you will never be able to surprise attack your enemy. You will never hit first, and in most cases the enemy will choose how it will attack you DESPITE the time bending artifact that you almost always use to initiate combat (basically you stop time). In fact, if you don’t initiate the attack, you will be jumped. And it’s not the nice kind either. It’s the find a 6-foot-spiked-pole-and-shove-it-in-your-ass-sideways jumped. Leaving you with maybe: a group with no healer and no way to resurrect the rest of your comrades.

The fights are all based on luck. You can find a rare monster that is probably 20 to 50 levels above you and beat the crap out of him. You can also find monsters that are 50 levels below you and get the crap kicked out of you. Since you have no control over what your party does: it is all up to the computer to decide to be nice to you or not. When this happens prepare for a LOT of stupid acts by your party.

It is a good thing that you can save because you are saving EVERY 2 FIGHTS. If you don’t and think that the computer is being nice, you will be screwed and have to play the last 45 minutes of game play over again. The person who programmed the save also needs to be shot. I have never saved over so many games accidently in my life until this game. If you are not careful it will save over a spot in the game that you might want to come back to instead of saving it in the file you just saved the game in 30 seconds ago. The game also does that when loading your last save because you just got hosed by a single level one mob.

If it were not for all the time I have already spent on this game it would have been dropped already and taken back to the store. This game gets a 1/10 stars and that’s just cause of all the good stuff mentioned earlier. DO NOT GET THIS GAME! If it were not for all the time I have spent on the game so far, I would not finish it. It is not worth the $5 it will be in the bargain bin in a month.