By James Johnson

So far, the movie Fantastic Four has done ‘OK’ in the theatres and received lukewarm reviews from the movie critics. This video game pretty much continues that trend. However, if you are into comic books and action games that require lots of button pushing to perform combos you may want to pick this game up. It may actually grow on you…

You know you’ve got an action game on your hands when you open the box and find a 4 CD install and a thin 14-page manual. Overall the game takes only a little while to learn and you should easily pick up the combos for special attacks. Launching the game starts a small application that is actually pretty important. You can select: Play, Controls, Settings, and Quit. This is important because this is only time you can change the controls, video settings, and mouse sensitivity. Once you are in the game the only options you will be able to change will be: Brightness, SFX Volume, Music Volume, and Vibration. If you want to change the controls while playing you are left with only one option – quit and start the game over to access the controls settings.

Reed gets fantastic on a bad guy.

Once you are all settled into Fantastic Four you’ll find that the game begins with a good cutscene and then starts you off to play through each of the four main characters. The members of the Fantastic Four, in case you forgot, are: Reed Richards as Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm as the Invisible Woman, Johnny Storm as the Human Torch, and Ben Grimm as the Thing. As you learn each player you’ll find that each of them has their own unique abilities and therefore unique combo attacks. Mr. Fantastic has the ability to stretch his body to attack opponents from far away. The Invisible Woman has the obvious power of invisibility but she is also able to use force fields and freeze opponents. The Human Torch hovers above the ground and can devastate opponents around him with repetitive fire attacks. The Thing uses his superhuman strength to lift large objects and pummel his opponents.

Once you have learned each of the characters and gotten comfortable with their controls and combos the game can really get quite fun. For example, using the Human Torch you can really go crazy in some of the early levels attacking dozens and dozens of opponents at once with the fire attacks. Likewise, using the Invisible Woman you can one-hit-kill opponents repeatedly by turning invisible, using the freeze attack, and then using a simple attack to shatter them to pieces. While playing in Single Player mode there may be different types of play with the characters. During some portions of the game you will be playing solo, as a single character. During other portions you will have your choice between 2, 3, or all 4 Fantastic Four characters. For example, you will need to be able to use the special powers and unique combos of each player in order to defeat some of the bosses and larger opponents. Switching between characters is relatively easy though the game may hesitate on you or you may get confused as to which character you are really playing. Early in the game you may find yourself creating force fields with the Invisible Woman and then switching to another character to attack. A good tip is to use the Invisible Woman to “power-up” another Fantastic Four character then switch to that character and continue to attack.

Switching between players of course brings up the issue of camera angles during gameplay and, honestly, the camera on Fantastic Four can really be a drag. Many times during the game the camera offers a useless angle that can make trying to control, let alone attack with, your character a real chore. At some point you will find yourself stuck in some corner with nowhere to go. It seems as though some controls should be offered to the player so they can center the camera or manipulate the angle in some way to overcome the problems. Unfortunately, none of these controls are available and this problem is something that must be dealt with repeatedly as you progress through the game. The lack of attention to detail here is very similar with the way the settings and controls are setup, as was discussed earlier in the review.

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