Reviews// Captain America: Super Soldier

Posted 15 Jul 2011 08:42 by
While the combat works well, however, there's little else in the game to keep you coming back and the fighty bits are left to prop up the game on their own. There's a bit of platforming in there, but since it only requires you to use the [A] button and point very vaguely the right direction it fails to engage. It's basically the idea of context-sensitive platforming from the likes of Assassin's Creed and inFamous with all the finesse scraped out of it.

There's a tiny bit of puzzling in there, but it's just the same two minigames repeated over and over.

The fact that you're invading a castle (albeit a huge one) means that the scenery gets a bit repetitive. LOTS of gloomy, grey rooms and vaults and a smattering of the outdoors, and that's not far from IT. Zemo's family home is also a castle that's oddly devoid of life. There's no-one there beyond the endlessly repeated parade of baddie types and the whole place feels a bit empty.

Despite all the above flaws, however, Captain America: Super Soldier is not an awful game. It's just a dull one. Everything in there works, and the combat works pretty well. It just does it without any flair.

CASS's worst sin is that it fails to deliver on its source materiel. Captain America ought to translate quite easily into games. He doesn't have any awkward powers, like Green Lantern or Superman, he's just a two-fisted brawler with a nifty ranged weapon and a penchant for pulling mad moves. His missions usually take place in some sort of approximation of the real world. All Next Level really needed to do was include some cool set pieces and (for my money) a few more environments. '40s New York would have been cool. Blitzed out London? Occupied Paris?

And, while you'd think the shield and the flag on the chest would do it, this doesn't really feel like Cap. Despite his voice apparently coming from Chris Evans, the character doesn't really have any presence or gravity. You could put it down to this being early in his career, but it's a bit disappointing that this Steve Rogers feels like he could be swapped out for any old gutsy crimefighter who fancies putting on a mask. If Batman: Arkham Asylum taught us anything, it's that a good superhero game should give you a sense of what it would actually be like to be that character. If superhero stories are power fantasies, there's a case that videogames should be their ultimate expression.

Conclusion

Captain America: Super Soldier isn't dreadful. It's not horribly broken. It's not as bad as Iron Man 2 or Thor. It's just drab, forgettable and a missed opportunity. Roll on the inevitable disappointment of next year's inevitable Avengers game...

SPOnG Score: 64%
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Comments

PaulRayment 15 Jul 2011 08:17
1/1
This film tie-in type of game has me asking a chicken or egg question...Do games of movies suck because publishers don't care about them or is it because they know that by being a tie-in the public has low expectations and they're happy with hitting these expectations dead-on.

Batman AA was great, but I'm sure the budget was also greater than that of CASS. I assume that they don't see the point when they can shovel this out to push the film and make a little money off the fact that it will benefit from the buzz around the film.

Just call me Pachter.
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