Countdown to MVC3: Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects

In lieu of the impending release of Marvel vs Capcom 3 in a few months I'm going to be doing a series of reviews of some underrated, time forgotten, Marvel based video games.

First Up:

Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects.

Back in 2004 Marvel partnered with then mostly sports video game maker EA to create a fighting/beat-'em-up game based on the Marvel property. With gamers still feeling the aftermath of Capcom's Marvel Vs Capcom 2 extravaganza even 4 years after its release, EA had one tall order to meet.

Released for the original Xbox, PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS and Gamecube it is a mix bag of good, bad, ugly, and utter garbage.

In there attempt to make it an interesting and engaging game they created 8 new characters to face off against some of Marvel's best known characters. They even went as far as creating a short comic book miniseries that featured the new characters to tie into the game.

Whether or not the creations were good, or brought something to the game that maybe other Marvel characters could have is up for debate, but the fact remains EA produced one memorable game if not for its success (or lack thereof) certainly for its massive shortcomings and deficiencies in game play, story, and mechanics.

The story revolves around an evil alien scientist Dr. Niles Van Roekel, who looks mysteriously human-like by the way, and his attempt at creating the ultimate weapon. Experimenting on several humans in the process he creates what he deems failed weapons, but still usable as his goons: The Imperfects.

Brigade

A merger of an entire platoon of soldiers' minds and memories into a single super strong body. Brigade possesses cybernetic implants that let him fire plasma bolts from his arms.

Fault Zone

A Russian Dancer that was paralyzed in an accident. Her legs and arms replaced by seismic generators she is now a walking earthquake.

Hazmat

The only imperfect who wasn't directly created by Van Roekel, he was scientist who after injecting himself with a boat load of antigens he was working on started to disintegrate. Roekel provided him with a suit that could contain his now liquid and extremely toxic body. (Very similar to Spidey in moves and abilities strangely enough)

Johnny Ohm

Convicted of crimes he did not commit, Van Roekel rescued him after his execution failed, and used his high resistance to electricity to create his own power conductor lightning generator. (Elektro anybody?)

Solara

A student who had mysteriously survived several fires as a child. Recruited by Roekel, she was turned into a powerful heat and microwave emitting entity. (Firestar?)

Wink

A Magician's daughter and fortuneteller, Roekl installed a particle reactor in her thigh granting her teleportation and intangibility. (Yeah I don't know how that works either, but she's almost female Nightcrawler)

Paragon

Finally Roekel perfects his weapon in the shape of Amazonian warrior Maya. Honing her senses, and bonding her to an alien symbiote she became his ultimate weapon.

Niles Van Roekel

The evil alien scientist that is the root of all this is playable after beating the game. He wears a big suit of armor and has a combination of powers from his creations: plasma shots, energy blades, flight, super stength.
Predictably, she escapes his facility, and thus starts the Rise of the Imperfects.

The Imperfects never really jived with gamers, or comic books fans. It was a poor attempt that failed miserably for the most part. One has to wonder why the chose this route instead of including more Marvel characters.

So lets take a look at what Marvel characters made it in:

In Roekel's quest to locate Paragon, his army of robots, and his imperfects face off against marvels mightiest heroes: The Thing, Human Torch (first and only fighting game to include any of the Fantastic Four, let alone the 2 most popular ones), Wolverine, Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Daredevil, Storm, Elektra (err, o.k so she's not as mighty as these other guys...) Magneto and Venom (not quite heroes but still).

The premise sounds o.k., the game looks visually dark, gritty, and intimidating, sadly the game play and structure throw all that magnificent prelude and setup down the toilet.

The game itself is a blend of beat them up levels, and one on one fighting. You take control of all the different Marvel heroes/anti-heroes as Van Roekl's armies overrun the streets of New York.

You start off using the Thing, and enter a short tutorial level that shows you the general usage of characters, and environment interaction such as picking up cars, and lampposts with which to bash your opponent. You also learn how to perform power attacks, grapples, throws etc... The mechanics are fairly easy to pickup and play.

There are 6 buttons you can press. You get a single attack button, a block button, a grapple button and a jump button for the basic actions. You also get a Super button which can either be used to charge the power meter when standing still, or perform super moves in conjunction with one of the other buttons mentioned. The sixth button is the mobility button which allows you to perform acrobatic or power moves depending on your characters. For instance while controlling Spider-Man pressing the mobility button will cause him to web swing. Magneto will fly, and most ground based characters will dash. Again used in conjunction with the attack button they will produce a flashier attack such as a sliding uppercut, or web sling kick strike.

While holding down the Super button, characters will perform super moves. Characters will super jump, do more powerful combos, or even shoot things depending on what button you press while holding done the Super button. Super Moves drain the power meter and while it will replenish itself when not being used its excruciatingly slow.

Using the attack button will cause your character to perform a more powerful combo, or shoot things if your character has such an ability, and the distance between your character and your opponent allows for it. That's right, the game automatically switches your characters actions depending on the distance from your opponent. Moving away will cause characters like Iron-Man or Brigade to fire bolts instead of throwing punches. This can get a bit annoying when you aren't close enough to hit your opponent with a punch, but not far enough either to actually cause the game to switch to firing instead. So you basically end up swashing at the air.

CPU controlled characters will always fire at you when they are far away. This can get very annoying if you don't know how to avoid them which brings us to blocking.

Getting a specific blocking button is very useful. Pressing the block button will make your character assume a defensive stance and will block incoming hits. Holding down the super button while pressing block will cause a super block which reflects any fireball type power back to its owner. The only downside is super blocking eats up the super bar like nothing else so it loses most of its usefulness.

Jumping, and grappling are similarly affected by the super button becoming super jump, and super grapple.

Each character has a unique feel and playability to them which is very nice. That is no 2 characters play exactly a like even though the moves are generic for all of them. Also each character is designed with their strengths in mind. That is while the Thing can lift and throw large objects like trucks, and heavy furniture, and rip lampposts from the ground to use as bats. Daredevil is limited to small boxes and crates, and the occasional parking meter. It makes for very interesting fights when you need think and anticipate enemies before the crush you with a car. Conversely small characters like Daredevil, Wolverine, Spider-Man etc.. are quite agile and can run circles around the stronger slower types.

The overall gameplay is solid, interesting, and a welcome departure from the generic fighters were visible strength differences mean nothing in combat.

However the game then goes downhill from here. The beat-them-up portion of the game which you are forced to play to unlock all the available characters is tedious, repetitive and annoying.

A was said earlier you start with the Thing, after 3 or 4 missions you get a showdown mission with an Imperfect. In a strange twist you control the imperfect and try to take down the hero you had been using. If you win, the hero is then removed from the story line mission screen and a new one replaces him. You can have up to 4 characters available for missions at the same time. Eventually you re forced to beat one of them with an imperfect in a show down to move the story along with another character. You may also get time based extra missions for characters you don't immediately kill off, where you need to kill X amount of alien robots or protect and save x amount of humans or structures from the unending hordes of baddies. This gets very tiresome very fast. There are also some missions which involve fighting against mind controlled heroes. Elektra for instance gets to fight a green skinned Daredevil at one point. Though this provides an in game reason for the lame psycho alternate outfits for all the characters its less than amusing after the second time.

Eventually you get to use Paragon the somewhat protagonist of this story in flashbacks telling of her development and her escape form Roekel's lab.

After you played all the story missions with all the Marvel heroes, and you've completed all of Paragon's levels you again get to use her one last time, and face off against Van Roekel in his super armor suit.

The Story mode is quite short, but its a good thing it is, because any longer and you would have removed the game from the console and thrown it out the window into a pit of molten lava. The story missions can be very aggravating. The later missions will get increasingly difficult and even ridiculous at times. Missions such as Defeat a horde of plasma cannon wielding goons with only a sliver of health because you've been poisoned.

But that's not all the game has to offer thankfully, it also has the Vs mode. This is your typical one on one fighting game in full 3D arenas with fully destructible environments.

The arenas are large so you can use the characters powers at their full extent. Spider-Man can web swing, wall climb, and throw web shots at opponents. Magneto can use his magnetic powers to pick up and throw cars and large metal crates strewn about the stages. Most objects can be picked up and used as weapons or thrown for damage. Barrels and cars explode when thrown a few times and these explosions also cause damage. This is another source of players disdain for the game. The explosions can and will cascade dealing massive damage to characters caught in them, so you may find yourself dead or down to a sliver of health within a few moments of starting the match if you are very unfortunate.

The game also features finishing moves and ring out stage deaths, while nowhere near as gory as say Mortal Kombat, there are some that are quite disturbing such as Wolverine's where he impales his opponent with his claws flings him over his head and then proceeds to jump on the downed opponent and stab him with his claws a few more times, or Iron-man's where he incinerates his opponent with his uni-beam. For the stage's ring outs you get to throw your opponent off a bridge, into a hole in the subway, off a building etc.. Finishers can be performed only when your opponents health is so low the Danger warning pops up. Performing a super grapple then will initiate the finisher instead. Stage deaths can be obtained at any time during a fight by simply throwing or causing the opponent to fly out of the stage, in which case they'll fall to their doom. Though if you are good and don't run out of super meter, you can fly back in before that happens.

Music is pretty decent, matching the tone and overall grimy look of the game.

Many people bash the game for the story mode, and rightfully so. Others for the Vs mode character strength differences and explosive environments, which I think are not a knock against the game, but rather a strength. It makes you think about the battles and plan a strategy rather than going in blindly. It also gives another level of realism when you have considerable strength differences between The Thing and Daredevil or between Spider-Man and Iron-Man.

Sadly the monotonous story mode, the mediocre Imperfects, and the shortage of Marvel characters put this game in the forgotten bin. However if you can get a copy for very cheap it runs perfectly on the Xbox360, and its an interesting experience with an above average vs mode and is the only Marvel based fighting game to have Thing and Torch so that's got to count for something.