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| Summary: "Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects" is a straight-out fighting game
95
"Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects" is a straight-out fighting game featuring 7 Marvel heroes (8, if you count Magneto, like EA does) 8 "Imperfects" villians, and 2 traditional Marvel villians. You start with 2 unlocked characters, and proceed for each character to make your way through best of 2-out-of-3 bouts with 10 oppoenents. When you defeat the tenth opponent, a new character is unlocked on the Main Menu. This works in an "opposing force" manner: in other words, if you play as a good guy, defeating the tenth villian unlocks a preset villian to use for the next round of 10 bouts, which then results in unlocking a preset hero (and so forth). There is a VERY loose storyline, displayed in text between bouts. After your first pass through, you really just click this away and get started fighting. The heros are: The Thing, Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Storm, Elektra, Magneto. & Spider Man. Classic villians are: Dr Doom & Venom. The Imperfects villians are: Johnny Ohm, Van Roekel, The Wink, Solare, Fault Zone, Brigade, Paragon, & Hazmat.
I purchased this game when it was released (10/06/05, I believe) in Ohio. It appears that EA upped the release date from what they were originally publishing. In any case, I have to take issue with the negative reviews that mags like PSM gave this version in particular, and (probably) the reviews in general for this game. If you are a long-time Marvel comics fan, this is probably the best realization of the characters yet. I've only had the game about 4 days, but have been playing it like mad and have unlocked all but about 4 characters.
One of the common complaints I've seen in reviews is that you 'get lost' in the fight trying to face your opponent. While this is true to some extent (and, I've noticed the severity varies from character-to-character based on if they are a more 'agile' character, or more of a 'brute force'/slower character), it's also true that in a real-life fight, you might get disoriented and momentarily loose sight of your enemy. You really have to weigh this in balance with the (awesome) facts that A) you're moving in a fully 3-D environment, B) you're using characters with special powers, including flight, ranged projectiles, and C) at any time, you can pick up any number of objects in the environment and throw, kick, or smash them into your opponent. It can't be said enough how fun Option C is in action: see that car over there? --if you're Iron Man, the Thing, or several other characters, you can lift it over your head, aim, and slam it into Dr Doom, etc.! --See that park bench? --kick it into Venom! If that's not good enough, fly into the air and shoot him with your repulsors (Iron Man), or wail on him with your claws (Wolverine)!
One of the things I actually appreciate about this game is that the controls are quite simple. You can actually play and accomplish a lot with some simple memorization. You don't necessarily have to remember a litany of combos (although they are there). When you start adding button presses in, that's when you start realizing that not only can you fly and aim your flight, but also shoot lightning bolts (Storm) at your enemy while in air. To put it in perspective, I liked the first SpiderMan game that came out a few years back (the movie tie-in), however I find the web slinging action much more accessible and fun here. I think EA actually DID put in quite an amount of effort to balance between not only character powers, but also the balance between the amount of time you can spend using powers from a distance, the amount of time that you have to fight hand-to-hand, and the amount of time that you have to use objects in order to defeat your opponent.
The graphics are great and (again) if you're a comics fan, you're just going to get a real kick out of things like Captain America slinging his sheild at you. And, even though the "Imperfects" on paper seem like a 'cheap out', they are actually very well designed (and, considering Marvel has of late forgotten the concept of creating NEW characters; very appreciated). Marvel actually did produce a limited-run comics tie-in over the summer to introduce the Imperfects characters. You may instincitively start the game as the Thing, who is the only unlocked good guy at the start of the game. However, it's just as much fun to play as an "Imperfect" and whoop the tail out of your favorite heroes.
The game also uses a "card-based" upgrade system (cards/power-ups are won after a successful bout); so there is some strategy to assigning a set of 4 power-ups to your character (EA kind of insinuates that you might want to tailor the card "battle set" to each fight, but I've found that keeping one battle set per character, all the way through a series of 10 rounds, is good enough). This is also what I think will make the game interesting over the long haul.
Lastly, the game supports Ad Hoc multiplayer, but I have not tried that feature yet.
So, to wrap this up, I'd rate the following:
Graphics: 90
Sound: 85
Controls: 85
Replay: 95
Loading Times: 95
Overall: 95
I really consider this a 'must buy'.
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