My 4-year-old son is in his ‘I love superheroes’ phase and, naturally, I have encouraged this love by recording certain Batman, Spider-man and Iron Man cartoons, buying select toys and books, as well as video games.
Through “Marvel Ultimate Alliance,” I have seen my son’s gaming skills grow, from an inability to maneuver his character up a flight of stairs to button mashing bad guys until they released their gold coin innards. The game also became his main introduction to the other superheroes that had yet received the Hollywood treatment. Although he only wanted to play as Spider-man, he quickly learned about Captain America, Thor, Wolverine and the other main teammates. Knowing my son’s gaming skill set, “Spider-man: Friend or Foe” was an easy buying decision. Even though the game did not score well (Metacritic rating of 60), I’m sure that most reviewers did not sit down with a child and play the game. The easy controls unleashed a series of combos, making my son exclaim “Wow!” and “Hey, did you see that?!” and, in essence, making him feel like a superhero – and isn’t that the point? While there is a versus mode in the game, I wanted different characters. So I went looking for a new superhero game to play with him.
The closure of EA Chicago stings more because their last title, a Marvel fighting game, vaporized with the company. If you have a chance to go to Gametrailers.com and check out the “Game Head” feature, you too will see the missed opportunity. A guy with Marvel Interactive began blogging over on 1UP.com, so I posted a comment in hopes of getting this title resurrected (I even mentioned my hopes of using storylines from the “Civil War” series to build the basis of a single-player story in a 3D fighting game). Here’s keeping my fingers crossed.
In the meantime I’m stuck with “Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects.” Before there are any outcries, it was purchased at the low price of $8. Since the game is backwards compatible, I got the Xbox version and I was pleasantly surprised that it filled my whole widescreen TV without stretching. It was only purchased with the intent of playing the versus mode with my son, so I’m not worried about the story or the other non-Marvel characters. What did concern me was how I was going to unlock all of the characters for multiplayer. Luckily, I found the FAQ which mentioned that for every 10 versus matches completed, a character or venue would unlock. Ok, now I only need to complete 160 matches to unlock everything. So here’s what I did. Setting the ‘Lives’ limit to one, I selected Spider-man (for his jumping ability) and the Bridge venue. At the start of the match, I’d run Spider-man to the ledge and have him jump over the side for a ‘ring out.’ One hundred and sixty times. Sure it was a loss, but it was a completed match. I was able to complete two matches in a minute, including the load times and intro and outro animations.
Now my son and I can play against each other with the full roster available and I don’t have to go through the story mode.
That’s devotion.
