War of the Marvels: The Next Videogame Letdown
September 4th, 2007 by Gavok | Tags: captain america, captain atom, doctor doom, hulk, ign, juggernaut, Marvel comics, mastermind, movies, sketches, spider-man, video, wrestlingFirst thing, big thanks to whoever submitted the comics/wrestling parallels article to Fark. You are a true class act, whoever you are.
Said article is also deemed incorrect thanks to Mr. Kennedy getting himself suspended and therefore written out of the “Vince McMahon’s long-lost son” storyline. Though I guess that does make him the wrestling version of Captain Atom.
Electronic Arts has announced another Marvel fighting game with no title yet. Rather than be a sequel to Marvel Nemesis, even in style, the game appears as a Marvel version of War of the Monsters. War of the Monsters was an all right game, though pretty shallow. The new game doesn’t look very different.
Here is the trailer and here is the in-game footage. The roster so far is Spider-Man, Captain America, the Hulk, the Juggernaut and Dr. Doom. Allow me to rail on the footage, character-by-character.
Spider-Man: Cool that they go with the small-eyed look, much like Alex Ross intended with his original Spider-Man movie designs. The part where he saves the blond lady from the falling building, but does nothing to save Bruce Banner reminds me of that Jay Pinkerton parody with the avalanche.
Captain America: Apparently able to punch the Hulk a mile away, Captain America pretends to be alive for this upcoming game. The designers show that they’ve come up with like a hundred sketches of what Captain America should look like here. Listen, I know I’m not paid the big bucks like you fine fellows, but why not… I don’t know… make him look like Captain America?!
See? Capcom got it right.
Hulk: They end the trailer with the Hulk yawning. I don’t get it.
Juggernaut: For a guy magically given an instant and infinitely buff body, why does the Juggernaut look like he needs to do some sit-ups? And stop trying to make him resemble the Vinnie Jones movie version. That’s not something that needs emulating.
Doctor Doom: First off, nice kilt, Scrooge Von Duck. Here I thought Doom was a strategic mastermind that acted evil behind the defenses of diplomatic immunity, not a guy who terrorizes the populace by taking a stroll through New York City in broad daylight. It looks like Jim Rhodes redesigned Doom’s armor by giving him missiles instead of the trademark energy gauntlets. Plus he blows up a building in his attempt to kill Spider-Man, showing that even Doom is over 9/11. No tears this time.
I’ll have a real article up tomorrow. Stay tuned.
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Is it me, or does Spider-Man come off as a dick in the trailer? From what I saw, he let Doom wipe out at least two innocent bystanders.
Not just you.
Also: I thought when I read the article “c’mon, Doom gets his hands dirty sometimes” Then I saw the video. Geeze, Vic, how are you going to be avenged on the accursed richards if you waste all your ammo on pedestrians?
There are some real problems going on in their art direction. It looks like half of their art direction is movie/ultimate oriented (cap, doom, juggernaut) while the other half wants the game to be a nod to old school designs (purple pants hulk, small eyed spiderman). They really ought to make up their damn minds.
Also: The lock on feature is evidence the game will suck.
You think after the utter failure that was Marvel Nemesis, EA would just let someone who knows what they’re doing handle the next Marvel game. Apparently not.
Nice post!
The programmers seem to be of the idea that most of the people who play superheroes would want to go around blowing stuff up. People enjoyed Marvel Superheroes even though it’s one-on-one since it did feature heroes beating each other up. Why complicate things?
You guys ever play Ultimate Alliance or Marvel Legends? Maybe they’re taking a nod from that, and from the success of sandbox games like the GTA series.
And I thought that Doom they showed was Doombot. I didn’t think Doom went clanking around or had rocket launchers, so I can definitely get behind not liking that one.