I’ve been a huge fan of comic book movies and games since I was a little kid. I grew up reading all of these comics and following these heroes. So any chance I get to grab a new comic book game, I’m all over it. I picked up Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer for PS3 expecting a solid game in the style of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. What the game provides is far from it. Here is a breakdown of some of the facets of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer for the PS3:

Presentation and Graphics: The game uses likenesses of the actors from the Fantastic Four movies, and they look fairly similar. Character models for all other characters are pretty good. Character animations looked pretty good, but not great.The environments didn’t match that level in most areas. The background details were sparse with repeated textures. The worst part about the graphics were the framerate issues. Whenever the camera would pan around large areas, or you were fighting multiple enemies on screen, there was a noticeable slowdown. This was one of the major factors that turned me off to the game right from the start. 3 of 5

Sound and Music: For a game that uses likenesses of real actors, you’d think they would have those actors provide voice-overs. Well, you would be sadly mistaken. The voice-overs in game are far from great and a few characters don’t sound anything like their on-screen counterparts. Johnny Storm and Mr. Incredible were fairly close to the actors’ voices, but The Thing and Sue Storm were very far off the mark. This provided a level of distraction whenever there was dialogue. Other sounds effects in the game were just okay, nothing spectacular. What really annoyed me from the minute I put the game in the tray were the menu sound effects. If you’ve played any 2K Sports game in 2001, you’ll know the sound. It’s very surprising that 2K and Visual Concepts have not changed their one single menu sound in over 5 years. 2.5 of 5

Gameplay: I honestly expected the game to play a lot like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I was extremely disappointed to see it tried to get to that level, but failed. The controls are similar to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but they don’t feel as responsive. The story of the game follows the movie, which is to be expected. However, the extend the gameplay out to longer than the 2 hours of the movie, many elements are repeated over and over. The first level consists of going through a door, killing 10 enemies, going through a door, going down/up an elevator… then repeating. Most other levels have the same type of repeated gameplay, which is very frustrating and takes away from the game a great deal. 2 of 5

Multiplayer: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer provides up to 4 player offline co-op. I was only able to try this out was 2 people for this review. Having a real person instead of the AI did make the game a bit easier, as the AI would sometimes do some stupid things. However, it doesn’t add enough to the game to make the multiplayer worth using. 2 of 5

Lasting Appeal: The framerate issues and the repeating gameplay elements severely take away from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. On my first time playing, I wanted to throw the game out the window during the first level of the game because scenarios repeated so often. If you even make it through the game, there’s no chance of wanting to go back and play the game again. 1 of 5

Final Word: 2K Games took a great franchise, which could have been a terrific game, and made it into a very annoying experience. With framerate issues, repeated gameplay elements, and shoddy controls, there’s no reason to get excited for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Overall: 2 of 5

1 = Not worth the bandwidth.

2= Demo is enough, not worth your money.

3= Game is good, depending on the price, seriously consider picking it up.

4= Worth your money. Should provide some good times for quite awhile.

5= Buy the game. Lock your door. Pick up a case of beer. This could take all night.