Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects

The Good
An alien invasion of New York City provides the backdrop for Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. Aliens are warping into Grand Central Station, the Avengers’ Mansion, and other famous Marvel/NYC locales searching for power and information. Thwarting them are famous superheroes like Spider-man, Daredevil, The Thing, and Iron Man, just to name a few. However, the heroes may have met their match in The Imperfects: eight alien-modified superhumans created just for this game.

Rise of the Imperfects has two playing modes, story and versus (fighting). Out of the box, only a handful of characters and one venue are available for PvP or PvComp combat. Other characters and venues are unlocked by playing through portions of the story mode or by playing the versus mode enough times. The venues are sandbox arenas, such as the rooftop of the Daily Bugle or inside a Power Plant. Within the confines of the arena, almost every object is destructible. In the streets of NYC, superheroes can throw parking meters, benches, or even cars at each other.

Mentioned above, the characters have a basic control scheme. There’s a jump button, an attack button, a throw button, a dodge button, and the right shoulder button adds a supercharge to the other attacks. In spite of its simplicity, Marvel Nemesis does a good job recreating the superhero experience. Spider-man shines as one of the better examples. He can swing around the playing field and then launch into an attack. He can web his opponent’s feet and toss them, damage them with a few webbing shots, construct a web shield to deflect attacks, and can pick up cars and hurl them.

Characters in Nemesis have three bars to watch: health, superpower, and rage. Damage drains health, some of which is regained (more if you are Wolverine). Using superpowers drains the superpower bar (more on this later), and full-on brawling raises the rage bar which (when full) lets players use superpowers with no penalty for a short amount of time. Versus battles can end quite quickly, so the superpower meter is a little more important in the story mode.

The story mode plays like a classic brawler game, expanding the world a bit beyond the versus arenas. If one arena is the rooftop of the Daily Bugle, then Elektra’s story level take her through several rooftops leading up to a boss fight on the Daily Bugle’s roof. Likewise, Iron Man might have to fight his way through the hallways of the Avengers’ Mansion, before reaching the central computer console. Every Marvel character has their own story section (and, for the most part, you can switch between heroes) and then a few bonus missions. Bonus missions present unique challenges like killing all the enemies in three minutes or taking down a hero character who’s been infected by the aliens.

Typically the flow of a story mission takes the character towards a confrontation with an Imperfect. Imperfects are introduced with an FMV resembling a live action comic panel (complete with a nefarious voiceover). Imperfect battles are the story mode’s strong point. With a few exceptions, story missions simply involve killing everything. Some smarter ones have Spider-man defending rescue helicopters and Iron Man defending a relay station, but aside from that, it’s basic brawling.

After unlocking everything, players can read two comics on the screen (complete with narration) and can view character trading cards with background information. Although the comics are low rez, everything else about Marvel Nemesis looks great. Jae Lee provided stunning concept art. Sound is also top notch, with a few questionable voice over exceptions. In game effects sound great, and if you are tossing a tank at someone, sometimes that’s all that matters.

The Bad
Marvel Nemesis isn’t a game for everyone. As a fighting game, it has very basic controls and no wealth of special moves or combos. It also places great emphasis on the story mode, usually an extra feature tacked on to fighting games. I can’t see Marvel Nemesis appealing beyond the Marvel fanbase, but Marvelites whose favorite character has been omitted from the line-up (or killed in the opening cinematic) will be even less fond of the newly created Imperfects whose powers (at best) replicate those already found in the Marvel Universe’s supervillain pantheon.

Nihilistic Software deserves credit for paring down the characters to their core abilities and balancing them so Elektra actually has a chance against Venom (or the Human Torch against Storm), even though this flies in the face of popular superhero simulators like The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction or Spider-man 2. What puzzles me, though, is what counts as a superpower.

Daredevil’s superhuman abilities come in the form of supersenses. Here, his superpower is just the ability to use his billy-club as a ranged weapon (and superstrength, somehow DD is able to rip parking meters out of the cement). At least he isn’t drained by an innate ability like Magneto’s magnetic powers. A few supercharged attacks and suddenly Magneto is just another septuagenarian in the wrong alleyway at the wrong time.

Marvel Nemesis has a great camera system except in two cases. In the story mode, during a fight with an Imperfect, the camera tracks the Imperfect. This means your character can be a speck in the background—hard to see and harder to control. The camera is a little worse in the versus mode since it tracks both players. Here the camera often zooms outside the map to show all the action.

The story mode is fun (quite fun, I think), but awfully repetitious. There are only seven arenas/world areas which is too small to provide any real depth. There’s really no reason why Iron Man needs to scuttle the Avengers’ computers, since Spider-man has already destroyed the terminals (which were previously destroyed by Wolverine during a boss battle). Don’t even get me started on the many uses of the Daily Bugle roof.

The Bottom Line
I’m renting Marvel Nemesis and am having a good time playing it, but I’m not sure I can recommend buying it, even at the GameCube’s lack-of-multiplayer-inspired lower price. I’m a Marvel fan, but I don’t have the sense of ownership which has led other players to bemoan the fact that their heroes aren’t here. I’m not even offended by the Imperfects, regarding them as merely a dumb marketing move; have you bought the comic?

Sadly, the Marvel Nemesis won’t be remembered for what it does right, but merely for what it fails to do. No four-player multiplay. No co-op. No survival mode or training mode or practice mode…