Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer for the Nintendo DS is an action game of 20 levels that loosely adapts the movie of the same name. The Fantastic Four must save the Earth from the world eater Galactus, whose arrival is heralded by the mysterious Silver Surfer. Only the later parts of the game are based directly on the film and feature the army base and the final showdown in Shanghai. Earlier levels take inspirations from Fantastic Four comics and feature antagonists like the Skrulls and Terrax.

The game consists of three types of levels. First, the player controls either Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman or the Thing in side-scrolling platform levels. To reach the exit of each level, enemies must be defeated, gaps jumped over and switches flipped to manipulate the environment. All three of the heroes have slightly different abilities: Mr. Fantastic has an attack with a longer reach but less power than the Thing, while the Invisible Woman can not jump like the other two, but instead create a forcefield allowing her to hover through the levels. She also is the only one with a ranged attack. This mode mainly takes place on the top screen of the DS, with the touch screen only used to display stats and collected powerups, which are activated by tapping.

The second type of level takes the form of a top-down vertically scrolling shooter, which utilizes both the DS' screens. The player controls either the Human Torch or the entire group in the Fantasticar. Gameplay follows the standard model of having to shoot down hordes of enemies using the Torch's flames or the car's cannons, evading bullet patterns and multiple fights against tough bosses with a lot of hit points and especially complex attack patterns.

The final type of level are boss battles, which also utilizes both screens. The boss is situated on the top screen and launches attacks against the Four on the bottom screen. The attacks have to be repelled and sent back at the boss through interactions with the stylus. This includes having to tap or circle around objects thrown by the boss, sliding the stylus quickly back and forth to create a repelling forcefield, and more. Collecting certain types of crystals in the platform levels gives bonus attacks for the boss battles.

Good performance in the levels (beating all enemies, collecting all crystals, taking no or little hits) unlocks covers from the 2002-2003 run of the Fantastic Four comic.