14 DAY TRIAL // 
It's that time of the year again, when tons of sequels and follow-ups to numeros movies and games are released, with great expectations and big disappointments for the fans. The movies and games based on Marvel comics have usually been average media products, if not failures and still there's an avalanche of them, since we've reviewed a least one Marvel-based title a month in the past year. Ghost Rider was a sad God of War clone, Spider-Man 3 borrowed from God of War and cloned its prequel and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is not looking too good either. We're dealing with an X-Men title lookalike that features Marvel's dream quartet battling it out with a silver alien that's keen on surfing. Die Hard 4, the movie just came out... Oh God have mercy and stop the avalanche of sequels!
Story Rise of the Silver Surfer for the PS2 features a storyline that's half original, half taken from the film... or it might just be lacking parts of the film's plot. You'll guide the Fantastic Four through this cheesy adventure, as they battle the Silver Surfer, an out of space entity that is messing with the Earth's climate, preparing the arrival of the mighty Galactus. As if this wasn't enough, Doctor Doom is back and ready to battle our fantastic quartet. You'll meet a couple of familiar foes, like the Red Ghost, Super Skrull or Terrax and you might be interested in the fact that the story's told through cutscenes that feature our heroes chatting with the aid of blue dialog boxes. It might remind you of Final Fantasy, but what they say is absolute rubbish, as the plot's rather unfolded by your actions, than by the insipid cutscenes.
Concept and Gameplay In case you were wondering about the gameplay of this title I guess that one action sequence sums it all up: characters bump their head on generators. No, really, they do! It might sound silly, but while you're controlling a hero, the other members of the gang keep on fighting for themselves and bumping into energy fields. You can switch to another member of the Fantastic Four team with the aid of the D-pad, but sometimes even this minor mechanism can become frustrating, since you'll switch to the wrong hero. Two things will destroy the game's action and its feeling: the camera angle and the lack of jump buttons. You might want to know that you'll have to play a 2007 title that features a fixed camera angle, without the possibility of changing it during gameplay.
That will get you hurt more than once, when all sorts of critters start attacking you while being off-screen. Each hero has a certain main ability, well, except for the Invisible Woman, who can only be invisible for a couple of seconds... In fact her main ability is creating an energy field that protects her or sending an energy ball through doors in order to deactivate their force fields. The Human Torch will be able to destroy a couple of such doors himself and he'll blast the foes apart with fire waves and various fiery combos. The leader of the group, Mister Fantastic is able to stretch his body to all shapes and sizes and he'll also be the only one who can deactivate the protective energy fields around the generators, while the others are bumping their heads on them.
Last, but not least comes The Thing, a huge creature with a Hulk-ish look, but with more humor and a solid rock body. He will be the physical force of the group, since the other three are rather skinny and you should see The Thing destroying concrete walls or steel doors. Let's talk a bit about the AI, that's probably the same AI you can find in all Marvel-based games. The bad guys always get a good beating in comics and this applies to the games too, but sometimes you'll feel that you're part of a huge practice session for one final boss fight. Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3 have taught me that superheroes have repetitive moves, many combos and variations of a couple of basic attacks. This time, you'd expect some variations from a squad of four heroes, but you're out of luck since these guys can only do their normal attacks and upgrade them later on. You shouldn't worry about dying in this title, because that's not going to happen even if you leave your PS2 joystick on the floor and go make dinner.
In case you are curios about what happens to one of your characters if he or she gets wasted, you'll find out that the fantastic man or woman gets teleported back to the base for healing. 30 seconds later, the hero will be back for some action and thus, you should never worry about game over screens, reloading or missing checkpoints. The game's pretty linear and I never found myself in the situation of having a choice between routes or things to do during the gameplay. As you kill your enemies, you'll see their life meters above their heads so one might surely notice that it takes about three blows to finish a foe off. Once the bad guy hits the floor, you'll get some experience points that can be used to reach the next level. Each character will level up according to his or her progress gaining new abilities and combos. If you're more focused on playing with the Human Torch, you'll probably forget about the other three, but if you want to make the fights easier you should level up all of the heroes. One thing surely changed in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: the button you'll be mashing during the gameplay.
In most Playstation and PS2 games, we used the X button to jump or perform certain environmentally interactive actions. In this title, the X is the new square button, being used for intense button mashing, in case you're fond of basic attacks. If you want combos, feel free to press the other action buttons, with the triangle being the one that triggers the most powerful move. Even if you won't die, the enemies' attacks might deplete your HP meter at some point, so you should start collecting health pickups. Those can be found by breaking certain objects that surround your characters, from pillars to the average boxes, in order to get a couple of flying green thingies that heal you. Characters can be controlled with the left analog stick, but this time the right stick is not there to complement the motion with the change of camera angles at the right time. Instead you get some decent action and a bad camera that even makes me wonder if the game's 3D at times.
Video I've complained about the camera before, but now I have to admit that graphically the game's at least decent, specially because of the characters' design. The Human Torch and his combos look great and so do most of the attacks of the quartet. Flames and energy fields are accompanied by sparks and blasts that will give you that small percentage of the eye candy you were hunting for. Rise of the Silver Surfer is a very colorful game and that applies to the environments, the characters and the enemies. Surprisingly enough, you'll enjoy the gameplay graphics more than those you'll see during cutscenes, but if you want to feast your eyes on quality content, you should check out the other versions of this title, preferably the PS3 and Xbox 360 ones.
Sound Usually a game's soundtrack is designed to leave an impression even after the game's finished, making you want to listen to it in your spare time or even buy an OST CD. This is surely not the case, as we've been fed with the same Hollywood soundtracks that accompany any famous media product labelled as a hit before its launch. If you thought that the music was bad, wait till you hear the dialogs... The four Fantastics have the bad habit of talking gibberish and if this were a language, they'd be the ones to teach it in universities.
Multiplayer Surprisingly enough the game features a multiplayer mode that allows four players to join in for some team boredom. They'll just have to press the start button on their joysticks to assume the control of one of the heroes and press the Select button when they want to stop playing the game. The gameplay remains the same, with the exception that you'll have to drag your friend with you, as one character can't leave the screen when the other's still laying around.
Conclusion The only thing I liked (can't say loved) about this game are the colorful graphics and the many enemies you'll be fighting at once. Smashing 20 on-screen beasts with a couple of fiery attacks can be nice, but not when you'll do it 40 times more. Also, that horrible camera angle can make a pretentious gamer sick, so he'll surely go get a serious dose of PS3 and Xbox 360 graphics if he wants to get better. We've yet to see a good game inspired from Marvel comics, but we're still waiting and hoping. The problem is that the producers are always rushed to release the game before the movie comes out, so there's less work on the content, especially on the gameplay and AI. Marking such games with poor or average ratings will hopefully teach the producers a lesson, so maybe the next installment in the Fantastic Four series will be somewhat of a hit.
