Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game’s About
Marvel Super Hero Squad is a tag team beat ’em up game that takes some iconic Marvel heroes, mixes up the art style and injects some off-beat humor that seems to take its cues from the 60s Batman TV show. The story begins with Dr. Doom up to his dastardly tricks and enlisting the help of fellow super villains to forge the all powerful Infinity Sword. The Super Hero Squad (members of the Avengers) must work together to save the world in a beat ’em up style game with some platforming elements.
What’s Hot
Super Hero Squad is a drastic departure from the often serious nature of comic books. When you first begin your super adventure, it might look a lot like a Muppet Babies approach to sacred comic icons. Those fears will be put to ease because the style and writing is more like Homestar Runner. If anything, the characters can have too much attitude, but it ends up being kitschy like watching an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. The heroes’ moves and abilities remain mostly untouched, the big exception is Wolverine’s healing, and you always team up so you can switch on the fly. Super Hero Squad stays close to what you’d expect from a typical beat ’em up game but also incorporates an arena mode that switches up gameplay.
The beauty in Super Hero Squad is the small details. The characters are animated well and the game runs smoothly as the enemies stream in. Thick battles where enemies are flying all over the place will also unveil tiny details like painting falling off walls, fire extinguishers bursting, etc. Characters like Falcon, Silver Surfer, Iron Man all have the ability to fly and you can swing the Wii-mote up and down to maintain a hover or get out of the battle quickly. Subtlety best describes the ways in which Super Hero Squad will impress gamers.
What’s Not
There was a lot of attention to detail but there wasn’t the same attention to some of the core game mechanics. Some of the super powers used by the heroes, like Thor’s lightening attack, are fairly tame and hard to control. Similar powers on other heroes work fine, so not all characters were treated equally. It was also disheartening to see the third level of the game bug out while trying to defend a S.H.E.I.L.D. door from the enemy agents. The bug didn’t break the game; it made the defense of the door unexciting once all the enemies were corralled in the same area far away from the defense point.
There are points where Super Hero Squad tries to be something it’s not: a platforming game. These parts eventually pop up and you are forced to do some jumping on platforms. The platforms can be moving or static so you get a taste of what death is like in all flavors. The camera, while movable, never seems to be in a good spot to make careful jumps. You can hope for a solid landing but you’ll be holding your breath each time you leap. The combat isn’t that great to begin with and adding the jumping elements is rather
Final Word
Super Hero Squad does a lot of the small things right, sacrificing some larger issues that should have been addressed. It is backwards game design in that regard since mechanics like combat and super powers needed to be adjusted along with fixing the camera trailing the heroes. Super Hero Squad isn’t going to light the world on fire with any beat ’em up revelations anytime soon.
