Available on: PS2, Xbox, Gamecube
Price: varies second hand
I played on: PS2
Notes: This game is on the DS & PSP but it’s not the same as seen here due to the handhelds being less powerful. You can check out my review for the PSP version by clicking here.
Marvel Nemesis offers players a chance to pit their favorite Marvel heroes against one another in a 3D fighter as well as offering a story around the introduction of 7 new characters; the Imperfects.
The story starts with the Thing going for a walk along the Manhattan bridge when New York is invaded by an alien force. The leader of these hostiles is Van Roekel, a profoundly intelligent man who has been picking up undiscovered meta-humans from Earth and transforming them into his loyal soldiers. This introduces us to the 7 new characters who are all experiments of Van Roekel and some of them are very interesting with Hazmat and Solara being my favorites. The worst thing about this story is how disconnected from the missions it feels, most the time you will only know what’s going on if you read the mission description. All too often I found myself back in an old location wondering why I was here because I forgot to read that description and it’s a shame because if told better this could have been great.
This game is split into two main gameplay modes, story, and verses. The story mode is where I spent most of my time for this review as it’s where the single player focus is and it’s a real shame because it sucks. The controls are designed for one on one combat and the story missions pit you against dozens of generic enemies at once meaning you can’t really take them on. You are only able to target and attack one enemy at a time so you will not be able to deal with the onslaught of enemies attacking you. The difficulty is all over the place in this game because of this, the bosses turn out to be the easiest part as it’s just you and them allowing the combat to work as intended. Most the time I just got so annoyed at the story mode because the challenge comes from trying to best awful controls making it feel unfair.
The versus mode allows you to take on a friend or the computer and this is the most fun you will have in this game. Although the combat is shallow next to most other fighters with no combos it does feel enjoyable in the large arenas. I love that most stuff can be picked up and used to fight with, characters that can swing or fly make use of the space and it does start to feel very fun despite its simplicity. This is what this game should have been instead of the awful action game it tried to be in the story mode.
The graphics are not great with everything having a distracting shine to it. The performance also became an issue for me when taking on larger groups of enemies which only added to the frustration of the bad controls. The art style is very nice and makes the most of the poor textures which means most the time outside of cutscenes when the camera is pulled back it looks good enough. I love the music and the voice acting is perfectly passable. The stages are designed well and during the boss fights and versus mode they really stand out. Once again it’s in the single player missions that they fall apart due to being reused over and over making them feel lazy and dull which is a shame because they are not when used right.
Marvel Nemesis is a very flawed mess of a game that isn’t sure if it wants to be a fighter or an action game and an interesting idea for a story gets lost in the middle of this identity crisis. I would advise most casual fighter and Marvel fans avoid this one and instead pick up any of the Marvel vs Capcom games to scratch that Marvel fighter itch they may have.
game on hai
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