In this second part of our comic book feature, which began with a look at the best Marvel Comics’ video games, we examine the worst Marvel Comics to have graced consoles. It’s never fun when you take control of your favorite Comic Book character only to find out that the game didn’t go through quality assurance checks prior to launch. Here’s just a few of those stinkers.
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PSP, NDS)
On paper, Electronic Arts’ fighting game sounded good: put your most popular Marvel characters up against originally-designed mutations called the Imperfects. Sadly, in reality it failed to live up to expectations. It’s simplistic combat didn’t hold people’s interest for long with little to no use of character-specific abilities. The game clearly favored the Imperfect characters over the Marvel ones; this was more than apparent in the game’s story and the cheap enemy A.I. of the Imperfect characters. It’s arena-like maps were boring and dull with little interaction too. At least the character models looked good, and finishing moves for the Imperfect characters were pretty cool.
Iron Man (PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii, NDS, Xbox 360, PC, Mobile)
When Marvel began its cinematic universe, it signed a deal with Sega to make video games for these movies. The first was Iron Man, based on the movie starring Robert Downey Jr. This game suffered like most games that release to coincide with a movie; it was rushed, filled with bugs, glitches, terrible controls, frame-rate issues, and dreadful graphics. You can tell that almost all of the game’s budget went to Robert Downey Jr. to provide his voice and likeness to the character.
Thor: God of Thunder (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, 3DS, NDS)
Sega’s second attempt with the license again didn’t fare so well. Thor: God of Thunder was designed as a pure action title taking elements of games like God of War and Devil May Cry. Of course it didn’t come close to those titles. Although its combat seemed fun at first, it quickly became a repetitive mess with combos taking so long to kill anyone it made people wonder if they were even having an effect. Thor’s graphics also seemed like they were pulled from the last generation, while its award winning writer couldn’t save this terrible mess of a game.
X-Men Destiny (PS3, Xbox 360, NDS)
You have the X-Men and you have an established studio in Silicon Knights, so what can go wrong? Well, as it turns out, a lot of things. This X-Men title allowed you to play with three new mutants created specifically for the game. This action role playing game allowed you to choose sides between the X-Men or the Brotherhood of Mutants, but no matter what side you chose the outcome was always the same. The game’s combat also didn’t help with unresponsive controls, poor camera angles, and repetitive combat that didn’t give you enough combos or special attacks to play around with. The voice acting didn’t match any of the characters they were supposed to portray and the game looked like an HD Remaster of a last gen title. Thankfully, due to lawsuits between Silicon Knights and Epic Games over the Unreal Engine (which was used to make the game), Activision and Silicon Knights pulled the game from store shelves, delisted it from PSN, and XBLA, and had all physical copies destroyed by court order.
Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcades’s Revenge (SNES, Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, Game Gear, Game Boy)
There aren’t enough words to describe what was wrong with this title. You got to play with Spider-Man and members of the X-Men as they try and escape from Arcade’s deadly "Murderworld." Each character has their own stage that they must clear. The problem with these stages is that everyone besides Wolverine dies in one hit. Storm, for example, has to swim underwater avoiding traps and collecting air bubbles to survive. Wolverine on the other hand has to fight clowns and Jack-in-the-Box enemies. Not only was the game brutally hard, the obstacles placed in front of you seemed impossible to get through leading to cheap deaths and plenty of restarts.
What are the worst Marvel games you’ve ever played? Let us know in the comments below.