Game: "Captain America and the Avengers"
System: Nintendo Entertainment System
Genre: Action
Published by: Other
Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Posted: 1/24/2008
Review: The Avengers are in big trouble! That living stereotype known as the Mandarin as kidnapped Iron Man and the Vision, and now it's up to Captain America, and to a lesser extent, Hawkeye, to save them.
In the arcade version of the game, you could play as all four of the Avengers listed, but then again, it was also a beat-'em-up game. This game, meanwhile, was a 2D platformer where you guided Cap and Hawkeye around the US and fight in strange versions of US cities. Best of all, the two heroes don't start anywhere near each other; Captain America starts in Miami, Hawkeye starts in New Orleans, and they apparently have to meet up on foot somewhere in the middle. Well, at least they can't run. I'd hate to think that this would end over too soon.
Anyway, once they meet, you can switch between the two heroes as you move about the stage. Therein lies the main fault of the game: You can only be Captain America or Hawkeye. Now, Captain America is a great superhero. For starters, he jumps high, and he can use his shield to bash the bad guys from a fair distance away. He can even use it to cross hazards like water and spikes by using it as a little platform. Hawkeye... well, he can shoot arrows in five directions. That's it. Granted, as a character, that's about the extent of his powers, but at least they could have made his shots as powerful as Cap's shield attack.
Anyway, a large portion of the game involves the collection of jewels. All over the many cities in the US are floating pods that release jewels when you hit them. Some boost your health, some boost your attack, and one kind opens up an exit so that you can walk from Montgomery, Alabama, to the Mississippi River. Plus, if one of the characters is killed, aka “captured” (like, just for example, Hawkeye), you'll have to get a special jewel from one of the pods in the stage where he ate it in order to rescue him.
And then you face some bosses. Bosses are particularly brutal because A) they have way more health that both of your heroes combined, and B) some of them can fly. Worse yet, the ones that can fly have energy attacks that travel quickly across the screen AND can't be blocked by Captain America's shield. Hawkeye, meanwhile, is just fucked. Sure, he can aim upward, but even that doesn't mean much when you consider how weak he is.
The game supports two players, but only in the form of a battle mode. Therein, the first player can only be Cap or Hawkeye, and the second player can only be one of three supervillains: Crossbones, Ultron, and Living Laser. If you chose Cap, and your buddy chose Crossbones, you could have an interesting fight. Otherwise, the first player was pretty much screwed. Living Laser has the aforementioned air attack that can't be blocked, along with a truly pitiful ground attack, and Ultron can do the same super-deadly air attack in the air and on the ground. Oh yeah, they can also stay in the air indefinitely and rain down hell while you twist in the wind. Good times.
When I was young, I thought this game sucked. When I got older, I thought maybe I didn't like it because I couldn't get very far, but then I realized that it really did just suck. Captain America has the dubious honor of being one of a very small number of superheroes to not have that many crappy games made about him, but this was unfortunately one of them. I guess in this game, it pretty much breaks down like this:
Captain America: great
Vision and Hawkeye: worthless
Iron Man: dick
Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)