Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects Review

Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects looks awesome on paper – a potential huge cast of characters, online fighting, and gorgeous graphics – but the final product can only be considered a disappointment. Clunky fighting, a lame single player mode, and a limited roster of characters you’ll actually want to play as will sour you on the game within the first fifteen minutes you spend with it.

Identity Crisis

The first big problem with Marvel Nemesis is that despite being hyped as a fighting game the main single player mode is a beat-em-up where you take on wave after wave of nameless minions. There is also a versus mode where you can fight one-on-one, but in order to unlock more characters you have to play through the beat-em-up. If it were put together better, that wouldn’t be an issue, but the enemy AI is downright stupid and your character (no matter which character you’re using) only has a handful of moves, so it becomes really boring really fast. The story is actually pretty interesting and tells of an alien force invading New York and it is up to the superheroes to save the day, but it isn’t nearly good enough to make up for the less than stellar gameplay.

Gameplay

The fights in Marvel Nemesis take place in large open levels and you have the freedom to run and jump and fly wherever you want. Your controls consist of buttons that allow you to block, jump, attack, and throw and the two triggers give you controls for added mobility and your super powers. Super powers are mostly contextual (i.e. different positions and ranges result in different moves) which gives you some variety, but once you learn one character you have literally learned them all because everyone plays the same. The controls are too simple and limited to provide any sort of depth and after your first couple of fights the game is just mindless and repetitive. What is worse is that none of the characters really use all of the powers you would expect them to. The whole point of a superhero game is to be able to really feel like a particular hero and Marvel Nemesis fails miserably in this aspect. Also, the whole point of a fighting game is to test your skills and reward you for learning a new characters and Marvel Nemesis fails there as well.

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