Alright, I finished the game by now. My rating is going down to 70%. Several visual gaming bugs along with an obscure and fast ending going along the lines of "beat all the bosses you've met from the beginning of the game" mood got the rating down by 10%.
This game is one of the best I ever played, but I am strongly biased because I just loved superheroes comics in my youth. To an average gamer who is not biased in this way, I beleive that the 70% might even be a little too high still. However, taking into account that this is the second successfull superhero PC game which got out and thus it's extremely original, it's sure worth a try even if you are not interested in the heroes gimmick.
Another pro of the game is that it really mannaged to make me feel (at some sparse points in the game) as a true superhero leader. At times I sure did not know where to throw myself in some heavy action fights (or more to the points, the 4 heroes you control in the game
) and this really add to the realism of being a "leader". Another good point goes in the realism and background of the "default" heroes. You could swear they really come out from a well thought out old comic like the Legion of Superheroes. A lot of work been put in their background, and they are really balanced in such a way that they both complement and need the other heroes to survive and fight well.
On the cons tough, while the graphics are quite nice to the eye and the camera is set into a kind of isometric view (which I just love, tough there is an option to unlock it), several graphic glitches and/or bugs really bothered me thru the course of the game. The most annoying glitche I ran across is when ennemies are throw away either by an explosion or one of your heroes power and "enter" an object or a building. This is extremely infuriating when the ennemy happen to be someone you need to interogate to continue the plot, and it actually happened to me more than once.
There was several minor glitches too, like when you pick up an object with a character and end up with a minor case of out of synch animation, or like "entering" building or walking thru not moving cars simply by walking thru them like if they did not exist (tough I could still pick them up). Nothing to hinder play, but graphically ugly.
Another gripe is the slowdown I experimented in the game when there is a lot of vegetation on the screen. While it may be system dependant (even tough I do have a nice gaming machine here) and that the same happened when I played Halo, I do feel like giving so much CPU power only to render vegetation a complete waste of game resource.
More to the point of the game itself, I really hated the ending. Like aforementioned, the last few fights get you to fight all the "big" bosses from the beginning of the game until you get to the real threat you need to take care of. While the beginning of the game is really well made and the story really stick together, the few last missions are part of the worst I ever ran thru in a game like this. It is extremely clear that it been really butched (a la Diablo II 4th act) and only been pieced together for the sake of having an ending. Not only does the game end without you having your final fight with your real nemesis, but I feel like the game been cut in two, just when I was enjoying levelling my last late heroes. While I should have seen this coming since you are always sending teams of 4 heroes to fight and thus leave you to fight more often with the heroes you prefer most, the ending was really too abrupt to really allow me to get the feeling it could have been way better. Moreso that the game simply stop there with no option to have some random missions with your ending heroes... If you want to play with them again, load an old mission or start again... :not_ok:
Also, on one mission in particular at the beginning of the game, you end up splitting your team to react to an emergency and cover more ground at the same time. Being one of my most liked mission at the beginning, I expected to have a few more missions like these... But to no avail.
My personnal oppinion of this game would be that it had a
lot more potential than what I seen and played. It is a first of it's kind and I would not be surprised to see a sequel or other games trying to copy and improve this game. In fact, I would be quite glad...
However, I been wrongly biased by the price of the game, since it seems it been 2 years already that it got out. It came to my attention by friends of mine that the game was selling as high as 70$(Can) when it got out, which is a utterly steal of good earned money. The game is really not worth as much, I would never pay more than 30$ for it now that I know what it is all about. This is another reason why I lowered my rating, since I now know better on that aspect.
Bottom line: if you dig superheroes comics and/or cartoons,
you must get this game! If you are not, then it would still be a very good purchase if it is at a low price. Considering I bought mine 7$, it's a bargain!
k: