Completion Time: 13h:35m:00s
Rating: 7/10

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No More Than Four

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The Fantastic Four is still hot right now, right? This blog entry isn’t TOO out of date, is it? I wanted to have this out a bit ago, but this game ended up being harder than I initially thought it would be. But only a month or so removed isn’t terrible, probably as timely as I’ve been with one of these up to this point. I saw “First Steps”, and it was fine. Completely passable, which is far and above most of the MCU features in my mind at any rate. That’s what they call a low bar! But we’re going back to the first of the theatrical releases of the group with this one, specifically “Fantastic 4” from 2005. Even more specifically, we’re talking about the game that was developed before the movie and then eventually simultaneously as the movie. What a tangled web we weave.

Hey, spoilers opening cutscene of the Fantastic 4 game! I didn't know Doom... existed!

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It's Clobberin' Time!

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The game is interesting in that it doesn’t follow the beats of the movie one to one. You can say that about a lot of movie licensed games in a way, since these are usually stretched out to fill a full gaming experience. But given that this started as a generic “Fantastic 4” game and then later was retrofitted to encompass beats of the movie, it seems especially so. Major FF media tends to focus on Doom, Silver Surfer, and Galactus as antagonists for our heroes, but this game pulls in about everyone they could think of. From big hitters like Mole Man and Puppet Master to less featured players like Blastaar and Diablo, there’s a lot to unpack here. The first two levels and the last two levels are indicative of what you would find in the 2005 feature film, but everything in between is a pure adventure romp that is only hindered by its control scheme.

Hey Dragon Man, how about you come down here and fight?!

You get to control each member of the team, as if you could make this game any other way, and they all have their unique abilities. Given that Mr. Fantastic can stretch and Johnny creates fire, they both have impressive range abilities. Invisible Woman is meant to be a defensive character, though she isn’t particularly good at it. And the Thing loves to fight, as the theme song tells us, simple as. They each have their own abilities list that you can upgrade as you play, spending points that you earn from accomplishing missions and performing combo moves, and these range in terms of usefulness. Though if you play things ass-backwards starting at Hard mode like I did, eventually you’ll be more powerful than could be imagined and everything can be beaten no problem. Even the toughest of boss fights that made you tear your hair out once before (looking at you, Horus) will take no time at all once you get the button presses down to a science. I think the fact that the analog and d-pad aren’t used for the combos helps this work, as the GameCube barely ever utilizes these in a sensible range. Changing characters mid fight was a chore because a single press of “right” would make my selection of player fly all over the place before ultimately landing on someone I didn’t want.

Many versions of these legends exist, but there is only one... Legends... of the Hidden Temple!

The levels are aesthetically nice enough, though pretty linear and easy to digest. The most complicated it’ll ever really get is when there’s a hub to focus around, such as Reed Richards running around and completing puzzles to disable a force field, or… Reed Richards running around a museum and completing puzzles to raise a cage. Lots of Reed puzzles here. Each character will occasionally need to perform an action to complete a task, and it will be there on special hero time with different mechanics. Invisible Woman requires you to rotate the control stick to fill up a meter, the Thing wants you to button mash “A” to fill up a meter, and the Human Torch has you pressing “A” to a timed rhythm to fill up a meter. Mr. Fantastic, however, has multiple of these. There are moments where you need to stretch up and save civilians with the click of a button, and that’s easy enough. But they also put these weird wire connection puzzles in the game that only Reed can do, and it’s in almost every single chapter to some degree. Just one of those things you add to pad gametime, I imagine. Not too engrossing.

Get down here and stop wasting my time!

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Completing the Game

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So, you want to complete the game, huh? Well, be prepared to play through the entirety of the game at least 3 times. Easy difficulty is just to fill out the green bubble on the level select screen and show that you’ve done it. But completing the game on Medium and on Hard will unlock different Bonus stages with their own story. And no, you can’t just go to the last level and beat it on Medium to unlock the medium one. I tried, you’ve gotta do the whole thing. And then, if you completed the last level on Medium before beating the rest of the game on Medium, then you must do the final level on Medium AGAIN or it won’t register. Fantastic, as some might say!

Sometimes to beat a level quickly, you just gotta run past enemies like a true hero!

In each level, there are a series of secondary tasks to perform like completing the stage without dying or landing 15 4-hit combo moves or whatever else. To get the special end of level bonus, though, you must do all of the secondary missions within the level. You can’t do one half of the challenges and then the other half later, it has to be all at once. And these rewards can be an exuberant amount of points for spending or permanent benefits like +10% health or something. Additionally, each section of every level has a hidden Fantastic 4 emblem to find, and as you collect these you’ll unlock other bonus features in the extras menu as well. This added to the points you gain that you use to upgrade your character abilities (as mentioned earlier), these same points can be spent to unlock comic covers, concept art, and interviews with the actors and Stan Lee and whoever else showed up that day.

Oh, I only have a single thing missing in the tutorial chapter? Good thing I've gotta play through it all at least two more times!

Finally, those bonus levels. There are sections taking place in Latveria prior to a missile launch, and sections in literal Hell as the team tries to escape its confines. There’s nothing to unlock here, no bonuses to complete in the levels, just beat them and bask in the added story elements. Its honestly… so much more than a lot of other games give you. Very surprising.

Is this "Fantastic 4"? Or "God of War"?

This game is a tad janky, but there’s a ton of heart here, benefited by the fact that it’s only partially a licensed game at this point. Forget even a superhero game, as pre-“Arkham Asylum” it was rare to find one that was decent, let alone great (looking at you “X-Men and Spider-Man: Arcade’s Revenge”!), so it’s hard for me to dislike this really. Now I’ve heard that the sequel game based on “Rise of the Silver Surfer” is abysmal, but thankfully that didn’t come out on GameCube so nothing is tying me to play that one!

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 42/652