Oh, Squirrel Girl, you deserve so much better than this.
Marvel Super Hero Squad: Comic Combat is one of the few
games exclusive to the infamous uDraw game tablet, the failed peripheral that
nearly sunk THQ. And if all the uDraw games were this bad, its failure is a
good thing.
Previous Super Hero Squad games were somewhat dull and
tedious, but adding the control scheme from Hell makes you forget all about the
boring monotony. Combat is equivalent to a strategy game, where you tell your
troops where to go and who to fire at, then you watch them do it. The
characters in this game are not well trained soldiers, and simple navigational
directions get blundered as they struggle moving around obstacles or even each
other. And when they get to the general area that you directed then to, they'll
often immediately disperse, wandering off towards random things like a
distracted toddler.
You can select a character to control individually, or the
entire crew (up to three "Squaddies") at once. Using your stylus, you
simply click a spot where you'd like them to go. Simple, yet trying to move
then offscreen is a tedious affair. You
can touch the edge of the visible area and slowly plod them along as the screen
area moves with them.
If an enemy or breakable item is on the spot where you
click, they'll attack it. Ranged characters will often move away from the target, so that they're
attacking at maximum distance. They don't seem to care that moving away puts
them in the line of fire from something else, such as the stage where there's a
GIAGANITC LASER firing down the center of the screen. Also, if the enemy
they're shooting at is knocked down, they'll be out of range, so they'll just
stand around like there's nothing to do. Any melee character you brought along
will be on his own until you manually command his buddies to rejoin the fray.
If there wasn't a way to make the A-I smart, then they should have included a
general "attack" command.
There's also no defense maneuvers at all, with the exception
of certain characters special moves that can heal or briefly block damage
(Generally, men's special moves attack, women heal. Not the most progressive
game). At least, I assume the bubbles Invisible Woman puts around her teammates
are shields. The game is also horrible at documentation.
There's no help menu, and nothing to explain what
anything is, aside from generic tutorial instruction early in the game. The
small game manual mentions the coins (or "issue sales") you pick up
in-game unlock items like upgrades and alternate costumes. Nowhere is there
anything to indicate if you have everything. Everybody has one alternate
outfit, and I think my powers are all up to level 2, but there's no list to
tell me if I should be expecting more or not. I don't even see any place to
tell me if my powers are really level two or not, the last pop-up I noticed
said "Orb Attack upgraded to level 2". I guess that's good? Who
knows.
Besides moving around Squaddies, you can activate draw attacks with your stylus, by sketching a quick path from a character. They will then fire a projectile attack, or melee-only characters will perform a rushing attack. The problem is, it's only really effective if the enemies are standing still. And most projectile attacks won't go further than the first enemy. Hope nobody's standing in the way of the person you really want to hit.
You also have "Glyph Attacks" (I only know they're
called this because the manual says so).
You can draw a circle to get an Orb that you can roll around to damage
enemies. Drawing a triangle makes a decoy to distract enemies. And an
"X" will create a bomb. Seems easy enough. Expect the game has a lot
of trouble distinguishing your attempts to draw a glyph from you just clicking
to move your characters. At least two-thirds of the time, my attempt to draw
something is misconstrued as a movement command.
The only other abilities you have are one-time-use
Earthquake and Zipper-Rift power-ups. The Earthquake is the only control I had
no problem using. Simply shaking the tablet back and forth activates this
powerful attack. The Zipper-Rift is the opposite story. It's activated by
placing your thumb and finger on the tablet and performing an
"un-pinching" motion. In theory. I only got it to work easily once.
Every other time, I struggled for nearly a minute trying to get it to work. By
then, most of the enemies were gone. It is an absolutely idiotic concept to
make you suddenly use your fingers when playing the game. It should have been
activated simply by clicking the zipper icon. Keep. It. Simple. This game has
the worst controls I've ever encountered, and would have benefited greatly from
just being another standard controller-based brawler.
I have to give some credit to the writer for actually making
the storyline specific to the uDraw tablet. Instead of just slapping a game
with hideous tablet controls, the entire storyline revolves around Dr. Doom
discovering "you" helping the Super Hero Squad with your "power
pen". He plans to cross into your dimension to steal the pen. It's a lot
of filler, as his minions gather supplies he needs, and when he achieves his
goal, it's a very brief, unfulfilling fight. There's also some inane sub-plot
in the cutscenes with Dr. Doom's mom bothering hm. It has absolutely no bearing
on the story whatsoever. You never fight her. She's just there to annoy her
son. That's the entire game: brief, annoying, and unfulfilling. The entire
game, including achievement hunting, is completed under five hours.
Graphically, it's blasé. Same Super Hero Squad graphics
(which were never impressive) in much smaller play areas. There's some amusing
voice acting, I assume it's the same actors from the cartoon. A lot of repetition
in the dialog, of course, but I'm amused by Squirrel Girl walking around
saying, "Have nuts, will travel!" And I did laugh at dimwit Hulk's
answer to a certain riddle.
There's other poor programming oversights: Being
disconnected from Xbox Live while playing resulted in being immediately kicked
back to the main menu; There's no sound during the credits, no music or
anything; And there's no explanation to the Heroic Feats. I figured out the
icons for finding the comic stash, and not dying during a panel. But what's
that third icon mean? And does accomplishing these feats reward you with
anything at all?
All in all, this poorly programmed mess is a total
kick-in-the-groin to those of us who love Marvel Comics characters.
1 out of 4 Stars
Recommended for: fans of Squirrel Girl. This is her first
video game appearance. I wouldn't recommend actually playing it, but having it
there in your SG shrine would be its best use.
Franchise fixes: since the uDraw tablet has been
discontinued, the SHS games should go back to the old formula, just focus on
making them more fun to play.
Achievement/In-Game Rewards - As I mentioned, this is a
quick 1000 achievement points for whoever wants to put up with the shoddy
control scheme. Aside from a single alternate costume for each character, the game
lacks much reward for its players.
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