Release Date: July 19, 2011
Time Played: 10 Hours, 15 Minutes
Trophies: 100% (No Guides)
When contemplating playing a game based on a comic book the most important question a player must ask himself is how much more will he enjoy the experience simply because of the character he gets to control. This is especially true of a game based off of a movie based off of a comic book, as these games are rarely "good." Captain America: Super Soldier is one of those games, hitting the shelves almost simultaneously with the theatrical release of Captain America: The First Avenger. Luckily for me, I've always liked Captain America and thus enjoyed playing both the game and watching the movie. Unfortunately, that does not mean that Super Soldier is a "good" game.
The first thing I realized when playing this game was that the difficulty settings seemed to be thrown in as a second thought. I started on Normal and found myself switching to Hard after about five minutes because the game was so mind-numbingly easy. There are three settings (Easy, Normal, Hard) that can be changed at any time during the game. Also, there aren't any trophies that are affected by difficulty, if you're worried about that sort of thing. When looking at the differences in difficulty, apart from the obvious AI combat changes, Cap automatically regenerates health on Easy and Normal and does not on Hard. Seems fair I guess, except for the fact that you quickly learn while playing on Hard that you can simply die whenever you want without much repercussion and start that exact same fight with a fresh full bar of health. This all may seem insignificant, but it's just an example of how you can tell that the game was not truly honed before its release.
Still, once I changed the setting to Hard the game became much more enjoyable. The combat system isn't too complicated with only a few attacks along with the ability to block with and throw Cap's shield. I always loved Captain America's shield, so even if it was simple, using the shield as a weapon was cool to me. There are a few (very few) upgrades that you can purchase throughout the game, but I didn't find them very useful or exciting. Also, the enemies are pretty repetitive, but rolling around smacking fools remains fun for the entire game.
One big issue I had was the pacing. Basically the game follows a formula of fight a group of guys all at once (which usually does not take too long), then explore the area for pickups and treasures (which usually takes too long). Now maybe everyone that plays this game doesn't search for all the treasures, but personally I always have to check every little nook, even though I find myself hating this part of games. Because of this I think I spent about 80% of the game looking for crap or Prince of Persia'ing around some Wolfenstein and only 20% actually fighting. Still, I DID have fun playing this game.
One thing that I guess is cool about Super Soldier is that most of the voice actors are the same stars that are in the The First Avenger. Personally this did not affect me and I did not even realize this until I looked it up on IMDb, but hey I guess it's cool.
The story is original and can be viewed as a supplement to the movie, but really you're not going to care about it. The graphics aren't great for this generation and the bosses aren't particularly exciting. The game is pretty average as far a length goes for a game like this, and it also has a super easy trophy list. It only took me a little over 10 hours to get 100% and I didn't use any sort of guide. There are some pretty easy challenges you can do in addition to the main story, but really after you beat it there's not much replay value. Still, if you like Cap, you might still have some fun. It's a 2.5.
