Day 60, Game 60 - Avengers: Battle For Earth

I can't say I had high expectations for this game going in to it. For the most part, I wanted to try it out to play with my seven year old, as we had a lot of fun during our week of Halo, and ever since then, he has been clamoring to play more and more games. While we are still making our way through the Halo 4 campaign co-op, he asks me almost daily to play something on the Wii U.

Lately, the only thing I have played on the Wii U has been BIT.TRIP presents Runner 2, but that is a one player experience. Due to the ridiculous lack of new games, my Wii U is going mostly underplayed, except for the few games I have played on it for this bog project. He would be happy playing NintendoLand, to be honest, but U just haven't found the motivation. Please, Nintendo, give me a reason not to regret buying this damn machine. And do it soon!

Anyway, enough griping, let's get to the game. Like I said, I didn't have high hopes for the game going in, based on reviews and the fact that it is a port from an Xbox Kinect game, of all things. A Kinect game being ported to other systems? What is this world coming to? Understandable that my expectations were tempered quite a bit.

Right off the bat, I found the menu confusing, and swore I was pushing the wrong buttons as we tried to get a 2-player campaign mode started. Unbeknownst to the me, the game is all pretty much the same no matter what mode you have it on. It's a two-on-two tag-team style fighting game, with limited move sets and confusing meters. I actually jumped back and forth between the campaign mode and arcade mode to try to figure out what the hell I was playing. Turns out, the campaign mode is just a glorified arcade mode with a couple cut-scenes and predetermined match-ups.

There are three Super Moves for each character, a melee attack, a kick attack and a limited range of movements. That's it. If you are using the GamePad, you use finger swipe motions and on-screen buttons to execute the moves, but if you are the lucky player to wield the Wii Motion+ controller/Nunchuck combination, you are basically resigned to frantically waiving the controller all over the place in a feasible attempt to pull off moves. I will offer this caveat to the discussion, though: my seven year old LOVED using the controller combo, and had to stand up to play just because of how much he was getting into the punching combos and move motions, keeping him from slamming the controller against the couch over and over again. Me? Not interested in that type of game play at all, but it's pretty clear, based on the difficulty and lack of depth, that this game is geared towards kids in his age range than it is gaming adults like myself.

I can appreciate that for what it is, actually. They have a nice selection of characters, from all of the Avengers, some X-men, Spidey and even some Marvel villains. All the characters pretty much play the same, despite having different attribute points. One other cool thing is the ranking system for each match, which goes: bronze, silver, gold and then Adamantium (instead of the normal platinum). Nice touch, there.

Anyway, in just a couple of hours, we got about 3/4 through the "campaign," and while I was bored and frustrated at first, the game actually grew on me and I enjoyed it for what it was. Plus, seeing how much my little guy enjoyed it, how could I really hate the game? Of course, little sister wanted to get into the action, but she eventually conceded her attempt to get a turn and instead just enjoyed mimicking all the catch phrases and eventually just started stomping around like Hulk. She was a happy camper.

We will probably finish up the game this weekend, and then call it good. I wish I could say this is the game to get me out of my Wii U funk, but it's not. At least it will keep Caleb off my back for a little bit about it.

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