One thing I hate, but thoroughly understand, is different retailers offering different pre-order bonuses. In this case, Amazon is offering a Stan Lee skin for Activision/Beenox’s upcoming Amazing Spider-Man video game. This always makes my purchasing choice so much more difficult than it should be, mostly because I enjoy heading to my local GameStop or Best Buy to acquire my game rather than wait for it to arrive at my door step. However, in this age of DLC, I’m hoping this “Amazon exclusive” appears on Xbox Live sometime after the game’s release. If not, then I’ll just enjoy my GameStop bonus Rhino challenge mission…true believing is over rated anyway…right?
Teen Titans
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Artificial Mind and Movement
Released: May 24, 2006
Platforms: PlayStation 2, Game Cube
ESRB: Everyone 10+
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s Young Justice: Legacy, a fighting game based off the young DC heroes from the animated series, is still months away, but for fans who may have missed out on the more whimsical Teen Titans series from the last decade, there’s much to be enjoyed. Especially the show’s video game sibling. Though clearly not as dark as Young Justice, you don’t have to be a child to have fun with Teen Titans: The Video Game, but it does help to be a fan of the source material.
The story mode is really the most boring part of this disc, though not a complete dread. The Master of Games mode was where my friends and I found the most delight, pitting up to four players in arena combat. Each of the 36 playable characters has their own unique moves, combos, and signature maneuvers, making each one feel different. But the eventual repetition in either game mode is inevitable. The combat is the highlight again in the campaign, but the repetition hits you much harder than anything Slade throws at you.
The story mode doesn’t help; I often forgot what exactly I was fighting for even after the cutscenes between stages. Like a plot out of the cartoon itself, the Titans are transported inside a video game where they do battle with some of their most classic foes, while breaking the fourth wall and talking to the player almost like something out of Sesame Street. Wave after wave of cannon fodder is fed to you until the next area opens, but, thankfully, the game is rather short, only lasting a few hours, with the boss battles mostly being worth the blandness between them. Though the Terminator isn’t as vicious as we’ve seen him in Identity Crisis or Geoff John’s inaugural Titans run, he’s still quite the bugger that requires mastery of even this simple game to defeat.
Unfortunately, the action can be obscured by the camera’s habit of zooming too far upward, which in turn exposes the cramped and littered environments. Moreover, the framerate lag nearly matches the game’s repetition as far as frustrations, but it’s never so bad as to kill the experience. If you can look past the hokeyness of Teen Titans, then fans of either the show or comic can really find a good night’s worth of DC romping and competition, as long as you have plenty of friends to go along with it.
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Andrew Hurst
andrewhurst@comicattack.net