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A better title for this game would be: Craptain America and the Ambiguously Gay Trio. I�m not quite sure where the game went wrong since the premise was decent: use one of The Avengers or Captain America to take on Red Skull's forces. Unfortunately that�s pretty much where the fun ends and crap-fest begins. In most side scrolling brawlers when an enemy gets hit he stays stunned for a second allowing you to pummel the ever loving snot out of his worthless behind. In this game however it seems as though the enemies are impervious to any and all physical attacks. Imagine for example a two year old attempting to pimp-slap Arnold Schwarzenegger. The result can best be described as disappointing and underwhelming. As if this wasn�t bad enough the character design allows for characters such as Vision to come across as a bit less than manly. As you can tell from the picture of vision to the right, he doesn�t exactly strike fear into the hearts of villains for some reason. Maybe it�s the fact that he stands around pointing at nobody and seems to carry himself like a gay model. It gets worse though. After getting past the first screen of nigh-invincible enemies and getting thrashed within an inch of your life because the enemies laugh at your attempt to serve justice in your tighty-whities you come across the first two �bosses� of the game. I have no idea who these characters are and I don�t care because once one of the bosses began to literally fist Vision, what was left of any hope for this game died. Even after slogging through ridiculous battles such as this things don�t get any better for our heroes. There are some cool flying stages but after hearing every enemy die with the exact same craptastic scream, I quit caring. The enemy design is also pretty retarded as well. For example there are men flying torpedo style through the air wearing what looks like scuba-gear. I�m not quite sure where they fit into the entire Avengers plot-line but I would guess it was around the same time that you discover that Iron-man designed his outfit after S&M gear. If you don�t believe me take a look at his mask and replace the mouth hole with a zipper and you�ll see what I mean. The dialogue in the game, what little of it there is some of the most pointless crap I have read in a while. In one of the last stages you fight some wannabe-silver samurai/nimrod crossover robot which tells you that before he tries to kill you, he will reveal the location of the laser which Red Skull will use to destroy the world (which if you think about it is really pointless because when he runs out of supplies on the moon he�s screwed. No witty analogy for that one. He�s just screwed.) Apparently this machine has short term memory loss worse than that fish on Finding Nemo because as soon as he finishes that statement he proceeds to try and kill you. I�m sure the people who built that robot didn�t put a lot of time into A.I. construction to say the least. Perhaps the most disturbing fight of the entire game comes before the aforementioned downs syndrome stricken cyborg. Again I don�t know who this loser was but the people who designed his attacks had to have had something seriously wrong with them since this bosses main attack seems to suspiciously resemble�well�lets just say the smallest of soldiers. Unfortunately for him fortress Ovum seems to be nowhere in sight. Staying away from that attack is more than just life-saving, it�s the most sanitary thing that you can do. Let�s just say I was very glad when the fight was over because I didn�t have to worry about getting hit with an electrically charged wad anymore. The list could go on and on my friends but after pointing out the horrors of somebody�s electrically charged precious bodily fluids, I don�t think there is much more that can be said about this travesty of gaming. On a scale of one to ten I rate this at least a three simply because it can be pretty funny to play through if for nothing more than to make fun of it much like Mystery Science Theater 3000 but that�s about the only reason it does that well. For those of you who have never heard of Dragon View don�t worry, most people haven�t. Here�s a brief history of Dragon View: There was a game called Drakkhen made many years ago for Super Nintendo. Then there was a sequel called Dragon View. The end. Wasn�t that a heartwarming story? I hope you enjoyed it because that�s about how much plot and character development actually is in Dragon View. The plot is very tired and reused: The main character is a loser (let�s call him Sir Bland the Useless) an he's the hero. I still haven�t figured out why. Anyways Bland�s girlfriend is kidnapped by an evil wizard. Is this starting to sound like almost every fantasy plot ever? Good, because it should. I remember I played this last summer and I remember wondering why I had never heard of this game. Then I realized it was because the plot was bland, the characters were flatter than a pre-pubescent girl and the over-world map was the single worst thing to happen to the SNES. It wasn�t that the overall game play was bad. It was actually pretty easy to handle but the over-world map was a first person view with a 3d perspective even more void of detail than a sheet of notebook paper. I became very frustrated because it was needlessly difficult navigating around boulders and such to the point that I almost quit playing just because of that. The plot is so poorly developed that I literally quit caring about what happened to the characters and hoped that somebody would just die to spice things up. Sadly nothing like that happened. Enemy design is a lot better than that of the Avengers though. The strangest thing though is that none of the boss fights are too difficult until the final boss who suddenly becomes practically impossible to kill unless you decided to waste your life by leveling up all the way to whatever the highest level is. Then you might stand a chance. Interestingly enough, unless you stumble upon a random scene by examining a grave stone, you�ll miss half the plot relating to the main villain. The plot is just that thin. I would rate this game a 4 out of 10 simply because it doesn�t suck as bad as the Avengers and it plays better but then again that�s like saying �I may have crabs but at least I don�t have gonorrhea". At that point it just doesn�t matter anymore. The only thing accurate about this title is "fury" because that�s the emotion you feel after playing through this game. The concept is simple enough: beat the crap out of your opponent using furry critters including but not limited to: Tai Cheetah, Kung-Fu Bunny, Kendo Coyote, and Foxy Roxy (the sex appeal of the game embodied in a very curvaceous fox with nice legs and a nice ra�well you get the idea). The visuals are pretty good but the problem is in the control setup. Pulling off special moves is only slightly more difficult than say pulling a bank job at Fort Knox. The controls are slightly sluggish when it comes to attacking and blocking sucks more than an Oreck. The computer however is needlessly cheap and defending against the computers combos is almost impossible. Most strategies boil down to jump and kick and hope to God you knock them down. When you can actually connect a combo of your own the results can actually devastating for your opponent. The problem lies in actually connecting blows. Remember how I said the controls sucked? Well executing combos is theoretically easy since it�s only a few buttons hit together but the computer�s detection of them being put it in is only slightly worse than the BTK killer�s neighbor's detection of him being a cold-blooded killer. If it weren�t for the sluggish controls, this game wouldn�t be that bad. The only thing that makes it bad aside from that, is the incredibly annoying soundtrack. I understand the attempt at a kung-fu movie soundtrack style, but even they weren�t this bad. I rate this game about a 5.5. Spiderman and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge To anybody who played this game and enjoyed it, I can only assume that you were horribly beaten, tortured and abused as a child or you're a masochist. The reason I have come to this conclusion is that that pain is basically all that you are subjected to in Arcade�s Revenge. Apparently Arcade wants revenge on all of mankind based on the fact that this game is the blight on humanity that it is. I�ve decided to spare you the screenshots from this game not only because I refuse to even load the rom even to get screenshots but because it is a game that has to be played to truly understand how horrifically bad it is. The game starts out with Spiderman going on a scavenger hunt to find the X-men. After succeeding in this pointless task you pick each of the five characters and go through two stages each and then through five more before fighting Arcade. Usually 15 stages can mean 15 stages of fun but not this time. Unholy abomination times 15 is never fun not even for the unholy abomination. The sound quality is less than crap, character design is excessively bad since Apocalypse looks like a misshapen smurf and Gambit looks like a retard. The levels are poorly designed and ridiculously hard for Cyclops and Gambit to the point of being almost impossible. Perhaps the most annoying character is sadly Gambit because if you run out of cards at any time, your screwed and pretty much are forced to start over. As I�ve said before, the game must truly be played to be appreciated or loathed depending on your point of view. This game gets a rating of two simply because�well�you know what I changed my mind the game gets a 1. I would give it a score of zero but not only am I using a 1-10 scoring system but because at least the game doesn't force you to use a pointless X-Man like Jubilee. She's cute, but she's just not that popular. Now Rogue, I would use her all day long. Shoot she could use me all day long for all I care. I could go on and on about crappy games that were released on Super Nintendo like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Spawn, Any of the Barbie Games, and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. However I�ve spent plenty of time on this already. I�m going to go forget that these games even exist now and bask in the sheer greatness that is Chrono Trigger.
Dragon View
Brutal: Paws of Fury
And now we reach what I consider to be the grandaddy of all sucky games...
