This mediocre game finishes off the blockbuster games of the summer.
With the onslaught of movie-based games that came out this summer, Captain America came out a little too late and made too little of a splash to really get noticed. With decent graphics and voice acting accompanied with fairly smooth gameplay, the game only comes off as mediocre. There aren't many aspects of the game that really jump out.
In the game, players take control of the titular character of Captain America, America’s poster boy and super soldier of World War II. It’s up to him to rally the troops while fighting members of HYDRA and attempting to bring down the Red Skull. Unfortunately Cap kinda of feels like a robot while he does all of this. The so-called super soldier runs and jumps in straight lines with stiff joints. He immediately stops before running over or dropping down a ledge, which can be frustrating when you’re trying to get the jump on some HYDRA agents.
The one part of the game that is pretty good is the action. When you’re surrounded by 15 HYDRA agents you can go wild with Cap and execute some of the coolest combos around. The downside is that all combos can be executed by just pressing the attack button over and over again. There’s no way to choose which attacks you dish out, the game decides for you. It’s nice to see red, white, and blue stars explode out of Captain America’s fist at the end of a fight, but it feels less rewarding when I didn’t choose for it to happen. Another aspect of the game that’s kind of fun is when players can throw Cap’s shield at enemies. At first it’s fun and helpful, but as the game progress it becomes painfully obvious how broken the mechanic is, and when you have no choice but to throw your shield across the field to blow up a bomb it can be a little frustrating when it hits two feet to the left.
Having Chris Evans voice Captain America in the game is a treat, when you can hear him. For some reason, you can hear most grunt soldiers loud and clear but whenever Captain America or any other movie figure talks, bombs drop or gunfire covers them up, making them barely audible. The music is repetitive and not very inspired to boot. The graphics accompany the audio perfectly: they’re not great, but not terrible. You can make out Cap’s costume and figure out who’s on your side pretty easily, but there’s not really a lot of attention to detail.
Overall, the game's all right. Nothing makes it stand out against Thor or Green Lantern or Transformers or any other of the hundred movie games that came out this year. The game's not bad, it's just not very good.