The console version of Fantastic Four is a new-age beat-em-up that predictably follows and expands upon the movie story. Marvel's legendary superhero team is depicted as the movie would show them, complete with the altered origin sequence and Dr. Doom's complete re-characterization. Activision even got the real movie stars to record voice samples for their respective characters. It all adds up to fan service…but for fans of the movie more than the comic. If you really, really love the Fantastic Four movie, the idea is that you'll be dazzled enough by the game's similarity to the film to overlook its numerous flaws.

Foremost among those flaws is the game's lowest denominator design. At its core is a very simple beat-em-up in which the four characters share essentially the same move sets, appropriately dressed up with special effects to give the illusion of variety. Usually there are two members of the team present in a given section of the level, and you can freely switch between them; it would be a novel concept if the characters had more distinct abilities. Instead, switching is usually only necessary when you see an event "hotspot" that must be activated by a certain character. These hotspots trigger mundane mini-games like pressing A rapidly or rotating the control stick, which even Mario Party learned not to use after the first game put nasty blisters on kids' hands.

The level designs are a mess. Despite being mostly linear, it still is not always clear where to go because a cut-scene will say things like "Let's meet in the control room!" but the game gives no indication of where the control room is. This game's idea of superhero teamwork usually involves Mr. Fantastic or The Human Torch opening a locked door (by hacking or melting it, respectively) so the other characters can run through. Only a couple of bosses and the final level hint at the kinds of cool teamwork situations that could have been applied throughout the game, even with the simplistic hotspot event mechanic.

Defeating enemies and completing levels earns points for your team, which can be used to upgrade each character's combos and special moves. You can't buy new moves though; each character always has the same three special abilities, and combos are unlocked at set points throughout the game. All you can do is make those specials and combos more powerful. It's still a fine idea with some real strategic value, since you have to allocate points among the four individual characters. However, the upgrade system does nothing to help the fact that Fantastic Four requires no skill whatsoever to play. Which combo you perform is largely irrelevant, and control sequencing is terrible anyway, so combat feels like, and effectively is, button smashing. The special moves are governed by a steadily recharging meter but are not really any more effective than the regular combos, except for each character's area-clearing special. Two characters can perform simultaneous special moves to create a combined effect, but since the other team members are usually controlled by the computer, there's no way to reliably plan such attacks, and they don't seem to make much difference anyway.

Luckily, Fantastic Four includes a two-player co-op mode to fully enable such teamwork. Unluckily, the co-op implementation sucks. The game's camera stays zoomed in close, so there's not much room to move around, and it's never really clear which player's progress is controlling the camera's movement. If the other player is anywhere near the edge of the screen, he won't be able to move much, and more often than not, he'll get completely stuck behind a car or flower pot, forcing the first player to backtrack just so the second player can free himself. Basically, the camera is a nightmare. It ruins the game so much that I couldn't get anyone to play co-op with me for more than a few minutes.

One thing Fantastic Four does a great job with is giving you a lot for your money, unless fun is one of the things you like to get out of a game purchase. The game is decently long, and levels can be replayed to earn more upgrade points and max out your characters. You can also use upgrade points to buy fan service content like concept art, comic book pages (which can't actually be read due to the text size), and laughably compressed video interviews with the stars and writers of the movie. Finding secret icons located in each level eventually opens up video interviews with Stan Lee, the legendary comic writer who created the Fantastic Four. And when you beat the game on Medium or Hard difficulty, you unlock bonus levels staged in Latveria, the fictional country ruled by Dr. Doom in the comics which is completely ignored in the game's main storyline. So if you really do enjoy playing Fantastic Four, there's a lot to keep you playing.

Most people, I expect, will not enjoy playing Fantastic Four. It's a dry, repetitive game with glaring design flaws and even some programming bugs. But then again, a lot of people apparently enjoyed the movie this game is based on, which performs unmentionable excretory functions all over its comic book source material. There's no accounting for taste, eh?