Review by: Brandon "Adhesive X" Cackowski-Schnell

In terms of athletic prowess, Captain America could give the caped crusader a run for his money, which makes the decision to take the widly successful formula of Batman: Arkham Asylum and port it over to the Captain America movie universe a smart one. It’s not the most novel approach to making a game, but the result is a movie tie-in that is much better than you’d expect, providing an afternoon of Hydra punching, shield slinging mayhem.

When I say that the Arkham Asylum formula was ported over, that’s no exaggeration. Everything from the combat system to the sprawling compound that allows for backtracking from almost every location to the use of upgrade points to buy new combat abilities and the collection of combat challenges brings to mind Batman’s most successful outing. It’s not a direct comparison between the two games though, as everything about the Sentinel of Liberty’s fight against the Hydra is somewhat...less.

Combat is satisfying, with buttons mapped to types of moves such as strikes, grabs and dodges rather than using a complicated combo system, but it never feels as deep or rhythmic as Batman’s Freeflow combat model. Even so, whacking an enemy soldier on the head with your shield makes a delightful clanging noise. The combat is definitely serviceable, and Cap has a nice selection of combat animations, but between the regenerating health on the default difficulty and Cap’s super moves, fights generally don’t cause too much of a problem.

Same as in the movie, the Nazi’s of Cap’s early comic book appearances have been replaced with Hydra soldiers. As the game takes place within the storyline of the movie, but doesn’t tie in directly, all of the main enemies from the movie, such as Red Skull and Armin Zola are also the main enemies in the game, with Madam Hydra and Baron Von Strucker thrown in for good measure. This relationship with the movie hampers the game a bit as the need to keep the main villains around so that they can also be in the movie removes the intensity from the conflict. As a direct result, the boss fights don’t have a lot of weight. At the risk of providing spoilers, you don’t even fight Red Skull directly, instead fighting a different enemy while the big crimson headed lug chucks grenades at you. This even extends to Baron Zemo, the man whose castle Hydra has taken over. You read all about him in his diaries, hearing about his difficulties with Hydra and his accident with Adhesive X, but you never see hide nor hood of the man. The diaries are well done, but Baron Zemo is a big enough villain in the comics that he warrants more than just the Judy Blume treatment.

On a similar note, the way in which you unlock Baron Zemo’s diaries entries is somewhat odd given the mission at hand. Basically you travel all around the castle and pick up whatever collectibles aren’t nailed down. You’ll hunt for ceramic eggs, ceramic roosters, virginal statues, falconry equipment, beer steins and military helmets as well as schematics, film reels, dossier folders, Hydra briefcases and empty film cannisters.

Dossier folders and the like give you experience points that you can spend on combat upgrades, so it’s not like they don’t have a purpose and they come close to wallpapering the game with them, so it’s not hard to find them. It’s just odd that they’re as prevalent as they are. If Hydra is trying to keep their plans secret, they’re doing a pretty terrible job at it. Similarly, the film reels give some background to Zola’s plans and the schematics make it easier to take down you enemies, so it’s not a waste of time to go after them, it’s just silly that Captain America would detour from fighting Hydra to go after a Civil War Commemorative Chess Set. Luckily all of the collectibles show up on your map making it easy to see where to go to find them, and Cap’s Tactical Vision, an organic version of Batman’s Detective Vision, lets you know which ledges to jump on to get to the item of the moment.