As any gamer will tell you, video games based on movies are usually nothing to write home about. They are more often then not, a rush job, pushed through development to coincide with the release of the film in theatres. Fantastic Four sadly falls victim to this trend, but unlike most movie-to-game translations, Fantastic Four takes a little detour from the storyline of the film and shakes it up a little more than the simple, "we received super powers in a cosmic storm and fight Doctor Doom". Anyone familiar with the Fantastic Four will know the history of how they came to be, but if not here’s a quick synopsis. The four friends blast off on a scientific research expedition to space where they get caught in a cosmic storm. As the crew gets bombarded with cosmic rays, they receive powers that reflect their personalities. Reed Richards, always spreading himself too thin between projects becomes the stretchable Mr. Fantastic, the often over looked and ignored Sue Storm gains the ability to turn invisible as the Invisible Woman. Hotshot Johnny Storm can turn himself into a flying inferno as the Human Torch and the tough and rugged Ben Grimm becomes a stone skinned behemoth known as The Thing.

As the game starts, you play a tutorial mission through the origin of the team and then the game takes its departure from the movie for awhile. Throughout the adventure of the game, the squabbling squad will face classic villains from the comics such as the Mole Man and alchemist Diablo. You will also visit different locales such as the Tikal jungles, Times Square and even the super criminal prison known as the Vault. Although it is nice to have different atmospheres pulled from the comics, it just strikes as very odd that you have to fight against giant spiders or wave after wave of ancient mummies. As the game progresses, it does eventually return to the story of the movie and the ending will spoil it if you haven’t seen it already. The game play of Fantastic Four is a linear and repetitive run through where every so often you will need to use a certain member of the team to play a mini-game to continue past a problem. Reed will need to hack computer panels, Sue can move objects, Johnny Storm will use his flame to cut open doors and The Thing uses his strength to break and overturn objects. To perform these actions, there are circles that appear in front of the interactive object known as "4 spots". When you walk over them, an icon will appear telling you to press a button to start the mini-game. Since you need to be in the exact spot and the icon only appears at that time, getting in the right spot when you are in a hurry is a frustrating task to say the least.

The view of the game is usually a 45 degree over head view that you can spin around with the awkward camera controls, except for times when the camera zooms far out to allow you to see each of the four characters in the action. The graphics of Fantastic Four definitely leaves something to be desired. While the cutscenes that appear once in a while are well done, the regular gameplay graphics look like they belong on the Dreamcast and are well below average of what you should expect on a powerhouse system like the Xbox. When you have games like Chronicles of Riddick released a year prior, the dreadful graphics found in this game are unforgivable. The voice acting throughout the game is done fairly well but that should be expected, since the voices are all done by their big screen counterparts.

While you are heading through each of the 10 missions, you will either be solo, with a partner or with the three other team members. When you are playing with more than one other character, you can switch control to other characters by pressing the corresponding direction on the D-pad shown in the corner. Sometimes it is necessary to do as some obstacles will only be passable with a certain character. Each character has their own attacks and some characters are faster than others, such as Sue being considerably swifter them the bulky Thing. While playing with more than one character during missions, you can use tag team moves to gang up on foes as well as being able to buff other players with your powers such as Sue giving a shield to other players. There is also the option of playing coop with a friend so that both of you can play through the game at the same time. As you defeat each enemy, you receive points that you can put towards upgrading each characters powers. During each mission there will be objectives that you can complete but some of them just don’t belong. One repeating objective is to break a certain amount of objects during the mission. It never really made sense why this would be an objective, it’s not like the Fantastic Four are known for running around causing mayhem and destruction wherever they go.

Fantastic Four is far from being Fantastic but if you are a fan of the comics, it is a nice feature that you get to fight against enemies like Annihilus and seeing other comic book characters making cameo appearances. Fans looking to play through the movie version may be left scratching their heads wondering what is going on and may find the power button getting pressed a little quick. The coop is a nice, but not perfect, feature that not many games have lately, but unfortunately that may not be enough to save this game from its terrible graphics and seriously repetitive gameplay.