Up until a few years ago, games based on Hollywood action movies were considered to be the absolute bottom feeder on the video game chain of command, and for good reason - the vast majority were low budget cheesy attempts at capitalizing on the hype surrounding the release of the movie, mere extensions to the movie's marketing agenda if you will. This image for movie based games has been slightly revamped in recent times thanks to some decent attempts from the likes of X-Men and Spiderman titles amongst others, but ultimately it is still a surprise to see a really good game inspired by Hollywood, and unfortunately, 2KGames' Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer only reinforces this.

Rise of the Silver Surfer tells the story of the Fantastic 4 and their encounters with an alien humanoid known as the "Silver Surfer". Without delving too deep into the storyline and plot itself, it is up to the Fantastic 4 to discover why the Silver Surfer is on earth, and deal with the twists and turns that inevitably occur in the process, scoping the topics of world domination, misunderstood bad guys, and enraged Russian space monkeys - you know, the usual.

When it comes to the actual adoption of the recently released movie's storyline and plot to the game, most of the main events and scenarios are here, but only in a "half arsed" sort of way - there are a few instances of changes to the storyline compared to the movie, and there are a lot of times during the game where you will wonder why you're doing what it is that you're doing due to the lack of smooth transitions as the game often tries to explain storyline events with blocks of text you barely have enough time to read between mission loads. The game does feature cutscenes which set up the next environment, but these don't do a great job of selling the story at all and feel thrown together and condensed. Obviously the game shouldn't try and steal the movie's thunder, but a little more time spent on the storyline definitely wouldn't have hurt.

One thing you'll notice very early on is the presence of patterns in RotSS's gameplay. For example, the following description can basically apply to every level in this game: repetitive design consisting of corridors, rooms and elevators themed to the current level, small and large enemies in both "hand to hand" and "gun fire" variants also themed to the current level, a mission featuring solo play by one of the characters, and a boss. There are a few exceptions to the rule here and there such as the presence of a sub boss or a few puzzles to figure out, but repetition is extremely evident in the game design, with very little imagination at play at all even by movie game standards. What's worse is the game is extremely linear, moving from event to event like it was on a train track, and character attack combo's are exactly the same for each character, resulting in mind numbing button mashing no matter who you are playing as.

As expected, RotSS allows you to play as any of the Fantastic 4 at any given time in the game by pressing a direction on the D-Pad, providing the character you want isn't "knocked out". If all four are in this state, you will get game over and have to restart from the last checkpoint, but otherwise there are basically unlimited lives. This is a questionable game design decision as if you ever find yourself losing your Fantastic buddies, all you have to do is run around with your current character out of harms way until they regenerate their health again, which is only half a minute or so. Coupled with the basic AI of enemies, RotSS is quite an easy game and will only take you an afternoon or so to finish.

However, even though the game is painfully repetitive and dull in its level design, and reasonably easy in its gameplay, some fun can still be had. One of the cooler parts to the game is each character not only has four unique capabilities in "Super Power" mode such as Sue's ability to turn invisible or Johnny's ability to flame up, but each character can also interact with any of the three other characters in what are called "Fusion Attacks", resulting in very effective double team moves on your enemies. Both the Super Power and Fusion Attack moves don't come freely however, as they use your character's "Cosmic Energy", which regenerates over time. These powers can make for some very action packed gameplay, particularly in situations where there are a lot of enemies around, not to mention there are usually a lot of destructible objects on hand for Ben to wreck havoc with. While most walls and doors are not destructible, most other objects are and the physics on offer in this game in that sense are not too bad at all and definitely help spruce up what is otherwise woefully generic gameplay.

In an attempt to offer some depth, the game does include RPG elements in that character attributes can be upgraded after each successful mission, however it never feels like a central part to the game and basically adds very little. For the more hardcore fans, collecting special icons and devices in the levels will unlock goodies like comic book covers, movie trailers and concept art to check out, which is always a nice addition for the fans and offers some form of incentive for playing the game for those who already know how the story ends.

One area that I think the game really missed out on big time however is the absence of Xbox Live support. While co-op play for up to 4 players is available in the game, this is only for playing on the same machine, and not over Live. I doubt this would have saved RotSS from its inevitable obscurity in a few months time, but it would have at least offered some fun for Fantastic 4 fans without having to resort to playing on the same machine. While the AI of the other three characters when under CPU control is actually not too bad in single player, being able to do co-op online would have definitely added to the game.

So with all these gameplay issues aside, can the game at least look pretty? Well, unfortunately not. Being on the Xbox 360, RotSS should have looked fantastic but it comes off more as a glorified PS2 game than anything. At the very least it would have been nice to get some eye candy out of this game, but the aforementioned environments are not only drab in design, but visually as well, perhaps not so much in quality but in variation and detail. The only real next gen feel to the visuals is the lighting, which can occasionally show off some decent effects, but other than that, there isn't much to boast about. The replication of the characters are not too bad but just barely above what I would consider acceptable for a next gen game. Given the short comings of the gameplay, visuals should have been an area for freebie points for this game but alas, it seems the "movie game rushed for movie release" phenomena spares nothing with RotSS.

I'd like to say Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer is proof that movie based videogames are making their way from the absolute bottom to somewhere in the middle of the video game quality spectrum because it is far more playable than some of the "movie game" tripe I remember in the past few years, but the fact RotSS is even a mildly enjoyable game probably stems more from the reality that the genre it so closely and rigidly replicates is matured to the point that developers playing it safe and not straying from the generic norm like we see here will very likely manage to create a playable game, at the expense of any innovation whatsoever. In other words, if you have ever played a multiple playable hero character third person action title before, then you've already played Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which is why this game is strictly for the fans of the series who can't get enough of this franchise. If you're just looking for some action adventure hero gaming, there are better titles out there.