Friday 7 May 2010

Kick-Ass: The Game



It's 1992 all over again! All the big movies gotta have their scrolling beater tie-in. Like Watchmen: The End Is Nigh before it, Kick-Ass: The Game adopts a grime spin on Marvel Ultimate Alliance mechanics. Players select a universe character and rush around urban crime corners assaulting the underclass. WHA Entertainment and Frozen Codebase's Kick-Ass makes for a slightly better diversion than the plodding Watchmen episodes, offering bare environment interacts, a couple of gonzo special actions, and in-game speaks that jive well with established fiction. Kick-Ass' presentation is a bit of a muddle offering movie character drafts in gameplay and John Romita Jr's comparatively kitchen-sink funnybook originals in captioned story sequences. Kick-Ass could be a button mash wheeze, but the developers have implemented a stats hike levelling system, balancing the difficulty on the idea that players will be prepared to replay early missions to farm XP. An optimistic outlook considering the lack of depth in the fighting system, and scarcity of secret areas in the game's few levels. A sour, simplistic experience best suited to people desperate to wildly stab at vaguely related button prompts after having just seen a violent movie.

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