You may look at gameplay of Marvel Nemesis and say “hey, it doesn’t look that bad. There’s various Marvel characters, it’s animated fairly well, and it has a unique aesthetic for a comic book game even though the graphics are mid. How bad could it be?”
Well, where do I start?
The combat is dull and unbalanced. Marvel Nemesis is a beat ‘em up with seemingly no depth. There’s a block, regular attack string, and a grab. Each character has a superpower they can activate but it’s either a projectile or makes their regular string more powerful. There’s also objects around the stages you can throw and they are far too powerful. They one shot every base enemy without getting up close.
When actually attack enemies you’ll notice how unresponsive the game is. Its not because of an input delay or slowdown issue, it’s because there’s so many frames of delay at the end of everything you do. You can’t cancel anything except attacks into grab. If an enemy blocks your attack, you’re stuck in place for 2 seconds while projectile enemies rain down missiles that ricochet you into other explosives. Getting knock over results in so much downtime for the player, and you can easily be knock over right away as soon as you get up. Barrels and cars just fly everywhere from offscreen. It’s such an unbalanced mess. You’ll beat some levels with no issues barely getting hit, and others will be a roadblock for no discernible reason. It’s an unbalanced unresponsive mess.
The level design is as bad as possible. Marvel Nemesis has bland environments that are reused CONSTANTLY. Levels play more like bonus challenges you’d unlock more than well thought out coherent structures. No puzzles, no platforming, no creative objectives. It’s always something dull such as “defeat 20 enemies!” Or “destroy the objects!”. These stages last about 2-5 minutes. Every time you finish one, you’ll feel a huge relief that you’re closer to the end of this catastrophe.
The boss fights are horrendous and there’s so many of them. There’s usually a boss fight after every two “beat ‘em up” levels. Multiple explosives going off at once stack so you can easily kill bosses in less than 20 seconds if they ricochet off of them. However, the opposite is also true. You can get absolutely steamrolled by these bosses because of these stacking explosives. Battles are more so a competition to who can throw more stuff at the opponent than a clash between unique super-powered heroes. I also had FOUR bosses kill themselves by flying off the edge.
This game is also strangely disrespectful to the source material. I’m more of a DC guy, but having these new generic characters known as “The Imperfects” kill multiple prominent Marvel heroes is silly. It’s trying to be dark and edgy, but it comes off as the develops saying that “our new characters are better”.
I’d like to also mention the PlayStation 2 version. Apparently, it has a game breaking bug that makes the first level unable to be completed. You have to enter a cheat code to bypass it. If you are considering playing this game (I don’t recommend it) I’d avoid the PS2 version. If you must play this frustrating miserable game, I’d recommend the Xbox version.
It’s a significant testament to a games’ quality if you find yourself running past enemies just to get it over with. With Marvel Nemesis, I did this nearly every level I could. Unbalanced unresponsive, unpolished, Rise of the Imperfects is a tedious and often frustrating experience that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemies.
2/10
Well, where do I start?
The combat is dull and unbalanced. Marvel Nemesis is a beat ‘em up with seemingly no depth. There’s a block, regular attack string, and a grab. Each character has a superpower they can activate but it’s either a projectile or makes their regular string more powerful. There’s also objects around the stages you can throw and they are far too powerful. They one shot every base enemy without getting up close.
When actually attack enemies you’ll notice how unresponsive the game is. Its not because of an input delay or slowdown issue, it’s because there’s so many frames of delay at the end of everything you do. You can’t cancel anything except attacks into grab. If an enemy blocks your attack, you’re stuck in place for 2 seconds while projectile enemies rain down missiles that ricochet you into other explosives. Getting knock over results in so much downtime for the player, and you can easily be knock over right away as soon as you get up. Barrels and cars just fly everywhere from offscreen. It’s such an unbalanced mess. You’ll beat some levels with no issues barely getting hit, and others will be a roadblock for no discernible reason. It’s an unbalanced unresponsive mess.
The level design is as bad as possible. Marvel Nemesis has bland environments that are reused CONSTANTLY. Levels play more like bonus challenges you’d unlock more than well thought out coherent structures. No puzzles, no platforming, no creative objectives. It’s always something dull such as “defeat 20 enemies!” Or “destroy the objects!”. These stages last about 2-5 minutes. Every time you finish one, you’ll feel a huge relief that you’re closer to the end of this catastrophe.
The boss fights are horrendous and there’s so many of them. There’s usually a boss fight after every two “beat ‘em up” levels. Multiple explosives going off at once stack so you can easily kill bosses in less than 20 seconds if they ricochet off of them. However, the opposite is also true. You can get absolutely steamrolled by these bosses because of these stacking explosives. Battles are more so a competition to who can throw more stuff at the opponent than a clash between unique super-powered heroes. I also had FOUR bosses kill themselves by flying off the edge.
This game is also strangely disrespectful to the source material. I’m more of a DC guy, but having these new generic characters known as “The Imperfects” kill multiple prominent Marvel heroes is silly. It’s trying to be dark and edgy, but it comes off as the develops saying that “our new characters are better”.
I’d like to also mention the PlayStation 2 version. Apparently, it has a game breaking bug that makes the first level unable to be completed. You have to enter a cheat code to bypass it. If you are considering playing this game (I don’t recommend it) I’d avoid the PS2 version. If you must play this frustrating miserable game, I’d recommend the Xbox version.
It’s a significant testament to a games’ quality if you find yourself running past enemies just to get it over with. With Marvel Nemesis, I did this nearly every level I could. Unbalanced unresponsive, unpolished, Rise of the Imperfects is a tedious and often frustrating experience that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemies.
2/10