Marvel Super Hero Squad: the Infinity Gauntlet

My daughter's really been into the Marvel Super Hero Squad lately, and after watching some clips online from the game, she couldn't wait to run around as a little Hulk, smashing Skrulls left and right. While we ended up getting the wrong game (Sentinel, a favorite character of hers, is in the Wii game, which is completely different from The Infinity Gauntlet), we still had a lot of fun playing as all the different heroes and laughing at the weird jokes during the cutscenes. The Infinity Gauntlet is one of the few ps3 games for kids I've seen that isn't dumbed down, and has some genuinely fun gameplay mechanics. It's mostly a beat 'em up, but there are some shooter segments and some puzzles as well. Plus it even has a few DLC additions, one of which you get with the game: Captain America and the Red Skull.

The story is simple- Thanos, a very powerful villain, is out to get the gems for the Infinity Gauntlet so he can have unlimited power. The gems are scattered through the universe and it's up to the Super Hero Squad to keep them from falling into his hands. At the same time, there are other villains who want the gems, such as Loki, Galactus, Doctor Doom and more. You'll play through 11 levels with many heroes: Iron Man, Hulk, Falcon, Thor, She-Hulk, the Invisible Woman, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Reptil, Wolverine, Black Widow, Nova and Spider-Man. The gameplay is a lot like the Lego games (Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.) in that you'll have two characters to control in each level, and they have unique abilities to use in certain situations. Iron Man can hack computers to open doors and use machinery, the Hulk can smash certain walls, Wolverine can whittle down blocks to fit where they're needed, Scarlet Witch can access portals, and the list goes on. You have your basic attack with the square button, special attack with triangle, and a powerful special attack with L2 when your special meter is charged up, allowing you to obliterate most enemies in one shot.

I have to hand it to the designers with having fun making a fun game. One level has Abomination throwing barrels down ramps on a building ala Donkey Kong (complete with 8-bit music), and another level has you flying an ice cream truck in space, shooting ice cream cones into Galactus' mouth to keep him from eating the planet. These segments aren't frequent, but when they show up, it's a treat. Most levels can be cleared in about 30 minutes, making this a pretty short game, but for the price, you could do much worse. This game's great to play with another person, though it has to be local, not online, and I recommend it since the AI isn't that great. There were times during boss fights when my partner would just stand there and get knocked out constantly. There were a few other frustrating parts for me, which pushed the rating back to 4 stars in both the fun and overall categories. One big problem is that some parts would go on forever, like when you have to protect objects from dozens and dozens of waves of enemies. I was going nuts with these areas, and my daughter was getting sick of them too. There was one point where I paused the game and checked an online guide to see if I was supposed to be doing something else, but no, there were just tons of enemies that had to be taken out. Another big one was the end of the 5th level, where waves of enemies respawn from paintings that you can cut down, but they recover quickly. Still, things like this didn't happen very often, so it doesn't hurt the score too much.

The graphics aren't anything special, but they get the job done. There's some slowdown when a lot of enemies are on the screen, which can be a pain sometimes. Most of the voice acting was great, and the voices really help the lines some of the characters have, like when Thor's taking a very prissy bath and the others make fun of him for it. And as I mentioned earlier, there's some DLC you can get if you go online, including the free Captain America/Red Skull voucher included with the game. As for the game's replay value, there's a Free Play mode just like in the Lego games that lets you go back to completed levels where you can use all the characters to get every collectible and complete every task. Trophy hunters will have their hands full with this.

Eventhough I got the wrong game, we still had a lot of fun with The Infinity Gauntlet. It could've been longer and those nearly endless parts with protecting computers and other things drove me insane, but this is still a heck of a lot better than most games for kids under 10 years old. Go for it.

My 7 year old newphew bought this game. He liked it alot because he played for over 8 hours the 1st day and the next day he finished it. So its about a 12 hours game. Some parts were to hard for him so since 2 people could play one has to be older. You could play by yourselve with the computers help but with the puzzels you need someone older about 10 years old and up. Now he is playing it to get more uniforms and unlock more characters. You could play story mode, free style and something else. You could get this gamne have a great time and if you want sell it back. Like i said once you pick it up you wont let it go. The game play besides the puzzels werent to bad. Its just fun to play.

l had the marvel superhero 2, this its much better, the grafics and de scene are better. my son loves spider man and hulk.

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