It May Have Taken Me Four Months To Beat Captain America: Super Soldier But It Was Worth It

I finally beat it. Yes I did. Great pal Frank was kind enough to give me the game for my birthday and I started playing Captain America: Super Soldier in late July. So why did it take so long?

Because the game is challenging, but in a good way. Super Soldier requires a lot of skill and timing, two things that I apparently don’t have. If your going to lead Captain America to rescue Allied prisoners of war and stop Hydra’s latest nefarious plot, your going to need them.

The game is set in this summer’s film adaptation continuity with Captain America infiltrating Hydra’s Bavarian headquarters (a huge castle compound formerly occupied by Baron Zemo) to rescue Bucky, Dum Dum Dugan and the rest of the Howling Commandos Invaders. He later discovers that Arnim Zola has some sort of massive weapons project under the castle that must be stopped. Along the way you fight off hundereds of Hydra agents, Baron Von Strucker, Madame Hydra and the awesome weird Arnim Zola robot.

Storywise, the game makes a lot of sense and is executed very well. All of the cut scenes and story elements flow together, and I would give this credit to comics writer Christos Gage who plotted the game. Visually the game is awesome. There’s a definite World War II/steampunk vibe to it, which works with the Zola character being a mad scientist.

The voice acting brings the cast of the film back together, including Chris Evans as Captain America.

Like I said, the game play takes some getting used to and once you get all of the nuances down its a pretty quick and easy game. There’s definitely some replay ability to the game, whether it be unlocking alternate Captain America costumes (let me telling you, playing as the World War II style Captain America from Bryan Hitch’s The Ultimates is epic), the various challenge modes, and even collecting the various film reels that tell the story of how Red Skull wound up seizing the castle from Zemo.

I don’t see why this game got so many bad reviews. It wasn’t a groundbreaking game by any means, but it was very enjoyable. It came across like an interactive movie, due to its combined visual awesomeness and you controlling the fight scenes/sequences. I recommend it. Based on my experiences, it was certainly worth the four months I spent on and off trying to stop Madame Hydra.

Captain America: The Bloodstone Hunt

Not only is it the week of my 30th birthday, but the new Captain America movie comes out! To celebrate Cap’s debut (or return if you want to count the Matt Salinger film), expect a whole lot of Captain America this week.

We start off with The Bloodstone Hunt by Mark Gruenwald and Kieron Dwyer. It was the summer of 1989 and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had just come out. It’s only appropriate that the summer’s big Cap story was  an Indy style epic.

The plot is very straight forward. Baron Zemo is trying to recover all the shards of the mystical Bloodstone so he can bring his father back to life. He’s employed Batroc the Leaper, Zaran and Machete to help him. Obviously Captain America can’t allow this to happen, and he’s joined by the former villainous Diamondback (who seems to have a hankering for some make-out time with the good Captain) to stop them.

The story is all over the world, with them fighting snakes, sharks, ninjas and samurai’s, a tribe of cannibals and even a cult. With all the accents of the villains, letterer John Morelli must have had one heck of a headache. As for the story, its pretty light and quick-moving. It’s not a deep story and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a fun popcorn-flick type plot.

There were two really odd things in the story. At one point, Cap and Diamondback track a Bloodstone piece into a cave, where they find it in the posession of a mummy that is wandering around and wants to kill them. However, since Cap is so swell, he talks the mummy into letting them borrow it and all is forgiven. At the end of the story, the mummy is nowhere to be found. I want to know what happened to the mummy.

The other weird thing is Diamondback’s costume. The story takes place over the course of a couple of days and her outfit keeps getting more and more shredded from all the fighting and environmental dangers. Don’t believe me? Check out the picture above. None of the men had this problem. Diamondback should really stop buying cheaply made clothes.

The story also introduces the villainous mercenary Crossbones, who is trying to collect a bounty on Cap placed by the Red Skull. As part of his plot, Crossbones kidnaps Diamondback as bait. Things only get worse for our purple-and-pink clad heroine, as Crossbones has dropped her off at a brothel for safe keeping and its other employees want to force her into becoming a working woman there. What an awful couple issues for Diamondback.

Lucky for her, she’s Cap’s gal and he always saves the day. This is a fun story. Like I said, it’s not very serious and its a quick read. It’s best served with a trenta Iced Mocha from Starbucks.