Review: Kick-Ass The Game

by David 'Hades' Becker [ Friday, 7th of May 2010 - 07:15 PM ]

There most certainly is. Why wouldn't there be, as merchandising is a great way to make more money off a great franchise. It is the capitalist way after all. Unfortunately, they are generally just pieces of shit that end up sitting on the shelf once you have made it through once. Is this the case for Kick-Ass? Read below.

Graphics:

Ok, I know that this was one of the biggest gripes people had when I posted the trailer and screens for the game. People whined and made fun of it because it looked dated. Which to be honest, when compared to modern games it is. What the retardababy patrol seems to have missed is that this is a PSN and iPhone game, and not a full blown, current gen title.

When you look at it from that angle, the graphics for the game are actually pretty decent. In fact I would place them higher than 'decent' given the limited resources. I mean, the iPhone/iPad are not know for their spectacular 3D graphics. As for the PSN, yes it does have the power of the PS3 behind it so they could have been much better, but developer, WHA Entertainment, was also developing for the other platform as well, so they couldn't push too hard. At least there were some good clips from the film and comic pages spliced in as well.

Audio:

Alright, now if ever you were to have a beef with something here, it would be the audio. This is most evident in the voice acting. I mean the music and effects are great, in fact much of it came from the film. I especially loved the music they used for the fights, but they could have at least grabbed the actors or at least decent sound-a-likes for the voice over work. The exception to this is Hit Girl.

I started playing as Hit Girl and thought that everything was great as Voice Overs go. It really sounded like Chloe Moretz did the VO work. (I can't verify if she did or not) But right when you get to meet Red Mist for the first time expecting to hear McLovin' Christopher Mintz-Plasse, I get surprised by hearing the 25-year-long smoker version of his voice. It was the same for Mr. McDunnough Mr. Cage and the Young Eisenheim Mr. Johnson. Not even close to the voices we were presented with in the film this is spawned from.

I know getting actors can be fickle, Iron Man 2 went through the same thing, but at least they tried to get sound-a-likes. This was just hard on the ears for me.

Controls:

For this review I was only able to get some good hands on with the PSN copy of Kick-Ass, so I can't really talk about the "waggle" and thumb pressing of the iPhone version. But what I can say is that if you have played Marvel Ultimate Alliance or any game like it, then the PSN controls will be extremely familiar. They are almost mapped the same way as well, including special attacks that require you to hold the R2 button and press which ever special attack you want from the other buttons. Not much more to say about them really. I mean outside of the touchy controls in the menu, there were no real issues one way or another. They took a non-broke system and went to town.

Gameplay:

Minus the last level (no spoilers) the entire game is played in a simple beat-em-up, button mashing RPGish kind of way. Just like the controls, it is close in hand with games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance. You are given a mission. You follow a "path" to get to the mission spamming light and heavy attacks wasting enemies until you get to the "boss" of the area. That is when you would generally change things up to a slightly different strategy, but generally it is doing the same thing.

The only "break" from this form of gameplay, sans the last level, is the upgrading section you get to play with as you gain style and experience points. Both of those are really the same thing, except that you gain more experience by beating enemies with style and high combos. Like beating a guy a few times, then shooting him, then kicking him on the prong of a fork lift. That will get you WAY more XP than just beating on him until he is down.

From there, you get to level and then upgrade the three aspects of the characters, Defense, Attack and Abilities. To me, it seemed kind of useless once I got higher in levels. As you can always take away from one section and pump it into another. Like for me, I balanced everyone in all three categories until I came across someone that was a bit difficult to take down. So I shifted all of my ability points into attack and defense. I couldn't do any cool tricks, but I didn't have the time to drop sweet moves since I walked right through them; they couldn't effectively damage me and I was hitting them like a steamroller.

Overview:

Now in the end, this is a Movie adaptation video game. It should be looked at as an adaptation video game as well and not like what has happened to other comic books that have films and video games. *COUGH* Batman *COUGH* It is not ground breaking to say the least, but it does add a bit of extra fun onto the whole Kick-Ass franchise. Don't expect it to have anything new as far as content or canon goes. The story, much like the comic was to the film, is exactly the same generally speaking. So, heads up, you will get to see the story for the third time here.

I will say that unlike other film adaptation games, this one can be extremely fun. I am not to sure if there is a reason to playthrough the game multiple times - unless you are a trophy whore - because you can get the full experience in one playthrough. Two if you want to go solo and then add a friend later on. That said, when you look at the price point here against the content, it could be a bit steep. So if you don't have the cash to burn or the huge fandom of the franchise, you may want to wait until it is about 9.99 on the PSN. You shouldn't feel jipped at that price.

Kick-Ass was designed and published by WHA Entertainment, Inc. and was released on April 29, 2010 for the PSN and iTunes. It retails for $14.99 on the PSN and $2.99 on iTunes. A code for the PSN version of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes. I played the game to completion on Normal mode in single player and co-op play. Just like in the film and comic, Hit Girl is my favorite.