Captain America: Super Soldier hands on (Xbox 360)

I’m weary about being a little too positive regarding games I play at E3. The splendor of it all and having the developer standing right next to you can really help skew the experience, especially for an E3 noob like myself. Even taking this into account, I do believe I can at least say this about Captain America: it doesn’t suck. In fact, I would go so far as to say it’s a lot of fun. How fun the final product will be I cannot say, but my experience here was definitely a positive one.

CA feels like Batman: Arkham Asylum, except with Captain America. The game takes place in a huge open mansion, which you’re free to explore, much like Batman AA’s location. The combat, based almost entirely on brawling, feels very smooth. It’s possible to counter certain enemy moves, and when combined with Cap’s dodging ability, the way in which he dispatches enemies can become very cinematic and stylish. It’s also possible to grapple enemies and throw your shield using either auto aiming or manual targeting. Using grapple, you can weaponize enemies, and the shield allows you to knock down multiple bad guys at once. In addition to all of these different moves, Captain America has special super moves, which can be activated by pressing the R bumper/R1 and any of the attack buttons indicated by the game’s interface. This comes in real handy when dealing with bosses, particularly Von Strucker, who served as the main boss in the demo.

Rather than breaking electrical boxes like in the Wii version, here Cap must disable a ray gun by short circuiting it. This is done by using the controller’s two analog thumbsticks to keep two wires in each of the gun’s three fuse boxes a certain distance away from each other. It’s an engrossing little mini game, and a bit more involved then destroying fuse boxes, though it didn’t require anything in the way of puzzle solving, unlike the Wii version.

The graphics of CA are so-so. This is not an amazing looking game, and looks kind of dated by today’s standards. At the very least the game doesn’t look as ugly as SEGA’s other Marvel games, and the frame rate is very smooth.

Overall, CA looks like it may finally break the curse of SEGA and Marvel games. It definitely isn’t a broken game, but only the final product can tell us whether or not it has what it takes to hold up over an entire adventure.