If you were expecting to just get a bland reproduction of the new Fantastic Four movie repackaged into a quick game port, you were wrong. The game takes plot elements from the movie, but also a heavy helping from the comic series, to weave a story chucked full of Fantastic Four nemeses. Everyone from the Skrull to Terrax to, dum, dum, dummmm: the Silver Surfer makes an appearance. But instead of feeling like a star-packed, universe encompassing rumble, it just feels like more stuff for The Thing to smash.

You'll begin the game in an underground Skrull stronghold, and after playing for about 15 minutes you'll have a full understanding of Skrull architectural theory: build a hallway, line it with various boxes, make sure to use plenty of guards, lock all the impermeable doors with nearby computer consoles and repeat. This would be okay, except the Skrull caves stretch on into hours of monotonous gameplay. Once you escape the caves, strangely, everyone from the military to ancient Tibetan monks happen to use the same principles of base design.

Marvel fans will notice that the gameplay is similar to the X-Men Legends series, which was itself reminiscent of Diablo and pretty much every arcade game in which up to four players bash the heads off everything in sight. You control one hero at a time and switch  with the d-pad, while the AI or your friends control the others.

But it's not all just fists shoved into faces. To start with, each hero has a regular attack, and a cosmic attack or two, and as they get kills and gain experience, additional attacks will be added to their skill sets. They’ll also gain a larger life meter and a bigger cosmic energy tank. Cosmic attacks can be used or enhanced by swinging the Wii-mote in different heroic ways depending on the character you’re controlling. The Invisible Woman and Human Torch have rapid fire attacks that are unleashed by drumming the Wii-mote and Nunchuk up and down, and The Thing and Mr. Fantastic can add some cosmic power to their regular attack combos with a well timed jab or down-swing. The movements are fun if you feel like getting a sweat on, but after they lost their initial charm, many of them seemed tacked on to replace simple button combinations in the comparable PS2 version of the game.   

The basic grunts are fairly easy to take out using standard attacks, but before long you'll be facing large numbers of them, and the trick becomes unleashing cosmic powers at the appropriate times to allow for maximum Fantastic whoopage and time to build cosmic charge back up by dispatching baddies. The formula is fun, but too repetitive. Different pathways through levels give you some reason to replay the adventure, but rooms look so similar that it's probably not enough reason for all but the most stalwart Fantastic Four fans.