Game #1151: Captain America - Super Soldier(Wii)

 Captain Waggle.

  I always thought that the Captain was one of Marvel's most boring heroes, so color me surprised to find out that Captain America: Super Soldier wasn't just a decent PS3 game, it was also a fairly decent, albeit quite different, Wii game!

 While the plot follows the same structure from its PS3 counterpart, heck, you even fight the same bosses, the way the story is told is completely different, even if you get to fight the same bosses. The main story beats remain the same, start off fighting Hydra soldiers in the trenches, get your plane shot down, find radios to communicate with your buddies, rescue the Invaders(Dum Dum Dugan, Bucky), a brief segment without your shield, etc. But how these things happen is quite different, so you could say it's an alternate dimension! The art-style is completely different as well, instead of going for realism, characters have very top-heavy, slightly cartoonish proportions. I thought it'd looks rather nice, and I appreciate how colorful everything is... considering it's the Wii and oh so many games went after the washed-out color palettes. Oh! You can also unlock the same two alternate costumes as in the other game.

 While this version keeps the Arkham-inspired combat, the game is not Metroidvania-ish as it's now divided into well-defined stages, there is no backtracking here. Exploration had a fair amount of puzzles, and most of them usually involve chucking your shield towards stuff or using your shield to reflect stuff onto guarded generators. There's a fair bit of platforming and acrobatics, but they are somewhat pseudo scripted. Basically, when Captain faces towards a platform, if an arrow appears on top of it, pressing jump will make Captain jump towards the platform without fail. It feels almost as if on rails, and to be honest, when you chain a few of these together it feels somewhat... cool. Because Cap will always land these jumps. 

 You always get a handy arrow on the top of the screen pointing you towards where you need to go next, however, exploring off the beaten path may net you hidden collectibles. They reward you with experience points as well as concept art, although collecting all the Zola Relics type of collectibles will net you the Comic Book Captain America costume.

 Combat is really neat, you use B to punch, Z to counter and C to throw the shield, You can hold down C to slow down time and aim at multiple enemies. There are no super moves, like in the console version, however, you can get upgrades so that when landing a combo, every third hit will be a knock down, every sixth hit will be a be an AoE and every ninth will be an almost certain knockout. The combat actually flows better than the console version, for the most part, as the Captain is a bit more nimble and moves from enemy to enemy a bit more like Batman. It's not perfect, sometimes you might be aiming towards an enemy and pressing B but Cap will still maul on the one he picked, and sometimes, like in the  console version albeit more rarely, you will just punch thin air and ruin your combo. So, while you have less tools, I felt it was smoother.

 Different enemies will require different strategies. Big enemies, if you throws your shield at them, will just grab it and chuck your shield towards a wall. Swordswomen will avoid any hit that isn't a shield throw. Enemies with electrified batons must be countered first. Robots must be attacked with their own bombs after you get one of them stuck on your shield. It works well I feel. Something I really liked was that when deflecting bullets with the shield, you can use the pointer to aim the ricochets! That was pure brilliance. What wasn't so cool was that bosses have waggle QTEs, and if you shake the wrong joystick you will get hit. At least it's the only instance of QTEs in the game.

 As you defeat enemies, break stuff, find collectibles and, optionally, complete Zola challenges, you'll obtain XP. Whenever you level up you get a choice of three upgrade paths: Shield, Combat or Star. Eventually you'll get everything, so there's no need to fuss.

 As enjoyable as the game was, some bits felt a bit... buggy. Sometimes, admittedly quite rarely, when running around the Cap will slow down as if he was wading on water. Eventually he gets out of it. Climbing stairs is a bit iffy too, sometimes you'll need to jump because it seems some short steps are, sometimes, a bit too high for him to run up through. There's also this area in which you must jump over platforms on top of electrified water, and the next platforms appear when you land on a platform... well, sometimes platforms that should appear would disappear, so I had to either jump to the previous platform and then back to the one I was on, or just jump quickly before it disappeared, and I'm sure it wasn't intended to work that way.

 Well, color me surprised! Captain America: Super Soldier on the Wii is just as good as its HD counterparts, although in very different ways. The combat lacks tools, but feels tighter thanks to having to fight enemies in different ways and the engine feeling more responsive. The Metroidvania aspect was gutted, but in its stead we get more puzzles and collectibles. The graphics are weaker, but the artstyle makes up for it.... in short, I think that this game is worth a look EVEN if you played the HD version.

 7.0