Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects Updated Hands-On

Back at E3, Electronic Arts unveiled an early version of a new comic-book fighting game called Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. Now, the company has shown off an updated version, containing another environment and a few more characters.

The fighting game is designed to be easy to pick up, without a lot of time spent learning complicated controls. You have a standard block button, one attack button, a jump button, and a throw button, which can also be used to pick up items around the environment and toss them at your opponent. While those controls sound simple, that's a little deceptive. The triggers are used as modifiers, which change each one of those buttons to do different things. One trigger is used for your superhero powers. Depending on which character you're fighting with, the effect changes. For Wolverine, it makes his claws come out. Iron Man will shoot beams, Spider-Man shoots his webs, and so on. It will also beef up your throws, let you pull off a super block that deflects all attacks and breaks combos, and so on. The other trigger is a mobility button that will also tap into your superhero powers. This is how you get Spider-Man to start swinging around on webs and Wolverine and Captain America to speed up.

While the game contains many superheroes from the Marvel universe, like Iron Man, Venom, Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine, there will also be a set of all-new characters called the Imperfects, which will round out the game's 18-character roster. These guys tie in to the game's storyline like so: A scientist from an alien world is ousted when his world is overrun, and he flees to Earth. Once there, he takes up the task of creating the perfect warrior, which he'll use to take back his planet. Over the course of his experimentation, he fails more than a few times, creating a series of not-quite-super guys known as the Imperfects. He eventually succeeds and creates a woman that's the perfect warrior. Well, perfect except for the part where she escapes. The Imperfects and the Marvel guys then set out to find her and bring her back.

You'll accomplish this task in a single-player mode that keeps the same control that you'll find in the multiplayer portion. The story seems to dictate which character you'll play as, but as the story progresses, you'll be able to swap around your team a bit and do a little picking and choosing.

EA is currently showing off the Xbox and PSP versions of the game. The interesting part about the PSP version is that it looks surprisingly close to its console counterpart. The Xbox version of the game has a pretty sharp look to it, and the animation really shows off a lot of the characters' personality. For example, blocking with Spider-Man shows off a bunch of quick dodging animations. Recovering from a throw with Wolverine causes him to dig his claws into the ground and grind himself to a stop.

Overall, Marvel Nemesis looks like it could be a promising fighting game that will appeal to fans of the comic-book characters. We'll have more on the game soon.