Not really new in neither plot nor elements yet thoroughly entertaining with batman-ish skills on a historic background.
To create a super-soldier thanks to an experimental serum anticipates, too, the ideas of physically enhanced specimen of the human species present in various other of today video games, from Mass Effect's bionic implants to Alcatraz' Nanosuit (Crysis) and Adam Jensen's cybernetics (Deus Ex).
With success, at least virtually, one might think: 23 years when first attempting to enlist the American army against the rising Nazi menace, Steve Rogers was the first subject to be selected for a secret defense project aiming to create physically superior soldiers thanks to which the formerly frail fine arts student transformed into a nearly perfect human being –Captain America– excelling as all at once combat strategist, approved acrobat, and demolition expert.
Furthermore enriching to the story's yet interesting mixture of both historic and futuristic aspects would have been the interposition of several extracts of the original comic series created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and first published by Marvel in March 1941, though.
Himself a patriotic trademark, both Captain America and his indestructible boomerang-shield wear a motif of the US-American flag as he defends the immutable American values against recurrent enemy forces, as are, Nazism, fascism, communism, terrorism.
In occurrence Cap's nazi arch-nemesis Red Skull who also seems to have the super-serum in his veins as he too fancies himself as the epitome of physical perfection, assisted by the evil genius Arnim Zola while successively appropriating the villainous Baron Zemo's estates, technology, and formerly loyal forces to their own end, that is, the conquest and acquisition of secular power for the former, and the reckless realization of his inventions –mechanically enhanced humans and soldiers, mind control, nay, immortality through disembodied consciousness, for the latter.
Built above as well as under ground and into the rock through the ancestors of the subsequently marginalized Baron, sort of an old Prussian lineage, as one learns from his diaries, Castle Zemo is a strategic mountainous fortress including wards, bastions, courtyard, estate, chapel, laboratory, cellblocks, rail line, hangar, dungeons and sewers…, sufficient to host an entire army obedient only to Red Skull, called the Order of Hydra.
And it is here where Captain America is finally spawned using his successively unlocked attack skills and shield combos against a legion of mechanically enhanced soldiers and robots in order to finish with their evil leaders, Baron von Strucker, Madame Hydra, Zola, and Red Skull, to help his pals, Falsworth, Barnes, and Dugan, and to destroy as much as possible of the castle's hyper-technical base and exterior structure, including "the sleeper", a giant mech of nobody knows what origin hibernating below Zemo's very property.
An expert in martial arts, multiple elements of artistic gymnastics have stunningly been motion-captured and added to his unique fighting performance making it a highly satisfying pleasure to conduct the super-hero quite batman-like trough the game's 18 chapters and numerous fight scenes as well as scripted jump-and-leap sequences which, if they are impossible to fail, at least reduce the number of trials and errors in the sometimes quite labyrinthic corridors to explore.
And it is worth doing this since the game offers a lot of collectibles to discover on the way –hydra dossiers, film reels, schematic drawings, ceramic eggs, falcon and virginal figurines, Prussian helmets– necessary for both filling in the story's somewhat loose threads and filling up the hero's combat skills –three times three combo upgrades for attack counter, shield bouncing, and shield smashing– gained thanks to the experience points in their exchange.
Although the plot unravels in a linear manner, the level design is sufficiently open to permit looking in all niches and on all ledges and even allows to continue the game after having completed the story in order to revisit all the former places and to unlock the one or other of the interconnecting doors –e.g., the 12 different sewer entrances– giving access again to more collectible items thankfully indicated also in the corresponding maps.
And there are still a lot more details in the Estate's visually appealing interiors to be observed here, for instance the Baron's interesting collection of juxtaposed statues, portraits, masks, and blazons, or the musical boxes so nicely overlaying with their simple melody (e.g., Schubert' s "Heideröslein") the sound floor's heavy orchestral mass. Yet the movie-like sound track (Bill Brown) in general is thoroughly enjoyable and contributes adequately to illustrate the tension-packed story's evolution.
Of the collectibles, the 14 historic film reels underscored with Zola's German accent (André Sogliuzzo) and further elucidated through the schematics certainly merit special interest as they contain all the elements of his ill-minded yet future-bearing inventions: drone weapons (airbone/artillery), ballistic soldiers, mechanical upgrades on humans (wardens, Baron von Strucker's arm) led by the intriguing "mingling of flesh and machine", or the medaled Iron Cross, "walking tank" and "modern knight in armor", the super-soldier-like perfection of the human body being actually but "a false goal".
The action-centered ten timed challenges surely aim to compensate for the game's relative lack of difficulty since although action is fast-paced and permanent, the few true boss fights (Baron von Strucker, Madame Hydra, Zola Bots, Sleeper) are rather easy to handle. Yet they also highlight the three main aspects on which Captain America gameplay-wise is based: combat, gymnastics, collection, and correspondingly one is challenged to prevent as a proponent of free speech the substitution of literary dossiers through Hydra-approved propaganda ("Overdue Penalties"), to locate all of the ceramic eggs and roosters of Baron Zemo's prized collection dispatched by Madame Hydra throughout the maze ("Hedge Maze"), or to sabotage Zola's missile thanks to Cap's gymnast agility ("Up and Up"), to name just three of them.
All in all a thoroughly enjoyable adventure that for its plot may remotely recall former Xbox games like TimeSplitters: Future Perfect or Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, and for its combat and platforming style newer classics like Batman or Uncharted, not entirely new in neither its story nor its elements, yet better entertaining with some yet approved ingredients than disconcerting with some ideas to-be-new at all costs…