SUPERHERO-X [Alpha Edition]

Don't get me wrong... this game has the potential to be good in the right hands but it's a half ***ed made game. The graphics are okay, the combat is simple with little effort into actual combo's. I could literally get my opponent in a nonstop juggle combo until I win. You have to play to unlock most of the costumes to even create your character and even then, it's not enough to keep playing after unlocking everything in 75 minutes of boring loading screens with the same voice commenting the same thing... over and over and over. I do not recommend this game unless its free.

This is a very unique fighting game, combining high-octane Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style acrobatics with MCU-style superhero powers and mixing them together with a very well designed create-a-fighter core gameplay mechanic. There are no pre-designed characters in this game, you create all of them yourself, that is what sets this game out from all the other fighting games. You want to create a superhero that can summon huge tornadoes that pickup your opponent and send them flying? Or maybe you would prefer to create a lightsaber-wielding Sith Lord type of character? Perhaps you want to create an evil Captain America-like character that shoots lasers out of his eyes like Superman? Well in this game you can do all of that! Before I get into the super powers, I should mention that you also have kick and punch attacks, which are different for each of the fighting styles (i.e. a martial arts style character will have completely different attacks and combos than an MMA style character). Each fighting style also has it's own unique manual combos (but there's also 2 preset combos that can be done with the Triggers). Now onto the main draw of this game, super powered attacks! Super powered attacks are all done with either a direction and the power button or just the power button by-itself. Each direction does a completely different power attack. Power attacks drain your power meter. In order to use some of the powers, outfits, and fighting styles, you will need to unlock them by playing Arcade, Survival, and Mission modes. Arcade consists of several matches against randomly created fighters. Survival is an endless series of matches against randomly created fighters, but you don't get any health or power meter back between rounds. To win a match, you need to win 3 rounds (but in Survival mode, it ends when you lose a single round against a cpu opponent). Mission mode is a single match against a specific super powered create-a-fighter cpu opponent (which always unlocks something the first time you win). There's also the standard offline 2P VS and Training modes. Most of your time in this game will be spent in the Creation mode creating your numerous fighters. Each fighting style has its own set of character slots (sub-divided by Male and Female), so for example, the 001 character slot in MMA Male is a different character than the 001 character slot in Martial Arts Male. This makes it easier to go through your collection of fighters if you have a huge list of them. For a character's costume, you can choose the hair, glasses, half-mask, upper and lower parts (all of which can be colored from a large selection of colors). You can also equip a full costume instead of the upper and lower parts. And of course, the most crucial step in creating a fighter is what super power he/she will have. My personal favorites are the tornado/lightning super powers, the laser optic blast (aka heat vision) super power, the Omega-X super power (which basically combines several super powers into one moveset), and of course the lightsaber superpower. I really like the realistic-style graphics for the super powered attacks, it's much cooler to summon a realistic-looking tornado in this game than a cartoony cel-shaded one (like you see in pretty much ever other fighting game). For me, it makes the attack seem much more terrifying since it actually looks like you just swept someone up with a real tornado, as opposed to games like Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3 where you just summon a Looney Tunes looking tornado. I also like all the backflipping and acrobatic moves your character does throughout the match. After doing a super powered combo attack, your character will do several backflips away from the opponent to give some breathing room to him/her. This makes it so that you can't just spam super powered attacks over and over again to win the match (you'll also run out of your power meter after doing a certain amount of super powered attacks, so that keeps the fight fair too). To sum it up, if you like being able to create your own superhero (or supervillain) or lightsaber wielding warrior and want to pit them in a flashy, fast paced epic battle, then this game is definitely for you! If I had to describe it in a just a few words I would say it's like mashing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with a one-on-one final battle in an MCU movie (aka pure epicness). Highly recommended!

Typically I don't do reviews but this is an Alpha game and if there's any incentive to tell these developers that this is a good start yet it still needs that little bit extra to make it pop then I'd love to try to communicate that because this game in it's current state is extremely close to becoming good. As I said it just needs that little bit extra. As a huge aspect of this game is the character customisation this needs talking about. I grew up with games like the annual WWE games on PS2 and SoulCalibur and one annoying thing - lets just say there's a certain look in mind for your OC that you want to select. In those games there are pictures to give the general idea of what you're just about to dress them up in or what that face looks like. The options are there but it's all text divided into groups meaning you need to pick a group, scroll through and select all of them one by one or going back and selecting another group over and over and over. It makes the process far more clockwork. Also one thing is that the fighting styles and powers are at a situation where they effectively communicate to you that there are some locked behind a round of Arcade mode or something like that - I like this because it gives incentive to the player to play more of this game yet there are some options like full body outfits in the male section that are select-able but nothing's in them. I don't know if they're going to be added later or they need to be unlocked one by one but if it's the latter that's another problem with legibility this game has. But that's about everything to do with the customisation that needs talking about. Now onto when you start fighting because it's got a fatal flaw - the stun locking. If you block an attack and your enemy hist more than once it breaks your block and you get stun-locked. The problem also goes both ways in that you can just hit the power button over and over again to knock your enemy to the ground, just wait for them to get up and fire, do this enough times and you can nearly decimate them without them even approaching you. Also in other fighters if you hit down and the kick button for example you do a leg sweep - here that doesn't happen and if you hit the punch or kick button then the move maybe an uppercut, leg sweep, whatever regardless of what else you're hitting so it's mostly hitting A on my controller a bunch then spamming Y and B. If I don't lock them into getting hit in the face with my ranged weapon over and over usually it's tapping X to block as well as the others in the hopes that I regain control and start fighting and that works a great majority of the time. I admit that this game has the potential to be good - I would simply ask for a refund if I thought this had no value. When you get past the legibility issues the customisation is good. The options are numerous and varied meaning they put a lot of time in the amount of ways you COULD fight. The incentive to pick up more styles is strong and I imagine with a little reworking this would be a great little indie fighter. It just... Isn't and I really, sincerely hope that there's some ability to change that.