Review of Marvel Super Hero Challenge: Interactive Game

Introduction

Marvel vies with DC as the biggest name in the world of comic books, with characters like Spiderman, The Hulk, The X-Men, The Silver Surfer, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, The Punisher, Iron Man and The Fantastic 4.

This interactive DVD quiz has questions on the entire Marvel universe which are split into five categories: Heroes, Teams, Villains, Powers and Movies. Each category has Easy, Medium and Hard options, with 50 questions for each option.

Video

A perfectly fine fullscreen presentation, but isn`t it about time that these games got with the 21st century and went widescreen?

Audio

The PCM 2.0 stereo soundtrack is only used on menus and is unimpressive but adequate for an interactive quiz.

Features

There is a page of trivia about 20 Marvel characters but I found no evidence on this disc of the video clips that are promised on the box.

There is also a gallery of 6 `exclusive artworks`.

Conclusion

DVD interactive quizzes are a strange invention and one that has yet to be perfected. There are 750 questions on this, but they are not randomised so it is possible to learn the answers to a round. I also didn`t notice much difference between the `easy` and `hard` rounds, with each containing very simple and very obscure questions covering a huge range of characters and comics, some of which were unknown to me.

A glaring weakness is the lack of any recognition for gaining 100% in a round - when you have answered all 50 questions a Marvel character will tell you that you have achieved less than 60%, more than 60% or more than 80%. This wouldn`t be so bad if each answer was met with a `correct` or `wrong` screen but this is skipped leaving you unsure if you got the right answer and impossible to create an accurate score. There is no sense of urgency when playing as the questions aren`t timed so you can take as long as you want and even Google the answers if you so wish. The disc is only 247Mb so is hardly content rich!

The idea of a quiz would surely be to challenge your knowledge against someone else`s so the fact that this is called a `challenge` and the "ultimate test of your super hero knowledge" is accurate as there is no `two player` or team mode.

If you are a fan of the Marvel comics then there is some short term enjoyment in this, but as the disc is only 247Mb in size it is hardly content rich and makes it easy to familiarise yourself with the questions. This reduces the longevity and you are unlikely to play it more than twice before giving it away.