Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer more or less follows the movie, with several understandable side-trips and extrapolations in an effort to make a game out of this thing. Playable solo (by swapping between Mr. Fantastic, the Human Torch, The Thing and Invisible Woman, courtesy of the D-pad) or with three other people (whom you don't particularly wish to keep as "friends"), the game is a by-the-numbers brawler filled largely with repetitive switch-hunts and over-and-over fights through levels that should be different from each other, but really aren't.

Skrull lair, Shanghai or space station, you're supposed to use/upgrade each team member's unique skills in turn -- but you're really using the same pedestrian attacks to crack open the scenery in search of Fantastic 4 tokens (which allow the upgrades). The individual powers of the characters get burned up quickly and are embarrassingly limited, and your default Fantas' quickly becomes the Thing as he, um, Hulk-smashes through level after level. Sue and Reed can still do their things (so to speak), but you don't even really need those "coveted" upgrades... Shortly, it all just gets depressing. Sometimes you get to fly through challenges that are, arguably, slighty more action-oriented, but it's too little, and "too late" isn't even worth mentioning.

And for better or worse, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a short game -- under ten hours, and that's if you're making a point of taking your time. Through no fault of the game designers, the voice-work is all done by sound-a-likes, and to add insult to injury, not only is Sue's voice not real, but even her visage is unrecognizable -- apparently, Jessica Alba is no big fan of committing any part of her image to video-games (though that's her image on the box, which looks like steal from the movie promo).

There are some unlockables, bonus content and such, as there should be -- trailers, bonus costumes, artwork, etc. -- and the story actually holds together (up until the very end), but it's far from enough to make this game crucial to any but the most fanatical, masochistic collectors. Feh. Flame off.