Captain America: Super Soldier Game Demo Review and Interview

Much like Rule 34 of the internet which states that “if it exists, there is porn of it”, there is a well-known rule with Superhero movies that if it is made, there will be a game of it. 

Enter the new Captain America game from the fine folks over Next Level games. It’s basically a good-looking, action-packed ride through what looks like the Captain America movieverse with a bunch of stories and characters that don’t take place in the movie or the comics. 

It’s a standard third person beat-em-up and features some really cool stuff like Cap being able to toss his shield and bounce it off of multiple enemies, turning his foes into a beaten and bruised game of human pinball. 

Checking out the game demo itself at WonderCon, the game is also equipped with what SEGA calls “Tactical Vision” which is basically just like Batman: Arkham Asylum’s “Detective Mode” only instead of showing you where interesting objects are in order to solve a possible riddle, it tells you the best points to hit to make Cap swing from place to place serendipitously like that girl in that scene from Jurassic Park 2. 

Here’s the official game trailer:

Cap moves fluidly and seems to have taken years of training from the greatest gymnasts in the world, which doesn’t make sense since we hated the Russians back then. It’s a pretty enough game, but… it’s not quite a geek’s wet dream, when it comes to Cap games and all the possibilities that surround the character and the franchise.

There’s so much that they could have done.

A geek’s wet dream in a Cap game would basically be a first-person shooter that would treat itself like a Call of Duty game in both realism and badassery, only instead of guns, you get a shield and some really sick moves. 

The saving grace of what looks like an otherwise “normal” obligatory superhero movie tie-in game is that it was written by a bonafide geek, comic book writer and all around great guy. This guy grew up actually reading Captain America and was able to bring every bit of authenticity to the game that only a seasoned writer of Young Avengers could bring.

Cristos Gage, writer and consultant for the new Captain America game being released on the heels of the new movie Captain America: The First Avenger, sat down (well, stood up in a quieter spot) with Geekscape at WonderCon and talked about the ins and outs of how deep the game Captain America: Super Soldier rolls in not only Marvel lore, but how closely it ties in to the new movie universe. 

What’s the difference between writing a character for the comics and writing him for a video game?

In a video game it’s about the game play,it’s about the interactivity, so you don’t want to have extensive scenes where you have exposition or people will just click through. That’s what I do. You want the cut scenes to be more rewarding, interesting stuff. You try and get as much information across in the game as possible, but in the cut scenes you’re really writing to get the player to the next gameplay as quickly as possible, but in an entertaining way. 

In the comics you’re trying to tell a story visually, while at the same time thinking “okay, what’s the coolest image I can put in here?” In comics, you can literally have a cast of thousands, you can blow up a galaxy. 

In video games you can do a lot of cool stuff, but you can’t do everything.

It’s really thinking about the movements. In comic books, you can have [the characters] do anything, but you have to think about the character’s movements in video games. For example, thinking of Iron Cross as a moving tank. What would the Satan Claw look like (Baron Strucker’s weapon) look like in a game? It was more thinking about the movement as opposed to the static image in a comic book.

They had some ideas of what they wanted to do: basically you’re trying to prevent the creation of some exotic weapons and you find out some more nefarious things are going on. I suggested a lot of villains and characters, and basically they asked me what would work well for what.

What Universe is the game set in?

It’s set in the movie universe, a little more than it is in the comics universe. This is kind of like Batman: Arkham Asylum in that it doesn’t take place in the movie universe exactly, and it doesn’t take place in the comics universe, but it still kind of looks like both. You don’t have to know the comic or watch the movie to play the game, but hopefully playing the game will make you want to do both. 

What’s the game really about? 

A lot of this game is the origin of Cap and his powers, which is good because you’re just getting right into the fun. Again, the origin is gonna be another one of those things that a lot of players are gonna want to click through. I’m old enough to remember Captain America in The Avengers, the Arcade game…

Does he say “I can’t move” when he dies in this game?

No, but I did in there at one point work it in so that Red Skull does say “You stupid man.” I just had to put something in there for all the fans of the old game.

What villains were you able to write into the game?

Madame Hydra, Baron Strucker, Iron Cross (an Invaders villain), Arnim Zola, Red Skull appears in the game. 

… Since it’s the movie universe, Next Level’s artists came up with some really fantastic designs, like with Iron Cross. The original art for him was done in the 70s and they didn’t want it to look like that, in part because they didn’t want him to look basically like a Nazi Iron Man and who wants to create that confusion. 

But they thought, what if you made armor that was basically a walking tank, that would work. And then some other [characters] like Baron Strucker still look like, you know… Baron Strucker. 

What can we look forward to reading from you in comics right now?

I’m still working on Avengers Academy, I’m doing a run on Astonishing X-Men, I’m doing some Amazing Spider-Man in May, I’m doing a mini series called Fear Itself: Homefront which ties in with the Marvel event Fear Itself. 

Are there any Marvel characters you haven’t done anything with yet that you’d like to?

You know what? I don’t think I’ve done Daredevil Yet.

Growing up were you a Marvel or a DC guy? 

I was a Marvel guy. When I was a kid I spent a lot of my time in Athens, Greece. And it just so happened the only American comics they got there were Marvel, so it just worked out that I was a Marvel guy.

Captain America: Super Soldier comes out in July of 2011 for PS3, XBox360 and the Wii, around the same time that that Marvel Studios movie Captain America: The First Avenger comes out (July 22, 2011, just in time for a Comic-Con screening.)