Every time we hear about an announced comic book movie being tied in to a game, we get a little nervous. There have been so many failed attempts with it in the past. Between Iron Man 2 and most recently Thor: God of Thunder, SEGA hasn’t had the best track record with them. Knowing they’d be publishing the action adventure based Captain America: Super Soldier, the cringing was understandable.

Fortunately, Next Level Games, the people who brought us Super Mario Strikers for both the Gamecube and Wii as well as Punch Out!! for the Wii, tossed a mighty star spangled shield at us and bucked the trend to produce a fun classic beat ’em up that fits well into the Captain America mythos and uses the movie signature in a positive way.

Gameplay:

Captain America: Super Soldier takes place in an “open world” much like that of the classic Metroid. We use the term loosely because players have the option to back track and explore the European castle to find hidden collectibles but the majority of the game can be done without ever needing to turn back. The size of the level is fairly impressive too with both a castle to explore and the underground workings below it.

With Captain America: Super Solider coming out next week, SEGA brought forth one last set of character dossiers to look at before the game’s release. From what we can see, Captain America: Super Solider is already visually more impressive than Thor: God of Thunder, which is a huge plus. Maybe because Chris Evan’s face is more obscured than Chris Hemsworth’s was in the Thor game but this title doesn’t leave us cringing when we see the trailers on TV.

What we are most curious about is the actual gameplay of Captain America: Super Solider since we haven’t gotten any advance hands on time with it. When we get our review copy next week, just in time for Comic Con, we will find out if developer’s promises live up to the hype they have given us for the game. While Thor: God of Thunder was a poor God of War / Dante’s Inferno ripoff, Captain America: Super Solider looks to be more of an action platformer instead of just a simple beat ’em up.

We are looking forward to giving you our full review of it next week. Until then, enjoy the final look at the characters coming to Captain America: Super Solider for the XBox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and Nintendo DS on July 19th.

In this all new behind the scenes feature for Captain America: Super Soldier, Game Director at Next Level Games, Brandon Gill, talks about the balancing movie, comic and video game in the creation of Captain America: Super Soldier.

With the Captain America: The First Avenger film racing towards us, we are also quickly approaching the July 19th release of the game Captain America: Super Solider. SEGA, presumably knowing that this game has to be a whole lot better than Thor: God of Thunder, has begun their hype machine releasing tons of new information to help people get ready for this important release.

First, take a look below at some screens and character descriptions for some of the game’s villains Baron von Strucker, Madame Hydra and the numerous snipers that Captain America will encounter.

Baron von Strucker

Baron Wolfgang von Strucker was born into Prussian nobility with familial association to the secret society known as Hydra. Ambitious, arrogant and harboring a particular distaste for the lower-class, Strucker quickly rose through Hydra, becoming proficient in both combat and tactics. Intercepted documents suggest he is pursuing development of advanced weaponry known as the “Satan Claw” for personal use.

Only a few weeks away, Thor: God of Thunder crashes down upon store shelves on May 3rd. But before the release of the game that coincides with, but doesn’t depend upon, the Thor movie, SEGA has released a special behind the scenes video for the game. SEGA has been doing everything they can to show the quality of this title before its release to help get the horrid aftertaste of Iron Man 2 out of gamers’ memories.

In this behind the scenes trailer, producers give some insight in to how the game’s combat will be structured. The main crux of Thor: God of Thunder’s action will rely upon his hammer as a melee weapon with the god powers acting as support. The thunder powers seeming will affect enemy statuses with stun effects, wind powers will help control groups of enemies and lighting will act as a damage dealing source. These powers also look to combine with Thor’s famous hammer Mjohnir as can be seen in some of the special attacks in the video.

The grapple system is also an interesting aspect to the game as it seems like a smaller scale version of Shadow of the Colossus. Players don’t just fight these enemies that tower over them. They must actually climb their way up to deal a fatal blow against their opponents. These gigantic fights help players feel like they are a part of the Thor world as these epic encounters are part of what makes Thor different from other “street level” heroes. While Spider-Man or Captain America may occasionally be forced to take on a gigantic monster or robot attacking their city, it is commonplace for Thor. It allows players to feel the power of the god they control on screen.

The only real red flag that comes up from the BTS video is the graphics of the Wii version. While the look of the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 versions are not exactly mindblowing, the Wii continues to look farther and farther back in time in terms of visual quality as more time passes. As a result, the Wii version of Thor: God of Thunder isn’t a very pretty game at all.

Take a peek after the jump of Thor: God of Thunder and stick to the Flickcast for more news as it becomes available.

This summer, Marvel films will be releasing two blockbusters with Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger on the way to their ultimate team movie, The Avengers. And with summer blockbusters comes the inevitable movie tie in games.

Comic book movie based video games have had mixed success in the past. Some titles like Spider-Man 2 were considered awesome games. Some like Wolverine: Origins received arguably more praise than the film they were based off of. Some, specifically Iron Man 2, were considered abysmal failures.

SEGA looks to fall in to the former of these categories with the rights to both of Marvel’s summer titles with Thor: God of Thunder and Captain America: Super Soldier. Recently, we reported rumors that both Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans will reprise their respective roles from the feature films as voice actors in the video games. This is very good news for anyone who saw the live demo of Captain America: Super Soldier at New York Comic Con and heard the placeholder voice behind Cap.

Now SEGA has released a pack of screen shots of both titles. In each batch, there are screens from XBox 360 and the PlayStation 3 before a drastic drop off in graphic quality when the Nintendo Wii screens start popping up. And of course, the old school looking graphics appear on the Nintendo DS. Both the XBox 360 and PlayStation versions of the games will be playable in stereoscopic 3D.

Make sure to check them all out after the jump and check back right here for more news on Thor: God of Thunder and Captain America: Super Soldier as they both quickly approach launch.

We’ve already seen him don the giant “A” and wield the shield in the trailer for the upcoming film. But now, Chris Evans is getting to stretch his acting chops into the world of video games as he voices his character in the upcoming release from SEGA: Captain America: Super Soldier.

No other voice talent has been announced for the game but with Evans leading the charge, you can expect SEGA to probably pull in his fellow cast members too. From the press release we know the game takes place around the time of World War II, in tandem with the film’s plot. Here’s the official synopsis:

In Captain America: Super Soldier, players become Captain America as he faces the Red Skull and his Hydra army in an epic third-person action adventure set in the darkest days of World War II. Wielding Captain America’s legendary shield, gamers will engage in free-flowing combat and acrobatic platforming to infiltrate a mysterious castle overtaken by Hydra forces, where they’ll battle a host of nefarious enemies serving the Red Skull, including the infamous Iron Cross, Baron Strucker and Madame Hydra. Players must defeat the evil scientist Arnim Zola and his wartime experiments, combining powerful melee combos and shield attacks to devastating effect.

The game is set for release later this year, closer to the time Captain America: First Avenger hits theaters. It will be available for all major gaming consoles.

At New York Comic Con, we had the pleasure of stopping by the Sega booth to take peeks at both the new Captain America game as well as the upcoming Thor title (stay tuned for that story!). When we got to the Sega booth we were given a hands off demo from Brandon Gill from Next Level Games, the developers of Captain America: Super Soldier which is being published by Sega.

We were told right off the bat that one of the most fun parts of the creative process was working with Christos Gage on an original story as opposed to being shackled to the storyline of the movie. The version we saw will be on the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 but there will be a Wii and Nintendo DS version as well.

The entirety of the title takes place during World War II after his origin. One thing that quickly stood out was the change of Nazi villains to Hydra. In keeping with Marvel’s family friendly image and the youth skew that game may take, it isn’t surprising that they went this route. The entire game takes place with Hydra entrenched in a Bavarian castle with Cap running in to tear them down.