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.

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.