Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is a new title for Kinect from Ubisoft Quebec. Unfortunately for core gamers, the previous sentence could be perceived to have two large negatives. First, a game based on the property of a recently released movie is typically a bad omen. It usually means the game was rushed to meet a harsh deadline, leaving much needed polish out the window. Fortunately, this game is coming out a full five months after the cinema release and over a month after it hit the stores. The second qualm is Kinect. Despite a lot of potential, this peripheral has not made a big splash other than in the dancing genre. Well, Kinect has been out for almost two years now, the first year gimmicks should be ironed out. The dominos have seemed to line up for Ubisoft Quebec, a cool property, the time to do it right, and a mature peripheral to do it on. Can they capitalize on their good fortune or will it fall into the traditional movie tie-in pitfalls?

The story campaign of Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth revolves around defending Earth from an extraterrestrial race called the Skrull. Their ability to shape shift has allowed them to infiltrate and catch even the Avengers off guard. This is essentially the premise of the storyline. There are five locations to defend and before each fight, there is a small couple second dialogue section delivering a fleeting story. Essentially the bottom line is with the exception of some introductory cutscenes at specific parts, the story is incredibly barebones. There is just enough premise to set up who you are fighting. I am sure if you want to know more you can go to the comics and cartoons but you’re not going to get much here. While it is in the fighting genre, which are not known for their ability to deliver a story, it would’ve been nice to see a tad more effort put into it, even if you had to read.

Another way to play through the game is taking part in the challenges. This includes three different subsections for tutorials, challenges, and trials. Unfortunately the challenges feel just like an extension of the tutorials so the real meat is the trials. Here you will be pitted in various scenarios to see if you can prevail. These work fairly well to add something different to the game and add some precious more life to the party. Especially considering that the game is not that popular so online games will be few and far apart. Luckily, the game supports competitive and cooperative modes so as long as you have another physical person with you, you can play side-by-side.

Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is a fighting game for Kinect and surprisingly the integration works well. From when you start up the game, you can navigate the menus using your arms or say a word to enable voice commands and navigate that way. Using your hands is quite sleek and fast. You definitely suffer from awkward positioning your hand on screen at times but once you select what you want, you do a quick swipe. No need to hold it there and let the timer select it. The voice commands are a little slower, since you have to enable it first but they are flawless. As long as you get in the neighborhood of what the words sound like, you will select it. So while it is not a perfect system, it’s a consistently good and predictable system that should prevent any navigation frustrations.

Fighting is broken up into four aspects, basic attacks, power attacks, a meter-based attack, and dodging. For the basic moves, you can punch and kick. Those are self-explanatory. The bread and butter of the fighting system are the power attacks. They have you follow a series of gestural icons to enact one of three power attack options. Each character has a different set of three. After you complete the attack, that move gets placed in timeout for a couple seconds which forces you do perform something else. And similar to other fighting games, based upon your performance, you fill up a power meter. Once you’ve built up a meter halfway, you can jump to conduct a breaker or you can wait until it’s completely full to do an ultra move. Finally, you can dodge the opposing fighters attacks if you see them powering up for one. There are some minor intricacies to the fighting system to block incoming attacks or countering their power attack with a specific type of attack which lend a little depth to the system. But overall, the fundamentals of a fighting game are definitely present. Some icing has been placed on top of the core system but you’ll quickly realize there isn’t much more to it after taking a couple bites.

The Kinect integration in gameplay works pretty well. Your moves are recognized with a healthy dose of accuracy and they never have to be perfect. You will still struggle with it at times but it’s loose enough that it rarely becomes a frustration to perform what you want. I almost liked how imperfect you can be as it feels like you could wave your arms around and be akin to someone button mashing for controller-based fighters. Luckily, in this title, you cannot spam a single attack over and over, which almost gives it an upper hand against those kinds of tactics. Plus, there is not a huge list of attacks to memorize. The learning curve is low but the skill ceiling is also low, a perfect recipe for casuals or children to get in and have fun immediately. Unfortunately, that also limits the games life since mastery will come so quickly.

The graphics in this title leave much to be desired. It’s feels like an early generation fighting game or a smaller arcade title as the world and characters are generally lacking in detail. There are five arenas to play on that never really change. It would be forgivable if they changed over time due to events in the campaign or actions during the level but you’ll get nothing more than repetition. The levels themselves aren’t much to look at either. The only difference between the real Avenger team members and the Skrull are that any flesh is just green tinted. Some characters like Iceman or the Human Torch don’t even show any noticeable difference. The animations are decent but with such a limited move set to begin with, can feel a little repetitive. I would have been nice to see some variation in the moves, especially the intro and ultra sequences since they are so unique and in your face. The game’s graphics are passable but without the detail and little touches, it just feels stale and old.

Similarly to the graphics, the sound design is quite bare bones. Voice acting is pretty terrible and what is there is quite sparse. It feels like they were told to just do a stereotypical tough guy when it was Hulk or a stereotypical Russian accent when it was for Black Widow. There is not much personality of the characters coming through but it’s hard to critique that since they barely speak a sentence at a time. Each character probably only has a couple minutes of speaking time in the entire game. Hits you deal out in the game sound decently punishing but there isn’t much feedback when it comes to the noise you make when you or they get hit. It’s just simple grunts or sometimes nothing at all if it’s a big hit. The music isn’t half bad for what’s there though. It does its job to build up tension and immerse you into the game. It also helps spruce up the environments so it doesn’t feel so static and lifeless. The title has the basics covered with some decent music that helps to fill gaps in atmosphere and tone.

Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is a game that on its surface does not seem to have much of a chance to stand out from the crowd. It’s a movie tie-in game with Kinect. The only plus is that it appears Ubisoft Quebec was not limited by the movie’s release in the theaters or to purchase. Unfortunately, the extra time did not help too much. While Kinect works well and the core fighting system is fun, there just isn’t enough content or polish. It does seem that they favored polish over content which makes the game an enjoyable experience, the low skill ceiling further puts a damper in the lack of content. The minor discount off the asking price is a good move but may not be enough to pull people into purchasing this title. So while the Kinect integration works really well, it does not make up for the lack of content. The core fighting fundamentals are well executed but the lack of depth docks the lifespan. While the game is fun, it’s just not going to last.

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