Sega's video game tie-in for the Captain America movie features the star-spangled avenger infiltrating Hydra's mysterious castle during the darkest days of World War II. Sounds like a What If Captain America Infiltrated Castle Wolfenstein, doesn't it?
I've trained myself to not get excited over the games spawning from Sega's deal with Marvel over its movie properties. After two bad Iron Man games and a so-so attempt at a Hulk title I have to curb my enthusiasm. It's not so easy in the case of Captain America: Super Soldier, the video game tie-in for next year's Captain America: The First Avenger movie.
Why? First off, it's set in World War II. Like the movie, Captain America: Super Soldier focuses on Cap's early years, before he became a Capsicle bobbing in the middle of the ocean somewhere. We get to see Steve Rogers in his element, before his rude awakening in the present day.
Secondly, the story is being written by Christos Gage, once the writer of Avengers: The Initiative and the current scribe of Avengers Academy, one of my current favorite Marvel books.
Of course there's still some aspects of the game that have me worried. Sega has tapped Next Level Games to handle development, for instance. Next Level did produce Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, which was a passable Spider-Man game. They also developed Transformers: Cybertron Adventures for the Wii, which was a horrible little game.
And it is a Sega Marvel game. None of them have been particularly amazing.
Perhaps I'm just being lulled into a false sense of security by the parallels to Castle Wolfenstein. It's set in World War II. There is a large, mysterious castle. Hell, check out the Arnim Zola concept art in the gallery. A Nazi mastermind encased in the body of a mech? Where have we seen this before?
All you really need to do to make a good Captain America game set in World War II is take one of the better games in the Wolfenstein series and put Captain America in it.
Hopefully Next Level Games will give us something like that when Captain America: Super Soldier comes out next year for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, and DS.