A poor hack-and-slash gameplay experience because an essential for a superhero game is that you feel like a superhero...
Fantastic 4 follows the same basic plot as the film, but with a bit of comic story on the side of the platter. Basically, five people are trapped on a space station where a nuclear cloud comes and changes their DNA. Four of these scientists, Reed Richards, Sue and Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm, are changed into Mr Fantastic (streches as far as he wants), Invisible Woman (who can also project force-fields), Human Torch (who can erupt in, ignite and spread flame and not get burned) and the Thing (a being of rock and stone, similar to the Incredible Hulk). You can play as all these characters, but you are usually limited to one or two of the team per level. And, funnily enough, there's a two-player co-operative mode.
The Audio what you would expect from an action game. The tunes fit the key moments of the game very well, but it doesn't work as effectively as the real-life city effects that Spiderman 2 showed us. Music should be hard and cold in this action game, not lighter sounds that we here in games like Mario Sunshine for example. It's not that the music is bad, but it doesn't exactly stand out as an epic orchestral score like the Wind Waker.
Controls are just a bit tedious. The controls are the same as for just a basic beat-'em-up, that being that you have your basic attacks, secondary moves and a special ability. Bashing up enemies doesn't require any thought, and a lack of combos hurts the basic game play mechanics. The special abilities involve slipping through tight cracks, hacking computers, lifting massive objects and the like. Seven Studios should have added more variety, because if you've ever played a third-person action game, you've basically already played Fantastic 4. In a nutshell, it copies a lot of more successful beat-'em-ups.
Seven Studios has worked hard to try and make the fairly-well animated levels fully destructible. There are some secrets to be found if you smash a fence in Brooklyn, or slip through cracks as Reed. This works nicely with with the plot of the game, and the moments where you are smashing stuff as the Thing are some of the very few moments where you feel like a superhero. That fact is basically what lets the Fantastic 4 down. In Spiderman 2, Treyarch and Activision showed us that you can actually feel like you have those powers by implementing the enormous playground of Manhattan. This is not what you get in F4. The smashing of the environment only happens when the game tells you that you can. This is a real let-down, because Activision's previous superhero games (well Spidey 2, anyway) showed us that we should expect total freedom in using our superhero powers, and it is ironic that the next game based on a movie that they published contradicted that fact completely.
Fantastic 4 is a solid hack-and-slash gameplay experience, but an essential for a superhero game is that you feel like a superhero, which Activision have proven themselves able to do. The music doesn't stand out, the graphics aren't life changing, and the gameplay really isn't all that much fun in long bursts. But from a action fan's perspective, no matter what age or height or anything, this game will appeal greatly.
It's only meant to be a simple action game, and it isn't meant to stand out. Quite an unenjoyable and flawed gaming experience.