Giant Fire Breathing Robot

Captain America: Super Soldier Preview

It’s not everyday that I find myself interested in a comic book-related game, especially when it’s created in tandem with a major motion picture. But I can honestly say that from the time I spent with Captain America: Super Soldier, a lot of care and attention was given to preserve the Cap we all know and love, while giving him a fresh coat of digital paint.

Hit the jump for my interview with Next Level Games‘ Game Director, Brandon Gill.

Giant Fire Breathing Robot: Is this game based on the movie that is coming out?

Brandon Gill: No, actually we got our own original storyline that we worked with Christos Gage, he wrote the storyline for us. He was really collaborative. We started working on the game flow that we wanted first, and fit it in with all the mechanics we want to teach the player, and then he came in and worked with us to start weaving a storyline into that. It was really—for us—we wanted to make a good game first, and then we started wrapping around the whole aspect of Captain America into it.

GFBR: What was the most important part of game play that you wanted in the game?

B: Well, when we started out, combat was something that we wanted to get right. I mean, he is the super soldier, so we sat down and did a bunch of prototyping. When we started off, we went down a road that a lot of people go down—that kind of God of War or Devil May Cry kind of feel with floating guys, juggling them in the air—and after a while, we went out on a limb and gave a try with this grounded fighting style where you’re dealing each enemy in turn, like feeling a bit more MMA, and it really started to feel good being able to block and counter out of things, to dodge out of the way, and really keep it grounded…almost realistic, but pushing the boundaries of reality. And that’s where it stood, and we grew from there.

GFBR: What was your favorite part about working on this game?

B: It was actually getting to know the Captain America character. We’re actually a Canadian company, so when we were told, “You wanna do Captain America?” We were like, “… Okay.” I went to the local comic shop, and I asked the guys I knew from there, “I want to get into Captain America. What should I read?” So they gave me Winter Soldier, which is [Ed] Brubaker’s run, and so I gave it a read and I was like, “Wow, this character is awesome,” and it doesn’t matter that I’m Canadian. This character is awesome!

That was quite a while ago, and it was about three years ago that Wolverine came out, and I thought, “Ya know, if an American company can make a game about a Canadian, then a Canadian company can make a game about Captain America.”

GFBR: What were the biggest challenges you came across in development?

B: One of the big things for us was that we wanted to make a game that played through storyline, and we found these villains with Christos, he pulled them out of the comic books, and reenvisioned them for World War II, but we really wanted to find characters that we could balance against Cap and tell the story of him becoming a super soldier. So it was finding characters and finding story lines that would question his abilities—not only physically, but also mentally, ethically.

GFBR: Is this the kind of game anyone can pick up and play? Do they need to be fans of Captain America to understand what’s going on?

B: I think that people can sit down and enjoy it for what it is, as far as the game goes. We really wanted to make a solid game. The combat system—it is accessible, but if you really want to get good at it and play on Hard mode, you got to learn your abilities, learn when to use your defensive and offensive abilities, so it plays easy for those who pick up and play it, and you still look good, but if you really want to get good at the game you have to learn the mechanics and practice.

GFBR: How many difficulty levels?

B: There are three difficulty levels. The differences between them are essentially that it changes out how quickly you lose health when you get hit, there’s something called Focus that actually amps up your existing move styles, you gain more of that on Easy and less of it on Hard, you take more damage, and then the big change that changes up the combat system is that the squads that are attacking you, they give you a full four seconds between attacks. On Hard mode, there’s like one second, so you are dealing with incoming attacks constantly.

GFBR: Are there going to be any other superhero cameos?

B: No other real heroes, but Bucky is in there. I mean, it’s Cap, it’s World War II… you gotta have Bucky in there.

GFBR: So this game is playable in 3D?

B: Yeah, the game will be shipping with multiple different modes of 3D. For people who don’t have 3D televisions, there’s the colored-glasses version, and then for those who do—on the Xbox and PS3—we support side-by-side and top-bottom 3D. On the PS3 alone, we support frame packing 3D, which is full resolution 3D, but you got to have a 3D television for it.

GFBR: Tell me about the game world.

B: The whole game takes place in this one complex. It’s this massive sprawling castle complex in the mountains of Bavaria. It’s the ancestral home of Baron Zemo. But Hydra and the Red Skull have come in and taken over the place, busted out walls, put in all their equipment. He’s pretty angry about this. You can find remnants of his dairies where you learn about how they came in and took over. Christos Gage wrote 31 diary entries for us, it was awesome, they are really cool and they are voiced by Steve Blum.

The other aspect is that you can find these film reels, and they are research reels from the Hydra forces, and they tell you why they built all of the tech that they were building within the place. So, once you move through these areas and open them up through the storyline, you can revisit them at any time you want. You can go back and check out rooms you were in before, there will be new patrols.

At this point, it was my turn to play the PS3 demo in front of everyone. Thankfully, Brandon was such a peach and called out the corresponding Xbox controls as I hardly touch a Playstation controller anymore.

I basically did a lot of this…

Playing Super Soldier reminds me of brawlers, such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, where your speed in subduing opponents weighs heavily on your understanding of jumping in with your fists, using counters, using Focus, blocking with your fancy shield, or learning the timing to deflect bullets with the shield itself. Focus is built up, like a power bar, which can then be used to make attacks more effective and more impressive to watch.

There is also a small, acrobatic side to the game, where Cap must climb through wrecked parts of the castle to get to other locations. Similar to many other games that include a parkour element, the ability to swing from pole to promontory was incredibly fluid and requires attentiveness rather than just button-mashing.

After finishing the demo, I asked Brandon a few more questions…

GFBR: With the counters and using Focus, as you go through the game will moves get more elaborate? And will there be different types of enemies later on?

B: There are going to be enemies you cannot counter, so you have to use block or dodge out of the way. There is certain ranged attacks that you cannot deflect, you have to block. It changes up as you get more enemy types.

GFBR: Is that something you learn on your own?

B: No, it teaches it to you step-by-step. What happens is that ring you see in the gold color, it means you can counter them, but the guys you can’t counter it’s red. So you know you have to block that.

GFBR: When is the game coming out?

B: It comes out July 19^th; it’s the Tuesday before the movie comes out.

Thank you Brandon, and Sega, for letting me embarrass myself in front of so many people while trying to play your wonderfully-made game!