Marvel Comics is one of the best known franchises in existence. It's cool then to see EA taking a slightly different approach to its next Marvel-inspired fighter coming to the major consoles and the PSP. As you may have heard Rise of the Imperfects is a one-on-one arena-based 3D fighter featuring some of the most well-known superheroes ever, and a whole host of brand new ones made specifically for the game. Known as the imperfects, these new guys and girls look set to compliment the old faves such as Spider-Man and The Thing perfectly.

At a recent event I got some much-needed hands-on play time with the promising PSP version of the game, and so far things are looking up. While there has had to be some reasonably big changed to the game mechanics in order to compensate for the lack of a standalone control pad, and of course, the nature of the PSP's screen, it's safe for me to say that EA is definitely on the right track for making a decent solid fighting title, which for the first time with support two-player battling across the digital void of the internet.

Let's take a look at those differences I mentioned. RotI is a 3D fighting game that presumably was designed with the PS2, Xbox and GameCube controllers in mind. While the PSP hardware is great stuff, something's got to give when it comes to a lack of buttons, decent analog movement etc. With that in mind, EA has added two different controller configurations, a new-to-the PSP camera system and an auto-face feature which is built into the block command. As if that wasn't enough there's also a nice targeting assistance feature built in too which helps out a little to keep the action moving smoothly on the smaller PSP screen.

There's not much to worry about in terms of potential balancing issues as far as these features are concerned; rather this is something left the actual choice of character and his or opponent. It turns out that some fighters are way more powerful than others. Given the nature of the whole "superhero" thing, this isn't a big surprise. So when asked if a newbie could trounce an experienced player simply by choosing, say Magneto and playing against a weaker character, it appears as though the answer might be "yes." It's not a big deal, but could be an irk for some gamers.


At its core, RotI on PSP is one great-looking game. The GUI captures the look and feel of comic panels perfectly and EA even drafted in Marvel artist Terry Dodson to work on graphical representation of the characters and game-world. It looks great. Partly due to the excellent quality LCD display and partly due to sheer talent, there's little doubt that RotI is anything other gorgeous to look at. And luckily it's not all about good looks. There's some PSP exclusive content planned including two new characters; one of which I can reveal is none other than Captain America.