Where’s there’s a trademark, there’s a game goes the old saying. Monday rumors that Ubisoft is making a game based on The Avengers have turned out to be all too true. The publisher announced Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth on Thursday morning. Unlike THQ’s aborted first-person Avengers adventure game though, Battle for Earth will be something new for superhero video games: It will be a motion controlled game for Microsoft’s Kinect and Nintendo’s Wii U.
That’s right. It’s time to throw your hands in the air and make like Iron Man just don’t care. Speaking with The Associated Press, Ubisoft vice president of sales Tony Key said, “The idea that we’re making a motion-control version of the Avengers is a unique proposition if you compare that to superhero games of the past. This is the perfect type of game for that because these characters are very action oriented. They’re always fighting and throwing things.”
The source material Ubisoft is drawing from certainly lends itself to punching and subsequently throwing things. The game is not based on the Avengers movie that’s grossed more than $700 million around the world in the past week, but the 2009 comic book crossover series Secret Invasion. Both share quite a bit in common though. Both the movie and Secret Invasion are in part about the alien Skrull race invading Earth by launching a large-scale attack on New York City. Instead of coming through a big hole in the sky though, the Skrulls of Secret Invasion carefully infiltrated human society over the course of years, replacing regular people by assuming their identities, before revealing themselves and punching most everyone in the face before throwing them into something.
The game will also put you in control of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk, which is strange because the Hulk mostly sat out Secret Invasion. He must be popular these days for some reason.
Avengers: Battle for Earth will be out by the end of the year to coincide with the release of the Wii U.
It isn’t the Avengers game some might have been hoping for, but considering how much people like Kinect Star Wars, a game about a dancing Han Solo, you can see why Ubisoft thinks this game is a sure thing.
What’s interesting about Battle for Earth is its dual support of Kinect and Wii U. We know that Wii U is compatible with the Wii’s motion controllers, but those offer a comparatively limited range of inputs compared to Microsoft’s hands-free device. Is there something about Wii U’s capacity for motion control that we don’t know about?
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