PowerUp Heroes was an interesting game to play. Going into it, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. And when I first started playing it, I didn't quite like what I was seeing. As I began to play through it, and learn the rhythm of the title, however, it started to grow on me, just a bit.

A fairly simplistic looking fighter: PowerUp Heroes uses gestures to use fight an opponent, weilding various super suits, and the abilities that come with them. Each suit comes with three moves to execute, displayed at all times to you in the bottom of the screen. Each of the moves requires a specific gesture to pull off. For example: jump to bring a rock out of the ground and then punch forward to fire it towards your enemy; raise your arms then bring them down again to rain lightning from the sky; bring your hands to your head to charge up a psychic blast before launching it at your foe.

Each move is fairly distinct in its execution, though each serve a purpose. The most important of them is the one that stops you opponent from acting for a few seconds, as this allows you to string together combos of attacks, doing massive damage if you can hit with following attacks. Also key is the ability to choose two different suits and switch between them during the fight, since each super attack requires a moment of cooldown.

Master the rapid-switching and quick execution of abilities, and you've mastered the game. And I mean the entire game. Sure, there's also close quarter combat and some simple projectile attacks (performed by raising your knee and punching, respectively). Oh, and you can dodge The problem here is that every battle feels the same: execute the moves you have, switch suit, execute those, switch suits again, and so forth and so forth.

The AI opponents, as you might expect, aren't the hardest things to take on. The story involves some alien trying to take over Earth, sending down agents to do the work for him. You fight a number of opponents, in more or less linear order, then take down the bad guy. Simple stuff, and fairly easy too. If you want to play against a friend, either online or via split-screen, it's a lot more fun, and damn tiring to boot. Either way, however, the repetition of battles can really get to you.

I got to say, I didn't really expect to have as much fun as I did with this title. The responsive moves mean you rarely ever do something you don't mean to, and actually pulling off the supermoves feels so good, like you're really in a super suit. There's only one move I had issue with, which is a blocking move where you raise your arm upwards, but other than that, the gestures came easily enough to me.

It's a good title for the younger crowd, but with the large amount of repetition in the title, it's hard to recommend it to anyone else. There isn't much real challenge, nor is there a feeling of accomplishment when you just win one fight after the other by spamming the same moves again and again. That said, it's a decent title to play, as long as you don't expect a Superman-sized offering.