Since the Fantastic 4 movie is coming off as formulaic popcorn fluff, then the game based on it, complete with popcorn-caliber similitude, comes off appropriately enough: formulaic videogame fluff.

Clearly not quite as fantastic as recent Spider-Man and X-Men movie-based games, Fantastic 4 is, nevertheless, competent about what it does. In it you control one of the four characters from the comic-book/film foursome (sometimes switching off control of two or four of them at a time), each with their own super-heroic skill set: elasticizing, flaming on, winking out and clobbering things.

Gameplay is your basic free-roam brawling affair where you auto-lock on a target selected from a streaming glut of hapless enemies, press attack or combo-attack or extra-special super-fantastic cosmic-combo attack, break some furniture, pick up helpful baubles, beat up a boss at the end of the level, repeat. It's as efficient/redundant as it sounds; great brainless action with trademarked characters in blockbuster scenery, also pock-market with "puzzles" of the lever yanking variety, with the occasional spot-welding of leaky pipes thrown in to keep it the context of Fantastic. Yes, you read that right. Weld on!

There's also a two-player co-operative mode that, like it sounds, is exactly half as fun as it could have been. Uh, hello? Fantastic 2? Don't think so.

[TIP: For unlimited Cosmic power in Fantastic 4, press Up, Square, Square, Square, Left, Right, Circle at the main menu of the PS2 version, or Up, X, X, X, Left, Right, B at the main menu of the Xbox version.]