The Fantastic Four were conceived by Stan Lee and the late, great Jack Kirby in 1961, who boldly and accurately described their creation as "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!" Over nearly half a century, Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Thing and the Human Torch have survived the worst threats imaginable, from the mad monarch Dr. Doom to cosmic world-eaters to a five-year run on the series by writer Tom DeFalco. But all of that pales in comparison to Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer, which does its level best to remove every last ounce of fun and excitement from the first family of superheroes. Somewhere, Kirby is rolling in his grave, and if Stan ever comes face to face with this abomination, he just might join him.

ROTSS is, of course, the officially licensed video game tie-in to the critically panned summer blockbuster of the same name, and the nicest thing we can say about it is that it makes its cinematic counterpart look like the first Spider-Man movie. The game's story is told through the use of talking heads and text boxes instead of cut scenes, and it doesn't really stick to the plot of the movie at all. Non-movie enemies from the comic series, like the Super Skrull and Terrax, appear in the game, and major characters and plot points from the movie, like Galactus and his planet eating, don't. Yes, you read that correctly. The comics character voted Most Likely to Be an Awesome End-Of-Game Boss by his graduating class doesn't even put in an appearance.

Borrowing heavily from Activision's far superior X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance, ROTSS allows you to control one member of the Fantastic Four at a time with a press of the D-pad. The other three fumble along behind you, guided by brute stupid AI. Fortunately, your enemies are similarly lobotomized, which makes for battles that seem more like super-powered games of Marco Polo. If any member of the team is reduced to zero health, they disappear for 30 seconds before returning to battle. As long as you make sure that all four members of the team don't die at the same time, you won't have any trouble making it through all five hours of the game's story. That might seem skimpy, but trust us: it'll seem at least twice that long.

Each member of the FF has the usual strong and weak melee attacks, as well as their own unique super powers. The Invisible Girl can turn invisible and shoot invisible waves of energy. Mr. Fantastic has a super stretchy smack that hits multiple enemies. The Human Torch shoots fireballs, and the Thing, who you'll be controlling most of the time, can lift and toss objects and pound the ground to send out a shockwave. And while this all sounds well and good on paper, the reality is that you'll spend most of your time mashing the attack buttons, while occasionally attempting to execute a sluggish super-powered attack.

Topping off the tedious gameplay are the ridiculously repetitive objectives. It seems like 90 percent of the game involves walking into a room where all of the doors lock until you defeat a pile of enemies, at which point you can go through the next door, which locks behind you... and so on. Sometimes ROTSS varies the formula by requiring you to beat up a bunch of baddies to access an elevator or disable a laser beam, which does absolutely nothing to reduce the monotony. Even worse, checkpoints are few and far between, and you can only save your game between levels. So in the unlikely event that your entire team is killed in battle, you might have to replay half an hour or more of the game. Or, if you don't hate yourself that much, you can also exchange it for a complete refund, if you kept your receipt.

And the graphics! Don't even get me started. If truth-in-advertising laws in this country had any teeth, Take-Two would have had to release this as Fantastic Turd: The Turd of the Silver Turd. It also features a jump-in/jump-out co-op mode for up to four players, so if you have three friends who you never want to speak to again, invite them over.

There is a special level of Video Game Hell reserved for ROTSS. Simply by existing, it has made the world that much less fun. It's the videogame equivalent of watching your dog being run over, with worse production values. Do not buy this game. Do not rent this game. Do not play this game.