There are plenty of video games out there that let you control some of the greatest superheroes of all time. But how often do you personally get to be morphed into a superpowered crime fighter who pummels evildoers? “PowerUp Heroes” for Kinect does just that — to an extent. “PowerUp Heroes” has you inheriting the powers of an alien being who came to Earth chasing the evil entity Malignance. After getting your hands on a suit that imbues you with electrical energy, you must punch and kick your way through a cadre of cartoonish minions loyal to Malignance on a quest to retrieve the other suits.
Just about everything in this game seems to be lifted from other superhero stories, from the suits — one of which is a dulled version of Iron Man buddy War Machine’s — to a back story that seems lifted from the pages of the “Green Lantern.” This aspect can be taken as good and bad: good in that you’ll get superpowers similar to your favorite heroes’, bad in that it comes across as the developers phoning in a bit of the design.
