Marvel Heroes: Breakout DVD Game is part board game, part DVD game. You and up to three friends move around the game board trying to re-capture escaped supervillains. You do this by taking part and completing various mini-games. Your turn begins with a roll of the die, moving your piece and selecting the activity that is represented by your location on the game board. If you complete the activity, you get a villain. You can play as one of four characters: Captain America, Spider Man, Storm and Wolverine. The mini-games take place at seven locations around the city.
In The Business District, you will control the Fantastic Four in a maze. The camera will pan over a bird's-eye-view of the city's streets starting at the scene of the crime and the panning down to the start locations. You must follow the streets and choose the beginning location that will get you to the end. At the Waterfront, you will play a memory game where you try to match pairs of heroes with their team members from The Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four. You keep playing until you either match three pairs of heroes or one pair of villains.
The Superhero Scramble in The Subway shows three spinning panels, one with a hero's head, one with a body and one with feet. The player must stop the spinning panels to form one of the many heroes in the game. Meanwhile at Empire University, you go are asked three questions about the Marvel Universe. These questions were unexpectedly tough and the average player might not be able to handle most of them. Thankfully, the developers have thought of that and balance things out a bit, but I'll explain that in the Difficulty section of this review.
At The Avenger's Tower, you will watch clips from classic Marvel cartoons (like Spider Man and X-Men) and will be asked questions about what you saw. This was one of the more nostalgic parts of this entire game since I remember watching these shows growing up.
The last two locations, West Side Rooftops and The X-Mansion, offer a couple of slightly different gameplay styles. At The X-Mansion, you will go to Cerebro's room and help locate villains. As the villain becomes clearer, you are suppose to shout out who it is. After a little bit of time, the other players are allowed to shout out their guesses as well. At the end, the game tells you who it is and the person who got it right first gets the villain. The other mini-game has you timing a jump from one building rooftop to the next in order to catch your crook.
The game goes until one person gets five or seven villains, depending on which game mode you chose.
