‘Avengers Origins: Assemble’ and ‘Avengers Origins: Hulk’ App Reviews

I’m jealous of kids today. I mean, I’m a kid at heart and I have no qualms spending my time watching cartoons, buying toys, and blogging about said cartoons and toys, but to be a kid right now in the age of iPads and Angry Birds and actual Avengers movies would be pretty awesome. I got bored with storybooks pretty quickly when I was little, and I’m sure flipping through the app equivalent of a storybook on an iPad would have kept my attention at least a little bit longer.

Like the Spider-man origin story app Rob reviewed a few months ago, Disney and Marvel have released two Avengers storybooks on iOS devices to coincide with the movie, and they were kind enough to send me some download codes so I could take a look. Avengers Origins: Assemble! and Avengers Origins: Hulk are both available for the iPhone and iPad.

Avengers Origins: Assemble

The awkwardly named Avengers Origins: Assemble! gives kids one version of how the Avengers all got together. It focuses on Captain America getting frozen in the ice and the Avengers finding him a few decades later. The line-up used in this story contains Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man, and Wasp, and the threat is non other than Namor himself. I’ve never understood Namor very much (read: casual comics fan), and this app actually taught me something.

Stan Lee narrates both of these stories and it’s great hearing him read. His voice is as iconic as his face, moustache, and sunglasses, and hearing him read about his heroes is a blast. I’m not sure if kids appreciate an old man narrating their stories as much as older geeks, but I’d like to think they don’t mind.

The artwork in these storybooks is really great. They feature some limited animation, but nothing overly distracted from the art itself. The style is more painterly than kids will be use to seeing from cartoons and comic books, and fits perfectly in the storybook medium. There is a lot of interactivity to keeps kids interested, such as fending off angry Atlanteans.

Throughout the story kids can collect easter eggs that will unlock new features. I have to give props to Disney for adding a good deal of new content recently with an update to the app. They added in a few minigames, each with levels and achievement badges and upped the value of this app a great deal.

Like I said, I don’t have kids of my own yet, but if I had some that were too young to take to see The Avengers I would taunt them about how awesome it is definitely give them this app as an introduction to the team.

Avengers Origins: Hulk

Disney is probably very glad it released Avengers Origins: Hulk because of how insanely positive the reception to the character has been from The Avengers. I’m sure kids too young to go see the movie can feel Hulk fever right now, and this interactive storybook can certainly hold their interest for a while if that’s the case.

I will say that this app isn’t as fun as the Avengers story, and seems shorter. It also hasn’t been updated yet to include minigames, but, if you own both apps you can use Avengers Origins: Hulk to unlock the Hulk as a playable character in the other app. That being said, the art in this story is also great, and it’s narrated by Stan Lee.

Hulk offers the same opportunities for kids to collect easter eggs and unlock bonus content, and I assume Disney will be adding minigames to the app soon. The storybook is short and covers Banner’s exposure to the Gamma radiation that creates the Hulk, but the lack of villains sets this app back from the Avengers. Kids can tap away to break through a wall and throw a car, but I’m not sure either of those experiences would be very fun to replay.

If your kid is Hulk-crazy, this isn’t a bad way to spend four dollars. I enjoyed it for the art and narration, and I hope they continue to refine these apps and release more, because kids love superheroes from such an early age and these apps fill in nicely for more mature comic books.

You can buy Avengers Origins: Assemble! and Avengers Origins: Hulk from iTunes.

Are you a geek Mom or Dad? If so, let us know in the comments what your kids think of these kind of apps!