Enthused by the new movie trailer, a reader hopes for a Superman video game that can use the character and his villains to their full potential.
As a big fan of DC Comics I was overjoyed to see the new Superman teaser trailer this week. Not only was it really good but it seems to have been very popular, with lots of views that suggest the film will be a big hit. This pleases me, as people have been saying for years that an optimistic, happy Superman would never be successful anymore, but hopefully this new film will be proof that is not true.
With the terrible state of the world at the moment, we need a film that celebrates hope and goodness and while the film might not end up doing everything I want it to, it sure seems a major improvement on the awful Zack Snyder films.
Naturally though, I’m not here to talk about Superman films, but games. This is another thing that people like to tell you can never work, because Superman is too powerful, but most video game characters are invulnerable and grossly overpowered compared to their opponents. There’s no reason a game couldn’t work, and I really hope Warner Bros. is going to give it another go.
Superman has stared in dozens of games over the years, going all the way back to the Atari 2600 in the ’70s. None of them have been very good, in fact the one on the N64 is famously one of the worst video games ever made. But just because nobody has made it work so far doesn’t mean the idea’s no good.
The most recent big budget attempt (if you don’t count the fun Lego Batman games) was a Superman Returns game from EA in 2006. This one was frustrating because it did a lot of things right, with a big open world to fly around and the very clever idea that while you don’t take damage the city does, and if it takes too much you lose.
Unfortunately, the game was pretty boring, with bad combat and samey enemies. But the damage idea is definitely something that could be used in a better game, as making sure other people aren’t hurt is Superman’s whole thing and would be a great thing to focus on and make the gameplay feel different.
Another complaint about Superman is that people say he has no good enemies, but this is nonsense. In my opinion he has one of the best rogues galleries in all comics. Because Superman is very powerful so too are his enemies, so you’ve got A-listers like Darkseid, Brainiac, Doomsday, Zod, Ultraman, Mongul, and Bizarro.
Not only are all of them as powerful, or more so, than Superman (without needing kryptonite or magic) but two of them are so iconic their names are regular words in the dictionary, as is kryptonite. People might not realise it, but that’s where the phrases brainiac and bizarro world come from.
Then you’ve got Lex Luthor – one of the most well known supervillains of all time and painfully relevant in today’s world, where billionaires have more power than governments. Then there’s lesser but still powerful villains like Cyborg Superman, Metallo, Parasite, Toyman, and Atomic Skull. Oh, and Mister Mxyzptlk, who is a reality-bending fifth dimensional imp that Superman has to beat by using his brains, not his fists.
Some of these guys are just good at punching but others have weird gimmicks and abilities that would offer a lot more variety than the average supervillain line-up. We see in the teaser trailer that Superman is bleeding and any of the seven characters I first mentioned could’ve done that to him, and probably others beside.
A Superman action game absolutely could work but it shouldn’t just be about fighting, it should be just as much focused on saving people, with things like runaway trains, broken dams, sinking ships – cliched superhero stuff but things we’ve never seen in a game before, not even good ones like the Spider-Man ones.
I would love to find out that Rocksteady, or someone else, has been secretly working on a game for years but I think that’s probably not likely. The problem with games today is that even if they started tomorrow, we wouldn’t see it for six years or more. That’s a shame but all the more reason to start now and prove that Superman can fly as a video game as well as a movie.
By reader PhantomZ
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