Superman Returns review

Last summer Superman returned to the movie screens. Brian Singer made a masterpiece, that beneath the surface of typical superhero action, contained strong religious tones, as well as a strong bond with the first movie in the series. This puts an enormous pressure on the folks over at EA. The fact that Raven, with huge success, has just released Marvel Ultimate Alliance didn't make it any easier.

Superman Returns uses the primary story from the new movie, with some of the villains from the new comics to accompany it.

Fans of the series will love to see Bizarro and Mr. Mxyzptlk adding a touch of humour to Superman’s girl scout-personality.

Oddly enough, the missions in the game don't follow the story at all, so the decent cutscenes with Luthor and Lane are totally wasted.

GTA with a cape

The main location in the game is of course Metropolis, which isn't only impressive in size, but also bears good resemblance to the modern comic version.

Just as in GTA you can go wherever you want to, whizzing over the tops of skyscrapers at mach 3. This is one of the game's most exciting aspects and while you pass over the streets of Metropolis, you almost feel out of breath. This really gives you the sense of being a superhero.

With Superman being nearly invulnerable EA had a problem to solve. It did this, by giving Metropolis its own life bar instead of you. If the health of the city gets to low you loose. Besides this Superman has an energy bar which limits his capabilities and tells you when you need a break.

As in a role-playing game you earn experience points which can be used to upgrade and expand you powers. For example, freezing breath and heat vision. I have been looking for the X-Ray vision but as of now found nothing...

By using an overwhelming number of combinations on your 360 controller, you can unleash an immense amount of damage with you different attacks. However many of your opponents are immune to some of Superman’s attacks which is rather annoying. The best all-round weapon of choice seems to be throwing car after car at them. Be this one of the many small-time criminals or Bizarro, it doesn't really make a difference. Superman just doesn't like cars I guess.

Dragons Galore

In order to get access to the main missions in the game you have to defeat several smaller criminal attacks. Apparently EA had some sort of low budget when they designed this part of the game because nearly all of these attacks are made by either robots or some sort of dragon (I haven’t read all the Superman comics but I don't get what dragons have to do with Bizarro).

All these smaller mission all look alike and get boring pretty quick. After 4000 robots even Superman gets impatient. On some rare occasions EA added a bit more variety to these missions. For example, in one of them you have to defend some Zeppelins from the dangerous dragons mentioned before.

The main missions are a bit more varied. Especially the fights with Metallo and Bizarro are quite entertaining.

All these boring missions are not the biggest problem however. The controls are. EA has implemented "The Camera-angle of Doom" in this game, which makes the fights way to annoying and too hard. You would think that EA could have done a better job in giving us a sense of being Superman but this is not the case. Most of the time you are just hoping for the best guessing what opponent you are locked on to and then just smash away.

The worst cases are the different races that Mr. Mxyzptlk challenges you to take part in. A countless number of times, I have had the pleasure of planting Supe's face on the side of one of the skyscrapers because I didn't make a turn and had to go supersonic. There is no in-between. You either go slow, or insanely fast.

Put some more pressure on the Box !

Metropolis is pretty but the 360 can handle a lot more than this. Shadows in the game look odd and it would seem that Superman doesn't cast a shadow on all kinds of materials. Mirror effects are really good but textures look horrible,even compared to that of Saints Row. Cars and the different inhabitants of Metropolis could also use a makeover, while Superman himself looks pretty darn good, with descent animations.

All GTA-like games seem to follow the same way of spawning vehicles and people. If you totally wreck havoc on a street, fly away, and come back later everything is back to normal again. Someone should tell the game designer and coders that this is a flaw, not a feature.

The sound is what bothers me the most. EA didn't buy the rights to use the original score from the movie! The license would have already been pretty expensive and it would have given the game the right mood setting. EA's music isn't bad in any way and I particularly enjoy the way the sound changes when Superman goes beyond the clouds. It just isn't good enough.

Will there ever be a good DC game?

Superman Returns is mostly for the fans of the old superhero. Those who have dreamt of stepping in to his shoes for a long time and can't really adapt to the many different Marvel heroes.

Unfortunately, EA continues to spew out crappy superhero games over and over. Not Catwoman crappy, but crappy nonetheless. I don't get the decision not to make the game follow the movie (except in the aforementioned cut-scenes).

The extra 6 months in development could have been used to make the controls actually controllable. If you like superhero games, Spider-Man 2 and Hulk Ultimate Destruction are a much better choice.

Translated by René Hansen.