don’t tell me the ending to: Superman Returns

I’ve seen the movie. I wish they had taken the last 45 minutes and left it on the cutting room floor. But that’s not what this post is about. It is about a Superman video game that doesn’t suck.

That doesn’t mean it is good. It means it may be ok, or a little bad. But it doesn’t suck. And that hasn’t happened. Almost Ever. I liked Blizzard’s Death and Return of Superman, but that game was hard and had no co-op, and no way to save your progress. It was like 1player Battle Toads.

This game is like Spiderman 2 (great game), but instead of swinging, you just fly everywhere. In a way that isn’t like driving a semi-truck drunk with a locked steering column through the air. And no, I don’t mean a flying semi-truck through the air; I mean a flying a normal, average semi-truck (see: Superman 64). It’s pretty fun to just fly around the city, looking for trouble. You can pick up citizens (but not thrown them). You can, however, leave them on the top of nuclear silos, or sky scrappers. That’s always fun. The game is a graphical throw back since it was made for the ps2/xbox as well (see: Gun). The combat is atrocious, archaically awful. Button combinations rarely do what you want, and since when does Superman need to hit someone more than once (maybe twice)? This goes double for minions. You do get nearly limitless Super powers (just have to recharge for a couple of seconds between use), and a health bar the replenishes half-way whenever it is depleted and you are stunned. Instead, saving the City (time limit during fights, collateral damage) is all you have to worry about.

It is an interesting play mechanic to have the City be your life bar, but regaining your life bar is a bit broken. Usually you gain a fair amount back after any successful gta-like mission. You can also deliver people to ambulances post-mission. There are ALWAYS injured after a fight. But picking people up one at a time and trying to run them to wherever the ambulance attempts to spawn often just causes another fight. Or sometimes the ambulance doesn’t spawn at all, leaving the injured to wail about on the ground. Funny, but not so much when you need health before the next mission, and it triggers anyway.

I picked this game up ultra cheap, and only played it because it was cartoony and light, instead of dark and brown and violent and FPS. It isn’t a good game so far, and I don’t recommend it. But maybe if someone makes a decent not-brown game,… I’d be all over that.

Hell, I just bought Naruto for that very reason. And that got GOOD reviews. Guess you’ll have to stay tuned for that preview.