I Would Rather Not Fly Anymore

Why is it so hard to make a good SupermanThe first big superhero from DC Comics, Superman has survived any number of pretenders to the throne, besting not only other comic titans but even Wolrd War II to remain one of only three comics to continue publishing since the 1940s. game? I understand that the character is powerful, and he has a host of abilities, and translating all of that into a game can require some thought. Making a good Superman game isn’t like making a good BatmanOne of the longest running, consistently in-print superheroes ever (matched only by Superman and Wonder Woman), Batman has been a force in entertainment for nearly as long as there's been an entertainment industry. It only makes sense, then that he is also the most regularly adapted, and consistently successful, superhero to grace the Silver Screen. game since the Caped Crusader is a street-level hero who kicks and punches his way through enemies. Even if you give him a bunch of gadgets, it’s still easy to see Batman fighting along the ground, delivering street justice to enemies, to make a mildly affecting title. But Superman is a different beast and he requires more thought. I understand that.

Video games, though, require artistic, talented people and you’d think, somewhere in the last twenty-plus years that we’ve so far covered on this site (starting with Superman ‘79 for, the Atari 2600) someone could have cracked the code on how to make a decently playable version of Big Blue. The closest we’ve gotten was Superman ‘92, which is a fun enough title but it still does a poor job of translating Superman into video games. That’s the best we’ve gotten, and everything else has been mediocre at best, unplayable at worst.

Superman: The Man of Steel from 2002 (not to be confused with Superman: The Man of Steel from 1989) is definitely on the unplayable end of that spectrum. It is, in essence, a Superman flight sim, putting you in control of the superhero as he flies around Metropolis, other cities, and deep space, all on a mission to take out Brainiac. Every mission, no matter what you’re doing, takes place in the open air over a city (or, yes, in space) and you have to fly around, taking out targets and fighting enemies. There isn’t really any variety, no true changes of pace, just an endless series of flight missions as you guide the big blue hero around and around again.

Superman: The Man of Steel is based on the comic series Superman: Y2K, where Brainiac-13 came to Metropolis. Superman defeats the robotic super-intelligence, and then Metropolis uses the technology to rebuild the city into a World of Tomorrow (cue Scott Pilgrim quote: “with jetpacks”). But when Brainiac-13 returns to Metropolis, he starts using his robotic drones to strip the technology from the city, causing chaos everywhere. Superman has to fight back the drones, and reverse the damage they’re doing, all while chasing Brainiac steadily across one world to the next, working to defeat the evil bad guy once and for all.

I gotta be honest, I was bored with Superman: The Man of Steel by the end of the first mission. That mission takes about ten minutes and by the end of it you’ve seen everything the game has to offer, more or less. Superman flies in and has to go from one point to the next around the city, finding Brainiac drones so he can destroy them. Then he finds some flying generators and destroys those, too. And then he finds some more drones and breaks them as well. Mission complete. It’s simple, but I wouldn’t really say it’s effective as the game draws everything out even in this one mission.

For starters, the mission isn’t laid out in a natural, linear way. The entire city lies before you and the only thing you have guiding you is a cone of “tunnel vision”, a rotating icon at the top of the screen, indicating where to go. I have to say, even though it wasn’t a series of rings to fly through, this whole sequence felt a lot like the gameplay from Superman: The New Adventures (and no one should want to be compared to that Nintendo 64 game). The game basically wants you to fly randomly to another part of the city, and then only really tells you what to do when you’re there, and it usually involves punching some things randomly before flying off somewhere else.

This first ten minute section was a microcosm for the whole of the game. Fly here via a cone above your head vaguely guiding you. Arrive and do some random task, then fly off again. The gameplay loop is, quite literally, the same as the failed Scott Pilgrim 64 game, only here the graphics are somewhat better and we have a bit of mediocre voice acting. If you’d told me this game was developed as a sequel to that title from 1997, I wouldn’t have doubted you for a second (even though they were made by two completely different companies).

It’s not that a Superman flight sim would necessarily be bad, but the objectives needed to be more interesting than what this game provides. In the game you get to fly to some drones and break them, fly to some fires and put them out, fly after a foe, capture them, and take them to the authorities, and occasionally fight a boss by, you know, chasing after them and then occasionally punching them. It all feels like the same, rote mechanics over and over again until the game gets bored and finally lets you stop. It takes a while for that, though, because the game is easily three hours long and you feel every excruciating minute of it.

If we set aside the mission structure (although we will come back), I don’t think I’d have minded this quite so much if the game made two major changes. The first is that Superman needs to fly faster in this game. By default he moves like molasses, slow as can be as he flies across the city. I’m sure this was done so that you don’t fly into buildings or overshoot your mark, but Superman (who is, canonically, supposed to be nearly as fast as The FlashStruck by lightning while working in his lab, Barry Allen became a speedster known as The Flash, launching an entire set of super-fast superheroes.) has no sense of speed or urgency to his movements at all. Worse, there are some missions that are timed and the game basically gives you just enough time to complete it if you don’t run into any issues (and often you will run into issues).

The other thing the game needed to change was its combat system. Superman will fly up to enemies and have three attacks he can perform: physical punches, laser vision, and cold breath. Different enemies (who are color-coded) will be weak to different attacks. The struggle is that you’re fighting them in three dimensional space and the enemies will go whipping around you, to and fro, making it impossible at times to get to them, lock on, and kill them. There is a lock on, but that doesn’t always mean you actually lock on properly, and the game will still let everything fly around at random and give up on you keeping track of things without help. You need that help because combat is incredibly frustrating. You have to want to get through this game to be bothered to try considering how bad the combat is here. I did it just so I could review it. I don’t expect anyone else will bother with that effort.

But let’s say that you do think a Superman flight sim is a good idea and that you want to do something like this. How could this work? I think that instead of a loose series of missions, start to finish, the game would be better served by a central hub world. Set each “mission” at a different part of the city and let Superman fly around (at great speed) towards them. When he gets to a mission he could do one of the various things this game assigns, but we’d also need more depth. Not just fighting drones and putting out fires, but maybe there’s a missile flying across the ocean towards Metropolis and Supes has to fly out, catch up to it, and then push it down into the ocean. Mister Mxyzptlk shows up at one location and he creates a bunch of crazy things that Superman has to chase down. Maybe he just needs to fly really fast around the Earth, dodging obstacles, to reset the day and stop a massive attack on the globe (shades of Superman: The Movie). If you’re going to do a fly sim like this you need more variety and more to do.

Plus, you could set various special missions at the specific locations around the city and, you know, do something other than just flying. A few in-base areas with a little combat focused brawling would be good. Superman does more than fly, and if you want to do boss fights maybe put them in controlled areas where the loose combat mechanics could be focused better. There are ways this game could have been improved with just a little forethought to take the basic idea of “let’s have a game all about Superman flying” and actually make it function.

This title feels like, at best, half a game. One team at Infrogrames got to make Superman: Shadow of Apokolips, and the other team was stuck with this glorified tech demo and had to make it into something. They did what they could with a basic engine and not much else, but this title feels rushed, empty, and not very interesting. It is a lot like Scott Pilgrim 64 and while I’m sure the team at Infogrames didn’t want to invite that comparison, they should have made a better game if they wanted to avoid it. This game is trash and there is, quite literally, no reason to suffer through it if you don’t have to.