As an avid player of superhero video games there is one hero who has had a handful of outings under his name with being able to reach the levels of other characters. The man of steel himself, he has had many short comings when it comes to reviews with the best titles that have him involved being the likes of Injustice and DC Universe Online. Both being games where superman is involved but not a solo running. In both he is either a side character. Or in the case of Injustice you can play as him against other heroes and villains, all of them with a kryptonite pill that allows the characters to withstand his attacks and be able to hurt him.
This is where the problem with him lies, when designing a game that involves a character that has very few weaknesses the makers of the game need to get a little creative with functions. Looking back at Supes last outing on his own, 2006’s Superman Returns by EA Tiburon, which was released alongside the film with the same name. Now, for all of its flaws the creators were able to do something good when it came to a health bar. Superman didn’t have a health bar himself, but instead Metropolis had one causing you to fly around the city stopping too much damage to happen to the city he calls home.
However, this also gets boring after a while, as it gets to the point you’ll want to put in the cheat where the city’s health never goes down. Which causes for a fun sandbox of Superman flying fun but also means there’s no danger in losing. We also need to look at the most popular superhero games that are currently in circulation, but for the ease of time then it will be to look at two of these: Marvel’s Spider-Man PS4 and the Batman Arkham Series.
With both of these games the heroes have standard health bars as Batman is a Billionaire in a suit, and Spider-Man, although super powered is essentially a glass canon. Both of these characters, no matter how strong need to do one thing, don’t get hit as much as possible. Which obviously is a goal that makes sense, especially when it comes to video games, as 99% of them have the same one. But this is also the one thing Superman doesn’t need to worry about as without the enemies using some Kryptonite infused bullets or Magical characters to go up against.
Now, from a storytelling point of few this closes how many options you can follow, with the antagonist of the piece needing to be one of very few options. This isn’t Supes only issue, as it also goes from video games to TV shows and films. Superman is an all powerful God amongst men who can pretty much do what he wants and so the only way to do anything against him will be events that involve him needing to be in more than one place or timed. And I’m probably not the only one to think that Time Trials: The Superman Game, isn’t something to wait inline for. Also, because they already did it and it was called Superman: The New Superman Adventures aka Superman 64. A game used as an example for how not to do a superhero game, or any game.
Essentially, the reason we haven’t had a Man of Steel game that reached the heights of the caped crusader or the web crawler because of one simple reason. Someone who can’t get hurt, doesn’t have any risk. In other words, Superman is too overpowered to be put into a video game, don’t get me wrong, I would love a game where I got to fly around shooting laser eyes and throwing cars. But unless there is a viable reason for me to worry about getting hit that doesn’t consist of that one rock in his lore being overused then it is unlikely to be a game that can balance his power with any threat he goes up against.
The Nerdy Bartender 