Superman Returns: The Videogame (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Chris McCarver on 12.28.2006
Not as horrific as that N64 Superman game, but what CAN'T say that?
Platform: Xbox 360 (also available on Playstation 2 and Xbox)
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Tiburon
ESRB Rating: T
Release Date: Nov. 20, 2006
Review by CHRIS McCARVER
Superman is one of those fictional properties you can easily either strike gold or sludge with. For every Richard Donner director's cut and every "Smallville,” there's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and that "Superboy" TV show from the late 80's. Unfortunately, one can't say the same about video games starring the Last Son of Krypton; they've been universally horrible. From the Atari 2600 game to the benchmark for gaming mediocrity that is the Nintendo 64 game, Clark Kent's alter ego has yet to see the light of excellence on a game console. Bryan Singer sought to re-invent the Superman movie wheel with his magnum opus Superman Returns, and EA aimed to do the same with their tie-in game. And while Superman Returns: The Videogame is light-years above many of the previous Superman titles, it still has a long way to go before it does that leaping-tall-buildings thing.
"Crap. Dropped my keys."
Graphics
Major note must be made of the sheer size and scope of the game's depiction of the city of Metropolis. This city is huge. Spider-Man 2 huge. Not only does the gamescape stretch to eighty square miles, but the game also combines intense detail with full-blown destructibility. The city's various structures can be damaged, demolished... some of them can even be used by Superman as found weapons. The Metropolis of this game owes as much to the current DC comics as to the movie, with every neighborhood and district duplicated for the game. Suicide Slum, Hypersector... it's all here.
Sadly it's the character models that got the short end of the stick. As slick as the city looks, the characters, especially in cutscenes, look so cartoony and claymation that Celebrity Deathmatch looks like Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in comparison. They're nicely animated and move very dynamically, but the overly expressive faces and buggy eyes seem way out of place in a virtual environment that is rendered in such a lifelike manner. In fact, apart from the possible exception of Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, the characters only marginally appear like the live-action counterparts.
Also a downfall in this title is the in-game camera. It aims at what you want it to easily enough, but the pans are so bloody fast, circle-strafing an enemy character becomes an exercise in dizziness. And when you're playing a character that moves at Mach speeds in-game, that adds up to a lot of disorientation. The framerate also suffers from massive lag when a number of characters appear on-screen at once; I could almost hear the graphics chip in my console screaming in agony.
"Geez, pal, you coulda just handed down some sunblock or something, now I got sunburn AND frostbite!"
Gameplay
The game follows the story of the film... in a sense. Basically, you'll be playing as Superman in a reimagining of the movie's storyline with additional bits of gameplay spritzed about the narrative, and in these bits, you'll have to pit the Man of Steel against a number of members of his longtime rogues' gallery, none of which are taken from the film. The sad part is that you don't actually take part in the segments that are lifted directly from the movie; you only play the add-on segments and scenes lifted from the film are played out as non-interactive cutscenes.
What Superman Returns gets right is primarily in gameplay presentation. Finally, someone came up with a means by which Superman, whom most would require an A-bomb to even bloody his nose, can have a "health meter." The life bar instead is ascribed to the state of Metropolis and its population. The city gets too wrecked, too many people get injured, the bar descends until it hits zero, wherein you'll have to restart the mission.
The controls of the game are really simple to pick up on the 360 version; ground movement and flight are handled pretty much the same, the only difference is having to hit one of the face buttons to toggle yourself airborne. A single button is mapped for hand-to-hand strikes and yet another activates a selection of Superman's powers, including freeze breath and heat vision (X-ray vision is notably absent), which are mapped to a specific power by hitting the D-pad in a specific direction. Strikes and power attacks can be combined for a number of combo moves with fancy names like Justice Striker and Jor-El's Fist (that last one just sounds creepy). You can also open the throttle with the right bumper and send Superman flying at supersonic speeds, and it really feels like you are sailing through the skyline at Mach 3. One downside to the speed factor is that, even when Superman is flying at normal speed, he moves so fast that precision flying can become a chore, especially considering the aforementioned twitchy camera.
Unfortunately the game fails miserably in the game's mission structure, if indeed it can be even called that. With the exception of the first two levels that mainly act as tutorials for the game, you basically fly around until an icon (an indication that your "super-hearing" has picked up sounds of people in danger) appears on your screen directing you to some super-villain attack or natural disaster for you to thwart. One could guess this was in essence to prove the downside of being Superman, namely, having to drop everything and rush to the aid of the citizenry in need six times every twenty minutes. Every so often during gameplay, the game treats you to a CG cutscene that serves little purpose other than to tell you where in the movie's plot you currently find yourself. That's the game's biggest drawback; you can't actually play the big moments from the movie or even interact with the major players like Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, or even that snot-nosed punk Jimmy Olsen. Instead, you're forced to deal with second-rate villains some of which only a hardcore Superman buff would even recognize in scenarios that feel like Post-it notes pasted all over the movie screenplay. If one were to liken this game to a comic book, imagine all you got to play was those five-page backup stories while the boffo main story is just told to you without giving you a chance to interact with it.
To sum it up, you're playing Superman and you don't get to save Lois Lane or beat up Lex Luthor even once. At all. Let that sink in a bit. Not once.
Sound
The game makes use of John Ottman's nicely crafted score for the film, which plays out as a thematic mix of the John Williams score from the Chris Reeve Superman films and Ottman's work on the X-Men franchise. If any selection of music could make you feel like a Kryptonian superhero, this one's it.
Unfortunately, and almost tragically, the voice acting is nowhere near as good. In almost a repeat performance of the vocal foibles of X-Men: The Official Game, again we have a movie tie-in game voiced by many members of the film's cast, and it's still awful. Although Kevin Spacey played it to the hilt as Lex, the remainder of the cast to reprise their roles in voiceover (namely Brandon Routh [Superman], Kate Bosworth [Lois], Parker Posey [Kitty], and Sam Huntington [Jimmy]) all sound like they're yawning their way through a first-read of the script rather than giving their all. Routh is the most glaring example of this, making him arguably the dullest and least interesting iteration of the Man of Steel's voice I've ever heard.
One other minor mention in regards to the game's audio: when one's engaging Superman's hypersonic flight, the action is accompanied by fabric flap foley I can only assume is supposed to be Superman's cape flapping in the wind. Unfortunately, the cape flaps don't match the soft-body animation of the cape itself, which drew me out of the experience a bit.
Lasting Appeal
The game presents itself as a sandbox title, but Metropolis is largely lifeless and the buildings are just un-enterable texture-mapped shells that act as little more than obstacles in the gamescape. The game does have a fair share of unlockable content, but most of it is just additional combat combos and unlockable costumes (a total of three). The game also contains no online playability over XBL. Chances are hardcore gamers will complete this in a week and turn it back in for store credit immediately thereafter.
Superman discovers Mongul's secret shame: his love of hip-hop dancing.
Fun Factor
Most of Superman Returns' appeal lies in the superficial aspects of the game. Getting out there and being Superman and using his powers is a treat par excellence, something nearly no other Superman videogame can attest to. The problem with this game lies in the fact that, as fun as it is to play Superman, the world in which you play the Man of Steel is devoid of all that fans are used to experiencing. The lack of true interaction with any of the major supporting cast in favor of taking on lower-tier challenges from the Superman mythos like Riot and Mongul is at its heart the worst detriment to this game, and what destroys much of the potential enjoyment. Any sort of Superman fan will find something to enjoy in this game, but it isn't worth owning or even renting for more than a day.
The 411
Superman Returns: The Videogame is fun for about 15 minutes. While EA Tiburon seems to have finally nailed down a formula for doing a Superman game right, the game content itself is severely lacking, as is the overall story structure. We can only hope EA can use what they've developed here to do a Superman game worthy of the license, perhaps based more on the comics or the recent animated series, because top-notch game mechanics, in this case, can't make up for shoddy presentation and threadbare levels of content. A handsome effort, but the potential is sadly squandered.
Graphics
7.0
Beautifully rendered depiction of Metropolis, characters not as well presented, twitchy camera
Gameplay
6.5
Huge leaps in innovation on the Superman theme, haphazard level structure
Sound
7.0
Ottman score nicely complements gameplay, majority of voice acting of dull quality
Lasting Appeal
5.0
No online play, open world has little within it to interact with, unlockables are barely worth playing the game to earn
Fun Factor
5.5
Superman gaming formula finally nailed down, no interaction with major supporting characters from the comic-book or movie mythos, gameplay content less than adequate
