Superman

"It's Great...On The Bizarro World, That Is"

Why can’t anyone seem to make a good game with comic book characters these days? I haven’t read an issue of Superman in years, and I've only caught half an episode of the animated series (which I hated), but I had high hopes that Titus’ much-delayed game would be a nice bit of sentimental fun for a couple of hours. I’ve never been so dreadfully wrong in my life. Superman is simply put, an exercise in frustration for all ages- frustrating story, control and music all struggling mightily for your undivided attention and almighty dollar. Note to those alpha males out there: even if you rent this one, you’ll want to torch the place you got it from!

The problems begin with the game's version of the character and spiral downward from there. This Superman is a watered-down pastiche of a pale imitation of the one from the original DC comics by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and the great Max Fleisher Superman cartoons from the 40’s. This is a big problem, as most of the target audience for this game hasn't even seen those films, meaning they can only take vague guesses as to the “why” of the visual style in the new cartoon series and game. Without this tiny frame of reference (or sense of history, if you will) it all becomes empty and meaningless. The Batman cartoon suffers just as much from this problem, but some passable scripting makes the few episodes I’ve seen tolerable.

The story is simple- Lex Luthor kidnaps your friends and transports them into a “virtual world”, and it’s up to you (as Superman) to save them. That’s it. There are a few other details, but they’re so generic that you could replace Superman with any character from Hello Kitty to The Tick and have the same game. In fact, this would have been a great Tick game with a few changes to the graphics engine. After a bland title screen and intro, the game starts with you having to fly through a circuit of rings, like in Pilotwings or G-Police. As a training level for kids it works fine, but the controls are so stiff, it’s as if you’re playing as Stump-El the Superlog! To add to that problem, there’s a countdown timer running, and missing 3 rings will send you back to the beginning. You can skip all this torture by playing on Easy, but you can’t reach the real end of the game this way.

After clearing the first set of stages, you have to go about saving your pals (yet again) and a lot of other innocent people over and over, in different ways throughout the rest of the game. This doesn’t make any kind of sense at all, because it conflicts with what the box and manual say! I’m guessing that the game world looked so poor that they came up with the “virtual world” nonsense to lend some sort of credibility to the whole mess. There is massive fog and flat, ugly Mode-7 looking ground detail, textures are non-existent (the gourad shading is OK in spots), and worse, Superman and his enemies have been neutered down to near powerlessness. That’s right, instead of getting to change the course of mighty rivers or bending steel with your bare hands, you get to enter codes into computers, save skaters, and punch out black-garbed villains with guns that can hurt you. There’s more to the game than that, but just try flying through a building or punching down a wall and you’re in for a shock. In one level, you even have to capture Darkseid (from the late, great Jack Kirby’s New Gods), and bring him to the police! I can see at least three creators spinning in their graves here.

The game has a multi-player mode, and it’s a lot worse than the regular game. Two to four players can go at it as the villains in the game, zipping around at what looks like10 or 15 frames a second in these flying vehicles that resemble kiddy rocket rides outside of a 7-11. Not only is this mode slow, but the levels loop endlessly- if you have the patience you can play forever (five minutes should do). Add to this the awful music that sounds as if it's too embarrassed to be in the same cartridge with the game code, and the wonderful option to customize the screen size from full screen to business card size, which doesn't help the gameplay or visuals at all. All you have with Superman is a weird and pricey collector’s item to show off to your friends, rather than an enjoyable game experience. There was supposed to be a PS One version of this game, but mercifully, it was cancelled. In any event, unless you're a resident of the Bizarro World, toss this game back into the Phantom Zone where it belongs.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/03, Updated 01/02/03