Superman Returns

"JoSmoe's Review of Superman Returns: The Video Game"

This is so not cool.

Story: 3/10
The story is horrible! The game's supposed to be based on the movie right? Well it's not! You fight different villains such as Metallo and Bizaro, but NO Lex Luthor. This is the sequence. Do 1-3 "random crimes" (note the quotes, I'll get to that later) and then fight the boss. Repeat 1-5 times and then you fight the same boss but he's better. Beat him, and you watch a cut-scene of something that's related to the movie. THAT'S THE ONLY WAY THIS GAME IS CONNECTED TO THE MOVIE! (Plus the title.) If you take out the cut-scenes, you will have no story at all. It is just fight the same things over and over again. There is no story, so yeah it's horrible. The cut-scenes are fine but don't really involve Superman. So you just play as Superman fighting about 3-5 different bosses and 6-10 different "thugs" if you want to call them that.

Graphics: 8/10
The only plus to the game, is the graphics. The 360 is the best version to get due to the great graphics. The colors and city look outstanding. The only bad thing, which is kind of a glitch is that if you fly for a while, you suddenly lose your cape, but it looks cool! The other bad thing is that there aren't that many different civilians; they all pretty much look the same. The trees are the same; nothing is really different, visually. When you use super-breath, all these leaves come flying out, but where do they go? They are nowhere to be found! Flying is great though, his cape ripples in the wind and the wind flying by you looks great.

Sound: 9/10
When you are flying, and you are going 300 mph, do you know what that sounds like? No, you don't, but you will after you play this game! The sound is so realistic and the sonic booms as you break the sound barrier and there is no sound is greatly designed and you want to go faster and faster! When you use super-breath and blow away cars the wind is amazing and the explosions are the classic booms you hear in cartoons.

Controls: 6/10
Taking off and landing is cool by pressing Y and attacking with A, but when your next to a small ledge and you want to get over, you need to take off, move up and over it, and land. It's a pain! There should be a jump button. Superman has super-strength which means he can jump mad high and far! This should be like Spider-man 2's jumping. RB is NOT a good super speed button! One of the triggers should have been super speed. Pulling off combos is also very hard to memorize them, then get used to them. There are too many buttons and the system is to slow. Lets say you press A, A, A. By the time you finish pressing that Superman is doing his first punch, the first A. Therefore it is even harder to execute combos. The controls should be customizable for each thing on any button. There should have been a zoom feature by clicking in the left stick. Superman does have super-sight! AND where's my x-ray vision???!!?

Game-play: 6/10
The best pat about this game is upgrading your character, which is bad, bad, bad. You level up at the same time that you go to the next level. If you are on level 2 and your characters level 8, you go to level 3 and go to level 10. (Example) So every one on level 3 is at the same character level, get it? You can't even pick which stat you want to upgrade, it does it for you. You level up by gaining exp., which you get from doing the crimes, therefore you need to do the crimes in order to progress through the game. They aren't even optional! If you are in an area, a crime will randomly happen and you will have to do it or Metropolis will die and you will get a game over. That is one of the many reasons why the Metropolis bar is a bad idea. Also, Superman has, you are going to laugh when you hear this, a stamina bar! When this bar goes out by using heat vision, freeze breath, or super-breath, you can't use it anymore until it recharges! The 80 square mile city is big. Try finding 100 cats in it. That's right, find 100 cats and you get an achievement! YEAH! It's impossible with out a guide and it is still hard with one. The mini games like playing as Bizaro and destroying the city with his powers for a high score is fun, and the games where you race against mxyzpltk or what ever his name is make you want to fly faster. You can fly only 2 miles high though, everyone wanted the Universe, but aw man!

Replay Value: 6/10
After you complete the game, do some of the mini-games, and find 3 cats, you won't play this game again for $15. There's nothing to do except fight either: 1. Dragons. 2. Robots. 3. Aliens. And that's it. You can't fight the bosses again or do anything. Sure you can fly around 80 square miles of land, but for what? An achievement that shows you are a loser by flying 10,000 miles? An achievement that shows that you are a bigger loser by playing this game for 12 hours? The game takes no more than 8 hours to beat max! I beat it in about 5! This is definitely either a illegal free download, free rent, free buy, free borrow, or anything free! It's not worth a penny!

Final Score: 6.33 (rounds down to 6)

Well that concludes my review for Superman Returns: The Video Game. I hope you liked and it caused you not to pat $0.01 or more for this game, I regret paying $59.99 plus tax on the day it came out.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/31/07