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Gamer's Kryptonite
1up has a feature, in honor of the excellent Superman Returns, discussing the unfortunate history of Superman licensed games across the many consoles. The worst is, of course, Superman 64. From the article: "Superman 64 isn't completely without redeeming features. It serves as an invaluable object lesson in how not to make a videogame. Try to build your characters with more than three polygons. Do not pad out your game by forcing players to fly through rings at two miles an hour in between each stage. Do not make your superheroes less physically imposing than a one-legged, asthmatic kitten with a concussion."
Is anyone else as astonished as I am? I thought Blizzard only made high quality computer games. Perhaps they have a few skeletons in their closet?
Also, whoever wrote this article seems to suffer from Tourettes Syndrome:
My work here is dung.
Someone once said "As long as people are willing to accept crap, it will financially profitable to dispense it." This holds true for everything, especially Game Developers.
Haiku for you!
Superman 64 truly was a horrible game...Worst of part about it was I wasted 2 bucks renting it from Blockbuster.
Do not make your superheroes less physically imposing than a one-legged, asthmatic kitten with a concussion.
Are you sure? I think that a game based around the idea of beating up crippled, hadicapped, physically challenged, diseases ridden animals would be fun. Who's with me?
Sorry - not going to get interested in a fellow who wears red underwear outside his pants. Why have Superroo's games sucked as much if not more than his movies/comic books/etc.? Dunno - why have almost all character licensed games sucked? (Hint: after they blow the wad on licensing, there isn't much money for code or design left over)
The problem with Superman games isn't with the developers. I mean, he's Superman. How do you make the game a challenge without giving everyone Kryptonite rings? He's got strength, laser eyes, freezing breath, and speed.
Game plot:
Superman hears there's a criminal planning to do something. Instead of taking out all of the henchmen along the way, he flies quickly past them to the boss and knocks him unconscious with one punch, then taking the villian to jail.
Roll Credits.
That's what Superman is like.
What make's Spyro's courses better than Superman 64's. I haven't played the latter. Also, Pilotwings 64 has a similar gameplay.
I played that game quite a bit when I was younger. Once I figured out how things worked, it was a fun (though heavily flawed) adventure game.
Rob
There were a great deal of Atari Games that you could pop in several times a week as a kid, wander around for an hour, and never get the slightest bit closer to any form or semblence of progress or completion. ET, Starmaster, Swordquests Earthworld and Fireworld... I could write pages describing them, but you have to wonder exactly what the people who wrote these things were thinking.
I am.
And I hope they have lots of worm ridden cats you can set fire to or something. Aww, whom I kidding? They don't even have to have worms...
I always thought that was sunlight.
Congrats!
Superman is one of the most hated superheroes because he has too many powers and is invulnerable to everything but space rocks from a jillion miles away. He's an overpowered flying side of beef with no natural predators. There's tons of room to write stories about such a character, but designing a challenging but sensible premise for a video game is really tough with Superman.
Man it was great to sling that shotgun behind you and blow someone away, especially the "prisoners" you were supposed to be releasing. One of the first games I can recall that had idle animations, he'd polish his sunglasses and load his shotgun IIRC.
Jonah HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
I was on a Nintendo magazine when Superman 64 was coming up for release. I had so much pity for the poor PR guy desperately trying to play it up as a good game that we should devote lots of coverage to when even he knew it was a pile of shit.
The funny thing was, it wasn't the worst N64 game ever released, by a long way. Carmageddon 64, anyone?
You must think in Russian.
This is the second-best genesis game ever. (First is Forgotten Worlds, one of the best 16-bit arcade conversions ever, if you can overlook the two deleted levels.
The shotgun would be loaded only if you had fired shells, and it would be loaded only until the number of shells fired had been equalled. Very slick touch.
You can read my writeup on Blackthorne on Everything2.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I.e., give Supes a series of missions he has to complete. He's effectively invincible but he needs to stop the bank robbers/terrorists/etc. in a minimum amount of time, with no human collateral damage and a minimum of property damage. The longer he dallies or the more of Metropolis he tears up while saving the world, the lower his publicity rating becomes. This will require strategic thinking and searching for non-obvious solutions (perhaps with the aid of X-ray vision). Boss battles could be super-powered robots built by Lex Luthor or something, with kryptonite power sources and Supes could only take a limited number of hits from those (perhaps as few as one).
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Am I the only one that enjoyed superman 64? It was a very fun game at the time, though it took a while to learn how to manipulate him properly. The douche's at 1up look like they played it for 30 secs just to bad mouth it. Play it for a few hours and it becomes difficult to put down. Okay, maybe the rings were kinda stupid, but it was kinda a fun thing to do while flying to the next location. It really let you hone your flying skills.
Mod me -1 redundant, but this is exactly what I was thinking after watching the movie and "getting" Superman again.
The trick is to be able to come away from it and still believe that Superman kicks more ass than God, and at the same time, you shouldn't ever feel like you're actually playing on Godmode.
This, by the way, is something that I think is pulled off pretty successfully in the Halo games. Master Chief kicks more ass than God, makes wiping the floor with the Covenant army look easy, but no one can say it's easy for him. Playing the game on normal or Heroic, I felt that.
But more on-topic, Superman should have health. Getting hit by bullets shouldn't touch him, but Kryptonite should obviously have an effect. The sun should heal him and give him strength. I just think it'd be kind of cool, even if it's only used as an actual gameplay mechanic once or twice in the game, to be constantly reminded just how easy most of this is for Superman.
And really, bad gameplay or not, any Superman game owes us at least one or two insanely easy stages that aren't presented as a "tutorial", just as in the movie. No way in hell a single bank robbery is going to cause Superman any problems. Good AI would be nice -- as Superman, I want to scare the piss out of anyone trying a mere gatling gun on me.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Batman is the Grep Ninja, master of the one-liner Bash script and fitting useful programs into a 1k handcoded assembly-language program. Batman is the clever security vulnerability that figures out the pattern in your random number generator and starts reading your AES-encrypted streams, delicately avoiding your RSA handshake.
Superman is the brute force on a fucking quantum supercomputer.
I like Batman for the depth of the character. I like the tormented, morally-ambiguous superheroes, the Daredevils, the Punishers... I like the dark, edgy shows, and I like the fact that a human being really could become Batman, in just about every real sense, with nothing more than money and determination. I like my superheroes to be real humans that I can relate to, placed in extraordinary circumstances and with extraordinary skill.
I like my superheroes with variety -- I love the X-Men. And I like my superheroes without tights -- Naruto, Bleach, etc.
But Superman is refreshing, unique, and great precisely because of all the reasons you listed. He's invincible. He can fly. Batman may be sneaky, but Superman only needs one clean punch -- hell, even a clear line of sight -- to crush Batman's spine into small splinters, or punch/melt his brain right out of his skull.
He's got relationship issues, he's got real dillemas, but he's got no moral issues whatsoever. He stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. He doesn't need a sidekick, barely even needs a damsel in distress.
You don't really need kryptonite. It makes him a little more believable, but he doesn't need to be believable. He's Superman.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
For a long time (especially in the 80s and early 90s), games based on a movie were a dead sure bet for a crappy, half-baked excuse for a game. When you look at the parameters, it makes sense:
- Expensive rights for the title (i.e. less budget for the actual game)
- Incredibly tight schedules (getting the game out 2 years after the movie is pointless)
- People buy it anyway because they know the name (and probably liked the movie)
Furthermore, movie studios didn't care about the game quality. The market was not the same, and bombing the game had no influence on the movie market. It was a cheap and easy way to make another quick buck with the movie name.
This changed in the late 90s when movie studios realized the advertising effect and the synergies that can be generated by pushing the title on more than one medium. Lucasfilms was one of the first studios to actually blend the two platforms (games and movies), not to the extent that was taken later by the Matrix movies/games, but it was a start. Indy III was one of the first good games based on a movie, and until now the rumors didn't vanish that they just might make an Indy IV movie based on the game.
But there are movies that don't really present themselves well as a storyline for a game. Superman being one of them. Let's face it: Superman is invincible, unless Kryptonite comes into play, in which case he simply crumbles. Now, where's the gameplay? Either you're in God mode or you're toast. There is no "in between" state, there is not really anything challenging where you, the player, have any effect in the outcome.
So I guess one of the reasons why some people consider the game sucky (I didn't see it yet, so I can't judge it), besides the appearantly not up to par graphics, is that the story itself doesn't offer a lot of room for good gameplay. One of the main problems is that you can't have a progression in difficulty which is IMO very necessary to get a feel for the character's growth or at least the game's progression. Starting in god mode is not necessarily bad (to get a feel for the handling and so on), but on the next 'stage' you're in "you're fu..ed" mode.
No fun.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I thought the article was going to be about that which incapacitates gamers whenever they are in close proximity: women.