Slashdot Mirror
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!
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 always thought that was sunlight.
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.
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!
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!
If that's not considered a terrorist action, it should be.