I’ve been thinking about this for a while ever since the rumor re-surfaced about Rocksteady possibly doing a Superman game. You always see in that one person in the comments that says something to the effect of “How can you make a good Superman game? It’s impossible!”
Despite the fact we’ve had some good Superman games in the past (Shadows of Apokolips and The Man of Steel on Xbox were pretty good…I’ll even give the Superman Returns game a nod because the flying mechanics were excellent.) I thought about how other games could tackle Superman’s powers. Suddenly it hit me …People think it would be too hard to translate Superman’s powers but we have most of what we need. Hear me out:
X-ray vision is no different than detective mode. They could tweak the gliding mechanics to make flight look incredible. Heat vision and freeze-breath? It’s no different than a laser and any of his ice-themed gadgets. When Batman punches through a wooden wall, why not take that same mechanic and apply it to “concrete” walls?
As for his “life bar” there are ways around it. One level could deal with Metallo to where you’d have to stop him before Kryptonite weakens you to a point you can’t fight anymore. Some enemies could be magic-based, there could be a level where he’s on an alien planet or under a red sun.
There are more than enough villains to warrant a couple of games.
To make a long story short (too late!) there’s potential for a Superman game. It’s not impossible. Your thoughts?
Of course a Superman game can be good. There’s 81 years worth of content to mine a story from and all manner of technical doodads to shine it up into the awe-inducing glory that The Man of Steel deserves.
This is coming from someone who isn’t a gamer BTW.
Funny enough, I’m not much of a gamer, either. I’ve got nothing against it, but when I do get games, I’m very selective.
When I played the Arkham games, I enjoyed them, but I was also confused as to how people said doing stuff like looking through walls with detective mode, soaring above buildings by gliding and busting an arm through a thin wall to pull a criminal in was cool…and then turn around and say a Superman game would never work.
And like I said earlier, there’s been some Superman games that have almost got it right. Superman: Shadows of Apokolips had a good story and had the cast from the animated series (minus Michael Ironside and Brion James) but the graphics weren’t the best. Superman: The Man of Steel had a great story but the controls were insane and not in a good way. Superman Returns: The Video Game had nice graphics and some of the best flying I’ve done in a game, but the story was bare bones and the enemies you fought were the same three groups of robots. We just need that one game to give us fantastic visuals, smooth game play and a variety of enemies. Like @Vroom said, there are lots of fantastic stories to mine from.
If some video game studio made a video game called something to the effect of “DC Universe: Fight!” and it was nothing but a good ol’ fashioned fighting game (you just pick your character and who you want to fight. That’s it!), I’d buy that.
I would love one. I would like one that is kind of like Spiderman on PS4. Where there are multiple suits you can use and an open world map. Flight mechanics would be really cool.
The guy who created God of War suggested a Superman game that would be basically Smallville meets Persona 5. As in a Superman origin story where he doesn’t have his powers at the start and slowly gets them over the course of the game.
Another thing I should’ve mentioned before: I’ve always wanted to see a video game where you get to play as Clark for a little while. It could kind of be like a stealth game where you’re trying to pick up information about someone (possible Intergang or Luthor) and you’d have to find ways to listen in with your super-hearing or see things with your X-Ray vision without attracting attention to yourself. It could be like one or two small portions of the larger game, but that would be fun.
DC does have a fighting game. It’s called Injustice. The current one is Injustice 2. It’s based on Injustice comics and ties it in pretty nicely with an engaging story line.
Nothing is impossible in thr game industry. It just takes the right developer and the right publisher.
We’re just now getting sequels to games that are 15 to 30 years old. I remember people saying “It’s not possible because that studio shut down and rights and stuff” only to get proven wrong.