Tom Bissell says that “Superman games are legendarily bad” and asks the question:
What comprises interesting gameplay for a character that is essentially immortal?
What Bissell is inadvertently touching on here is the fact that — with the exception of puzzle games and sports simulators — virtually every video game in existence is fundamentally rooted in either D&D, Space Invaders, or both. And what both D&D and Spacer Invaders have in common (and thus virtually every video game ever made has in common) is that they define success as “killing the bad guy” and they define failure as “you die”.
(Technically, it would be more accurate to say Spacewar! instead of Space Invaders, but everybody knows what Space Invaders is and almost no one knows what Spacewar! is. And, of course, there are endless variations on the “kill” and “die” conditions. But I digress…)
So, yes, as long as you intrinsically define gameplay as “either you die or the bad guy dies”, designing a Superman game that doesn’t suck is going to be pretty much impossible. And, unfortunately, Superman doesn’t seem to easily lend himself to blended puzzle or sim gameplay. (For example, the original Prince of Persia: Sands of Time largely eliminated the kill-or-die mechanics, but it did so by introducing puzzle-style gameplay.)
Another option might be making the goals of the game exterior to Superman as a character. (In other words, you can still fail at your goals even if there’s never any real chance that your avatar in the game will die.) What probably won’t work well, however, would be simply pushing the kill-or-die mechanics onto secondary characters. (An entire game of escort quests featuring Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen? Kill me now.)
I’m not going to pretend to have the magical solution. But open question: What alternative forms of gameplay could a Superman game use that would be fun to play?
Well, what kinds of things DOES Superman worry about, typically?
1) exposure of secret identity (not so much a threat to himself, as to his friends and associates through exposure to becoming hostages, etc.)
2) kryptonite
3) death/injury to innocent bystanders/victims
4) failure to apprehend/punish malefactors
5) being unable to cope with multiple threats at once (or at least be challenged by them)
6) having to react quickly enough to save threatened innocents
(1) is really a further constraint on gameplay – you can’t change when in public, maybe the need to establish an alibi for your alter ego, and so on. And if you screw it up enough, maybe that leads to consequences — maybe a “penalty mission” (contrast with secret/bonus missions/levels) where the bad guys put hits out on your Daily Planet friends while they commit heinous crimes elsewhere.
(2) would be the change-up in this conception – an actual threat to the player avatar, or at least a change in gameplay as you have to get along without your usual bag of tricks.
(3) I wouldn’t think escort missions so much as defeating the enemy without allowing any friendly casualties. E.g. hostage situation in a bank robbery gone awry, must neutralize all villains without allowing them to harm any hostages.
(4)-(6) are all related, generally under the heading of “defeat the bad guys without any friendly losses.” For players that like to do perfect runs through levels, this might be interesting: the whole premise of the game would be that, hey, you’re Superman — if you don’t do it perfectly, you lose. But I wouldn’t go the “do it again, stupid” route — instead maybe failure leads to increased angstiness which might actually reduce your powers. (“I’ve let Earth down; woe is me. Why do I even bother if I can’t be perfect? Think I’ll go eat worms.” That could lead to a spiral of failure, though.
I’m thinking a sort of superhero version of “Rainbow Six” where you have to reconnoiter with your X-ray vision and then bust in quickly to defeat the baddies before they can react.
Would this be “fun?” Ehh, I dunno. It’s not really my kind of game.
Something Awful dot Com already covered this – and remarkable well, for a sarcastic comedy site, too.
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/superman-game-terrible.php
The immediate solution that I can think of would be timed sequences (ie, rescue Lois Lane before she gets killed, destroy the missiles before they hit Metropolis, etc). You could have a stealth section, where you must get close to the villain without them discovering you.
Unfortunately, I think the love that most gamers have for nonstandard loss conditions (for example these three pages are rather negative in tone at the idea of anything other than “kill the enemy before they kill you”).
Or you could have a super-strong boss which can’t kill you, but will constantly regenerate health and requires the player to exhibit enough skill to continually damage him.
Batman games were universally bad until recently.
I imagien being Superman is alot like being the mayor of Sim City, you have to constantly fight off Fires, Floods, and Godzilla attacks, all the while trying to keep the citizens happy by giving them perfection.
It is less about can you take on the crisis (of course you can, you are superman) but rather it is about asset management. Which crises do you take on. Maybe there is something in that style of game-play. Figuring out what fights to fight and then going in for more traditional beat-em up action. Maybe an aspect where instead of hitting as hard as you can, you instead have to control supes with discretion, holding back lest you accidentally knock that mechanical henchman through 3 office buildings.
A friend of mine is adamant that there was once a Superman game where he didn’t have hit points, Metropolis did. Gameplay was a bunch of things happening at once and trying to prioritize them and stop them quickly.
Yes that game existed, I have played it! I can’t remember what it was called, but as I recall it was for XBox. The first level involved flying above Metropolis and smashing through meteors as they hurtled towards the city. They can’t hurt Superman but they can knock him down, and every one that he’s too slow to catch will destroy buildings.
You can fly very high and very fast, and that part was fun. Beating up the villains was fun. I thought it was pretty cool, but I didn’t play it through very far.
Stephan and HDA are talking about the Superman Returns game for the 360. The main problem was that, for all of having Metropolis as a 80 square mile playground, you’re still just punching rocks and wrasslin’ tornadoes.
It would be more interesting to play as Lex Luthor, trying to succeed at resurrecting Brainiac or stealing 40 cakes while avoiding having your plots defeated by Superman. However, “villain-games” are pretty niche markets (see: Dungeon Keeper; Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
Baquies: Batman on the NES was a great game, and the SNES game based on Batman the Animated Series was really cool. A few others were good/fun and not actually “bad.”
I’m sure a Superman game based around stopping villains and rescuing people or keeping them safe could work and also be fun. Villains need not be “killed”, and you don’t have to make protecting people annoying either. One problem is that Superman needs super foes to be challenged, and fighting endless hordes of them would be hard to justify. Smashing up robots and the like would get old fast. I don’t think we should discount Superman using his abilities to find clues and solve mysteries/crimes either. That is more Batman’s turf, but Superman certainly has done such things.
Compared to Batman and many other comic book superheroes, Superman is a pretty boring protagonist is the problem. The only thing that makes Superman storylines interesting in the least are the villains, so I have to agree with Everett, playing as Lex Luthor and figuring out ways to outsmart the invincible Superman would be more fun. A well done high budget game of this sort could be a breakout hit I imagine.
What about a game with a timeline, rather than a time limit? Hostile aliens send scouts, then raiders, then a full-scale invasion force. As superman, you’ve got more than enough power to stop them, the question is how you go about doing so. The more damage is done to the city, the more budget Lex Luthor gets to build crazy robots. If there aren’t any invading aliens for the robots to repel, they’ll pick fights with Superman when they see him, or randomly wander around and accidentally-on-purpose cause trouble when they don’t. You can spend time as Clark Kent, messing up Luthor’s PR engine, but switching back and forth only works when nobody can see you and Clark-mode puts a damper on all the combat powers… which is an advantage, sometimes, since swinging around at full power means everything is made of cardboard.
The fun of a game is all about which decisions the player is facing at any given time. In disguise, you’d always be thinking
“was that a flying saucer, or just a cloud?
How close is the nearest phone booth?”
wheras in full-power mode you’d be thinking
“if I aim left, down the length of they alley, that might knock ’em out into traffic. The wall would keep things up close and personal, but it looks load-bearing. Could I stop a car before anyone gets killed?
Two cars?
And without letting the goons get away?
How long would it take to evacuate the building, without tearing through any more walls?”
Superman hardly ever worries about having enough power. His daily challenge is restraint. Maybe use the wiimote, so the player can feel how much force they’re putting in?