Superman Returns - Previews - The Armchair Empire


	Platform GC, PC, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2 Genre Action Publisher Electronic Arts Developer EA Tiburon ETA Fall 2006
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Superman Returns

The high water mark for superhero action games at the moment is The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, a game which features a fully-realized video game Hulk which lets you interact with (read: destroy) a wide-open city and desert environments. And when reading up on Superman Returns, it seems like the development team is using Ultimate Destruction as somewhat of a template, but with the Last Son of Krypton in the lead role.

Superman Returns was originally on-track for release alongside the recent summer film but was pushed back to (obviously) iron out bugs and get the gameplay into a solid state to coincide with the release of the DVD. With the kind of promises that EA Tiburon is making, like 80 square miles of Metropolis to explore and 8,000 buildings within, it’s understandable that there may be some technical issues to overcome, never mind the complexity of working with a character as powerful as Superman.

Besides being able to fly, Supes will be able use his x-ray and heat vision, travel at super speeds – 800mph is noted on the fact sheet – and knock baddies down with his super breath. How do you create obstacles for a character that is practically unstoppable? (I mean without resorting to making the Man of Steel slalom through hoops, like the classic Superman 64 from Acclaim.) For one, you’ll have to keep tabs on the general condition of Metropolis. Like any other major city in Comic

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Book Land, Metropolis is always under attack in one form or another so it makes sense to task Superman with keeping tabs on what happens in Metropolis. The other problem though is creating tough enough bad guys to create a challenge particularly since Superman can’t be killed (Doomsday and kryptonite excepted). He’s the Man of Steel after

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all. I can imagine many of the objectives will rely on saving people and places from destruction rather than simply beating the hell out of big robots and monsters.

Though the game takes place in sandbox world, Superman Returns will lift some obvious elements from the film, Tim Routh’s likeness for one, but with villains Metallo and Parasite making appearances the developers show a willingness to break from the straight and narrow of the movie source. Sticking too closely to the movie can be a bane for licensed games, like EA’s own Batman Begins release last year. Okay, it’s fun to play as Batman but moving along a heavily scripted path isn’t. With an approach borrowed from the most recent Spider-Man games from Activision and Vivendi’s Ultimate Destruction, hopefully this equals a more fun and dynamic game world.

EA has already scored some points in my book by not rushing to put Superman Returns on retail shelves to be released alongside the film; rushing almost equals a shoddy gaming experience. Hopefully the developers have put the extra time to good use and Superman Returns will live up to the lofty billing as “the game based on the Superman universe that fans have been anticipating for decades.”

Superman Returns ships Fall 2006.

- Omni

(August 31, 2006)