Superman Review

It’s Superman in 3D
He Can Fly at Anytime
Young Kids May Love the Concept

Inane Gameplay Uncharacteristic of the Legend
Fog, Foggy, Foggiest
Flying Through Rings
Slow Walking (Without Super Speed)
High Difficulty

Okay where do I begin. When I spoke to the Titus people at E3 I made the worst video game faux pas (blooper) that you could possibly make to a game developer. After playing Superman for awhile, I commented, "So how far along are you guys on this title? 50% or so?". The reply was, "No, we are shipping it in two weeks." Hard gulp on my part. Actually the hard gulp wasn’t because I was embarrassed for me, but because I was embarrassed for them. How could they think this game was finished? I just don’t get it. Releasing a game at this point in development is like saying, "Well, you’re six years old. You can feed yourself and go to the bathroom by yourself, so your mom and I thought you should move out on your own. We’ve pretty much done everything we can do." How do you work on a title for so long and then just give up?

Superman is hampered by the worst case of fog you’ve ever seen in a game, so move over Turok, you’re #2 now. As well, the graphics are so jaggy they have to be seen to be believed. You’d swear Superman was drawn up in Paintshop and kept as a bitmap. The N64 does Anti-Aliasing right? So what’s the deal? The outdoor environments are large, but everything lacks character. Sure, Titus was trying emulate the look of the cartoon and they did get close, but you’ll have to hunt through the fog to see what I mean.

Unfortunately things go down hill from here. The storyline was invented to give the idiotic missions some credibility. We are to believe Superman is placed into a virtual world where he must solve Lex’s objectives. "Superman, fly through this maze of 99 rings if you ever want to find your friends." Okay, I thought, I can handle this. It’s the first level and sort of a training stage to try out flying. Imagine my surprise when almost every second level I had to fly through these blasted rings again. And thanks to the touchy controls and the fog, flying through the rings gets downright hard, not to mention tedious. Miss a ring or two and it’s back to the beginning. Yay! Eventually you move to an indoor scene, where there is no fog. Superman must find bombs in the dam, but first he has to find the computer card to open the doors. Where is his super strength? Bust the doors down man, people are gonna die! In all fairness, some of these levels were fun and almost superhero like. For instance, Superman must fly and pick up two vehicles before they crash into pedestrians. That was okay, but very short lived. Then it was back to flying through rings again.

The problem with most superhero games is that they tend to ignore the most important traits of the character. Luckily Titus saw to it that we have a Superman who could fly at anytime: inside, outside and even underwater. He can even sometimes hover (stand) in mid air, which I’m not sure if it’s a glitch, but think of it as a bonus. Titus also saw fit to give him Superbreath, Supervision, SuperSpeed and X-ray Vision. These are all controlled by the c buttons, and are mission sensitive, which means sometimes he doesn’t have all his powers. The one thing missing, is his invulnerability to pain.. Sure he can lift cars and fly with them, which I have to admit is cool and never been done in a Superman game before. But he isn’t invulnerable to the slightest punch, explosion or gun shot. I know it wouldn’t be much of a game if he could just walk through everything, but this game is challenging enough even if he was invincible.

If it’s multiplayer you want Superman’s got that. Just don’t expect GoldenEye or Turok multiplayer quality. This is the worst example of multiplayer I’ve ever seen. My wife, who was my "player two" told me to tell you that this part of the game "sucks". That’s being very polite. I couldn’t even find a way to play as Superman in the multiplayer levels. This multiiplayer nonsense is the perfect punchline to a very expensive joke.

Before I close up shop, let me tell you that I tested this game on kids aged 7 - 15. They all had a chance to play the game for 15 - 30 minutes. They were genuinely excited when I told them what game it was. Excitement turned to frustration very quickly. They all said it was too hard and they didn’t understand why Superman had to fly through all of those rings. To say they were underwhelmed by Superman is the under statement of the year.

This game has it’s moments and if you stick with it long enough you’ll play some borderline fun missions. The problem is that the fun missions are over so quickly. If you are a Superman fan then I’d say "proceed with extreme caution." Just flying around might be enough to keep you satisfied for awhile, but you’d have to be a notch above braindead or a telemarketer. Let’s face it there is a whole audience of kids out there who don’t know what anti-aliasing is or don’t care about the fog or flying through rings. They love Superman and want to play it. It’s still the best Superman game available for the N64. Okay so it’s the only one available. But that’s still better than nothing to them. The only way I could recommend this game is if you use cheats to make yourself invincible, just like the "real" Superman. That way you can play the game without worrying about the bad control or cheap shots or poor collision detection. Just have fun flying around and taking out the odd bad guy. It's your call. Rent if you must.