Why have we never got a good Superman solo game? DC comicsWhy have we never got a good Superman solo game? It\u2019s a simple enough question, but one with an answer so complex it\u2019d make a genius like Lex Luthor cross-eyed. Standing for truth, justice, and the American way, Superman is undoubtedly one of the most popular heroes of all time. He\u2019s part of a pantheon, alongside Spider-Man and Batman, as one of the greatest superheroes ever. Yet, while there have been award-winning Spider-Man games and Batman games, poor Clark never really got an adaptation worthy of his alter ego\u2019s name. In fact, the Superman games rank from downright dreadful (Did anyone else just have a flashback to flying through rings while playing Superman 64?) to games so average you wouldn\u2019t even remember their titles if I told you them five minutes ago. Sure, the occasional team-up game has given the Man of Steel his time to shine \u2014 like the underrated Justice League Heroes or the Injustice fighting games \u2014 but Superman\u2019s never got his version of Arkham Asylum? So why is that, and how do we fix it? Put the super in Superman Well, the first answer is the most apparent. It\u2019s hard to make a game with stakes when you\u2019re playing as someone who could take a bubble bath in a volcano and beat the Hulk in arm wrestling. He\u2019s not just invulnerable and strong, either. Clark\u2019s got super speed, super hearing, laser eyes, freeze breath, and on top of all that, he can fly. Yes, Superman\u2019s vast and incredible power set makes him a difficult character to adapt to video games. If you include all of his powers, you risk making the player too strong and robbing the game of challenge, but if you don\u2019t give him all the benefits of his unique Kryptonian biology, then you\u2019re going to get people complaining that it doesn\u2019t feel like you\u2019re really playing like Superman. So, how do you thread that needle? Well, the obvious answer is Kryptonite, which would rob Clark of his gifts, but that\u2019s a pretty Route 1 way of dealing with it. No, there are far better solutions to this problem than chucking green rocks at Clark. Some adaptations, like the Superman Returns game, made it so your \u2018health bar\u2019 was, in fact, Metropolis\u2019s health, and if it went too low, it was presumed the city had been destroyed. It was a novel way of giving the game some stakes, and I think that while that game was a little dull, it was along the right lines. You could also do what Bruce Timm did when he adapted Clark for the Superman Animated Series. Rather than using the uber Superman from the comics, he instead drew his inspiration from older source material before Clark was a flying brick in a blue onesie. This meant his version of Superman was still far stronger than other heroes but not ludicrously overpowered. A blend of the Superman Returns approach and the Timms could work very nicely. You\u2019re boring, Clark\u2026 The second reason I believe we\u2019ve not had a brilliant Superman game is because of a certain stigma surrounding the character. It\u2019s a problem that\u2019s persisted for years, especially in the comic book world, but it\u2019s also bled into the realm of cinema as well: Superman is a fundamentally boring character. From the outside, it\u2019s easy to see why. Clark is the most powerful hero; he has a loving family, and life seems pretty great to him. If drama is essential to storytelling, then Clark\u2019s story sounds pretty unessential; after all, there\u2019s no problem he can\u2019t deal with. Except that\u2019s an absurd way to look at the character; they\u2019ve been telling Superman stories for more than 85 years, and he\u2019s still going strong. Just pick one of his dozens of iconic storylines and start from there. That\u2019s basically what Insomniac does with Spider-Man, and those games are brilliant adaptations of some of Spidey\u2019s most convoluted stories. More than that, I\u2019d argue that Clark\u2019s story is essential. He\u2019s basically the ultimate immigrant, sent from his home as a baby and raised in a foreign land; he assimilates into their culture and uses his abilities to help his new home. Yet despite his altruism, there are still those, Lex Luthor being the most prominent, who refuse to ever let him forget he\u2019s an alien. But amazingly, and sadly not like in our own world, Superman is not just accepted by the people of his new home he\u2019s embraced. It\u2019s a story of hope and optimism born from disaster and loss. I can\u2019t imagine anyone thinking that\u2019s boring. Maybe I\u2019m getting a bit soppy in my older age, but people learn so much through the art they consume. If there were a game championing the immigrant story, well I think that\u2019d be something pretty special. Whatever happened to the man of Tomorrow? Of course, the real reason we\u2019ve not got a AAA Superman game is that while I can wax poetically about the Man of Tomorrow, such an endeavor would cost more than Bruce Wayne spends on batarangs, and while single-player games are still a thing (Thanks Baldur\u2019s Gate 3), they\u2019re not an attractive investment to companies looking at their bottom dollar. After all, you can\u2019t charge $15.99 a month for a Superman battle pass if you\u2019ve made a thoughtful meditation on Superman\u2019s immigrant status instead of a battle royale game. Who knows, maybe I\u2019m being cynical, and there were rumblings of a Superman game a few years ago. Maybe when the new movie about the classic hero hits the silver screen, there\u2019ll be renewed interest in the character, and the powers that be will finally realize we need the Man of Tomorrow, today. If you can\u2019t get enough of Superman then check out our article breaking down James Gunn\u2019s Superman movie or our list of all the upcoming DCU movies including The Batman 2 and Joker 2. This op-ed is part of Dexerto\u2019s HeroFest, a week celebrating all things superheroic. Check out the full HeroFest schedule here, including our list of the best superhero TV shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why have we never got a good Superman solo game? DC comicsWhy have we never got a good Superman solo game? It\u2019s a simple enough question, but one with an answer so complex it\u2019d make a genius like Lex Luthor cross-eyed. Standing for truth, justice, and the American way, Superman is undoubtedly one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}