A new good Superman game is past due

@shindig: i interpret this as a pickle jar that even superman cannot open.

ah well, their engine seems quite old at this point.

Just make Asura's Wrath but with Superman stuff in it. Done.

@d-man123:

TL;DR

Rocksteady was/is supposed to be working on a Superman game in the same vein as Arkham. Apparently, was much weaker and different outfits/costumes had different move sets

I would argue that most comic book heroes aren't represented well in video games: The Avengers, Justice League, etc, etc have seemingly been relegated to free to play and mobile BS which is sad. I would say a Superman game is completely doable in a studio's hands that actually cared and was given time.

Telltale could be cool. Or a New Krypton / Exile type storyline where Superman is in space fighting beings that are more in line with his power level. An American Alien or Smallville type setting would also be neat, him discovering how and when to use his powers.

Superman is super boring and has a pretty lackluster rouges gallery. A lot of things that were the "first" of something are far from the "best." I mean, Superman has every power. Abili-tease and progression makes total sense for someone like Batman who is all gadgets, not so for Superman. Dude can fly around the earth so fast he can travel through time, is immune to bullets and explosions, etc.. Game over. Just don't see it working in a traditional game. At best, like others have said, a tell-tale style game of a David Cage-like along the lines of Until Dawn. But I just don't think his universe is interesting enough to form a game around in 2017, unless you include Justice League and others.

Besides, there already was a pretty decent Superman game: '94s Death and Return of Superman. Just kidding, that one sucks too, but boy did I ever play the shit out of that as a kid

I'm not an expert but didn't that happen once? That doesn't mean that it's true for all versions of Superman in perpetuity. Either way, it's not a deal breaker.

Having no interest in Telltale Batman, a hero in that spot with fun superpowers seems like extra wasted potential. But big choices in key moments like Mass Effect would be awesome. Seems to work better with the Flash.

"Kryptonite," in anti-Superman arguments, ends up being an almost fallacious metonym for Superman's physical invulnerability--particularly the oft-employed misconception that his physical well-being is somehow the only attribute one might ever use to create a dramatic scenario for the character. His physical strength/durability do pose significant problems for action-oriented video games, where your typical interactions are focused on combat, but there have already been some really cool suggestions above, including a Superman game developed by Telltale.

Seriously, why isn't that a thing?

Otherwise, there have been a lot of creative attempts to reckon with Superman's power, and ways to give him weaknesses that extend outside his numerous abilities. Superman Returns (the game, not the movie) tried to use a cool idea where Superman's health bar wasn't actually his life, but the general state of the city of Metropolis. If destruction ran rampant across the city--too many lives lost or too many buildings crumbled--Superman would fail his mission. The mechanic wasn't executed on especially well, often leading to the player hitting a Game Over state as a result of enemy activity out of sight or beyond the player's control. But the idea made a lot of sense.

Some recent comics have tried to pivot Superman away from being the protector of the working men and women of Metropolis into more of a meta-textual hero. A hero who represents all heroes in fiction. It's a high-concept proposition that gets away from the trope of rescuing babies out of burning buildings. In Grant Morrison's Final Crisis, Superman is nearly a cosmic being fighting extra-dimensional vampires who feed on the invisible energy giving the universe, and all universes, life. If there is a space between the comic panel on which the story is told and the imagination that envisioned the page in the first place, that's where Superman exists, a figurative defense against the forces threatening to stifle and commodify creativity. It's a loose-but-overt metaphor for this character, a beacon of hope and free will, pushing against a parasitic, change-resistant executive/editorial structure within DC Comics and the comic book industry itself.

That's a super long-winded way of saying Superman has in some ways ascended beyond dealing with petty crimes or evil space aliens or dictatorial interdimensional tyrants, despite still making time for those. He might not be a character whose physical safety is at stake in a fight. But that doesn't mean he can't be supremely important, or even "good."

Man, if you think Superman is boring and you haven't read any modern deification shit like All-Star Superman, I encourage you to do so. Exploring Superman as a crimefighter is boring, yes. Exploring him as a force of nature, as a god, as a curious being with infinite time to explore and learn, is much more interesting.

@wonderboycoz said:

This sounds like enormous fun, to me.

Every mission in this new game would end with Superman having to make a heroic choice between a drowning box of kittens and a backpacker family hanging from a cliff at two ass-ends of the galaxy so he can only make it to one. Now we are playing toward his weaknesses!

No but seriously though. I'd actually be very curious if someone could come up with a cool concept to make an invincible protagonist interesting. It'd probably have to be less combat focused honestly. An easy "but terrible" idea is something along the lines of Ico where Superman babysits an escort the entire game that limits you to protecting them. Anything really that gives you a chance of failure other than walking into a room filled with kryptonite gas.

EDIT: @wonderboycoz OK DUDE. I'M IN! Asura was an awesome overpowered protagonist. That game was great.

And old good superman game is past due, the truth is hes somewhat invincible in the fiction and therefore kind of a boring character.

I hate Superman.

I'm too tired today to put any more thought into this, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.

I like Superman, I think the strength of the good Superman stories lie in things people usually dismiss or overlook. It's not that he's overpowered and the enemies pose no threat, that's not the point. Is what moral and internal conflict a man (or woman, shoutout to the good Supergirl show!) who has all the power of the world will deal with in situations where pure brawn or x-ray vision alone won't cut it. That's to me where the character shines. Nothing is for everyone though, so I'm sure some people will disagree, that's fine.

That said, I never enjoyed any Superman games, they are all terrible, so I agree that we are due a good video game Superman.

I think people confuse One Punch-Man and Superman a lot. Nobody says "Goku is boring because he's invincible". You just don't make a game that's about them beating up regular humans. You give them worthy opponents.

Yeah, aside from the first game (probably mainly due to it's uniqueness and unexpected quality at the time, along with its impact on the industry), I agree - Origins is my 2nd favorite. And it has the best boss battle of the series, an actual real battle that isn't just a quicktime event after a chase or beating up a million cronies - it's the Deathstroke battle. Fun, and challenging in that way where each time you replay it on Hard, you think "I can do it this time, I know what I did wrong" but still took me quite a few tries, and I wasn't frustrated a bit.

Superman, huh?

First off, just want to say I've noticed your slew of threads here @D-Man123, and welcome to the site!

I am a pretty huge comic book fan, so I have a lot of love for Superman the concept. Seeing that you brought up All-Star and Birthright already, I think perhaps we like some of the same things of the character. Way, way back in time, when I was at University, I wrote something about an Alex Ross Superman image (from Mythologies, maybe?) which I think encapsulated "the reality" of Superman very well. This came back to me upon reading your thread.

Everyone knows Superman is all powerful, but the most interesting thing about his character are how his humanity create this impossible push-pull with his super self. Regardless of all his amazing abilities, Superman just can't save everyone. But, he does have to hear them suffer, and he does have to live with failure. This image is known to me as "Tired" or "Sad Superman". When you have to save a crashing train but can't save a drowning child; when you can stop a nuclear war but miss a woman run over by a truck. Superman, for all his power, can't be everywhere at once. When you imagine being able to hear suffering / danger for miles and miles and miles, but not be able to do anything about it, well, maybe you'd have a look on your face like above. This is similar to what @burncoat and @trulyalive have said: "Superman Simulator: Life in Metropolis is Hard!"

Perhaps there is an angle here for a Superman game. It's a bit dark, I suppose. But reminds me a little of the setups in the old Spider-Man game. Mary Jane excepts me to come over but I gotta stop this robbery! Only instead it's "this train is on fire but so is that plane!" Which will you save? How will the city react? This becomes more a game about acting fast and making decisions. It creates an arcade like "reaction speed" challenge which gets around the fact that Superman has effectively unlimited health and power. Combining this idea with a youthful Superman whose powers are growing/discovering would I think make for a strong context for a Superman game. If you really wanted to explore the mental aspect only, you'd have Telltale make this game I guess...

Shadow of Apokolipse wasn't terrible, it wasn't good, but I dug it. It's never brought up in these topics.