With the exciting Spider-Man game coming out later this year, the hype train is going top speed towards the release date. With everyone hoping this will be the game that does for Spidey what Arkham Asylum did for Batman, those expectations are obviously high. While attempting to temper my own excitement, I started thinking about who else needs a revamp.. and the choice is obvious.
SUPERMAN
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Superman is FAR from my favorite hero….. as a matter of fact I have always thought he was overrated and a result of the writers getting sloppy and complacent. However, I actually enjoyed Superman Returns on the Xbox 360. It was fun flying around Metropolis, helping random citizens, saving them from random attacks. I did dispise the Mister Mxyzptlk segments, aggravating and anti immersive.
Just think of it, a huge open world game that allows you to live your day to day life as Clark Kent, switching to Supes as the need arises to help the citizens of the city.
The change up? Instead of the traditional “story mode”, how about random arcs to serve as the games primary means of story telling? Each arc would be the length of a comic book story. Some scenarios would cover an entire issue, others could be more epic in scope covering a multi issue arc.
Reoccurring enemies would be needed as well. For example, let’s say you defeat Parasite during a single issue “story arc”. Let’s run into him again some hours later, with a different arc, perhaps referencing the previous encounter. Some decent writing would be needed to really pull it off, but I’m convinced it would allow for a more realistic comic book feel to the game. While we are taking about villains, it would be important to have quite a few of the big hitters as well as a ton of “story of the week” villains.
Things the game definitely DON’T need is more of that annoying mini game crap with Mister Mxyzptlk. Flying through a bunch of rings like some sort of trained flying monkey….
Combat would be another area of concern. I know I don’t have any answers when it comes figuring out how to translate a Superman fight into a video game in a way that makes it engaging for players.
All in all, I think the next hero we give the open world remake treatment to would definitely have to be Supes.