I should know better by now. How can I be disappointed by the quality of a Superman game when I've heard over and over again that they all suck? I guess it happens when there is actual potential on display that just gets defeated. Looking at
the Nintendo 64 game, there was definitely no potential there anyway; so, I couldn't be surprised that it was a festering pile of crap. Superman: The Man of Steel on the Xbox wasn't like that. It got plenty right which made the stuff it got wrong hurt so much more than getting a headbutt from Doomsday.
This particular outing takes its ideas from the comic books. In a futuristic version of Metropolis, Superman has to square off against Brainiac 13 who is out to steal technology to aid in his quest for world domination. Though that thin plot synopsis makes Brainiac sound more like the Borg from Star Trek, it works. The setting DEFINITELY works. The future Metropolis was extremely well-built, fully realized, and absolutely gorgeous by Xbox standards. I wanted to just fly around exploring everything. It is a shame that the character models didn't get the same love and care. While not hideous, the comic shading made them look deformed. They stood out from the setting and not in a good way. On top of that, the voice acting is terrible, overacted all to hell.
Click For the Full Picture Archive
The controls and mechanics could have been the model for all subsequent Superman games to follow. All of Kal-El's powers are available and mapped to the face buttons. The heat vision and frost breath can be charged for stronger hits. Anyone who had ever played a flying game can handle the flight mechanics here. The sense of speed is excellent. There is even a handy lock-on feature for fighting in mid-air; the targeting reticule even changes color to tell players which attack would work best against each enemy. The only real problem is that the lock-on tended to cut off at random times, making following enemies in a fight more frustrating.
See all that good stuff I mentioned? Well, that stuff got largely ruined by the mission designs. Too many objectives are present in each stage. Too many of those objectives have annoying time limits. Too many enemies with varying weaknesses gang up on Superman, making the fights frustrating. Superman's life gauge goes down annoyingly quickly with few ways to restore it. Finally, there are no mid-level checkpoints. If you go down on the last objective, you have to start the whole stage all over again. While
Star Trek: Shattered Universe had these same faults, at least this Superman game has a couple of entertaining missions and boss fights scattered through its runtime.
Superman: The Man of Steel on the Xbox was easily the most disappointing Superman game I played. It had all the elements necessary for a good Superman game; it looks decent even now, and its controls and mechanics are some of the best I've experienced. However, the mission structure ruined it. I would've almost preferred if it was straight-up terrible; hating it would've been so much easier. Instead, like with Clark's reunion with Lana Lang in Superman 3, I find myself wondering about what it could've been.
