We've always wanted x-ray vision
Superman Returns includes three types of missions, flying, rescue, and combat. I’d presume the fire fighting mission that I completed falls into the second category. A local fire brigade is called out to put out a fire at one of the city's numerous skyscrapers. By following the map markers it’s easy to find the location and then it’s a matter of choosing the relevant power via the d-pad in order to put the fire out. Superman has a number of powers at his fingertips, including X-Ray vision, heat vision, super hearing, super strength, super speed, and super breath. This basically involved hovering around the building and targeting the fire before it spiralled out of control. It was simply a matter of switching to the super breath power in order to extinguish the fire and in return for our good deed I received EXP points. Unfortunately I failed to discover what this actually means, although I’d assume you can assign points to superman’s attributes to enhance your super hero skills.
Click for larger imageThe next mission I played was a combat mission. As I roamed the city from the relative safety of the skies a number of baddies were terrorising the streets. By pursuing them you can use a super power to take them out with each taking a fair degree of skill to eliminate. I discovered that by mixing up my super powers I was able to dispatch these enemies in more entertaining ways. For example, I tried freezing an enemy and then using the heat vision power to crack him which was very amusing and extremely effective. All enemies have a health bar and you’ll need to wear it right down to kill them, but the big bosses have stronger health and you’ll have to dodge their own powerful super powers so stay alive. Fighting against Metallo was a struggle, he had some sort of Sonic boom that sent me flying backwards, but it’s persistence that pays off and I had toyou dodge and weave to avoid his strike whilst targeting him with my selected power; I used the heat power and it took a good five minutes to send him crashing to the ground. The cut scene prior to the big battle was extremely impressive and once again gave the impression that EA are sticking to the comic book style for all of the game characters.
Click for larger imageAfter taking part in a number of rescue missions I thought I’d try out one of the flying objectives. The one I choose involved a race from point A to point B against one of the baddies. Using the boost function I had to follow a set path, dodging and weaving in between skyscrapers. The sequence is extremely similar to EA’s Harry Potter titles where you race against a dragon to the finishing line, unsurprisingly Superman handles very much like the bespectacled wizard’s action scenes (only Superman flies horizontally instead of using a broomstick…doh!) There’s a decent blur effect as you speed above the streets and you’re able to pull of a number of acrobatic moves to avoid a collision. Racing is a simple premise that was bound to be included, but nevertheless the feeling of speed is accurately recreated and the races are a decent side event to the main action.
