A whole range of Superhero powers...
As you travel across the different areas of Metropolis, you’ll receive alerts that warn you that innocents are under attack in the streets. You’ll then need to hurtle through the streets in order to take them on. Although there are other missions on offer, which allow you to test out your flying skills or put out a burning building, a large chunk of the gameplay revolves around defeating the bots on the streets. Combat is fairly boring and frustrating due to the repetitiveness of having to use the combo moves to see off the minions and the camera angles don’t help because you’ll constantly be on the move in order to avoid the enemies attack and, on occasions, the camera doesn’t manage to keep up with the actionl.
Superman has a number of powers at his fingertips, including X-Ray vision, heat vision, super hearing, super strength and super breath, but they’re all carried out through the same targeting system, meaning that although the powers have different visual effects, you’re just repeating the same action over and over again. You can lock onto a target using the L2 trigger, but the system doesn’t always work too well and we were often targetting the wrong enemy through no choice of our own. By mixing up the super powers you are able to dispatch these enemies in more entertaining ways. For example, freezing an enemy and then using the heat vision power to crack him is entertaining and effective, but it’s not enough to save Superman Returns from being yet another average movie spin-off.
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Click for larger imageEA have taken a different direction in the implementation of the health system and instead of Superman dying when his health runs out (you can simply tap the ‘Y’ button to bring him to his feet) it’s the city of Metropolis that takes the damage. It’s a case of flying around the city and destroying the enemies who will be setting buildings on fire or smashing up the streets, but also watching the environment carefully to ensure a building doesn’t burn to the ground. The health metre can be replenished by rescuing any of the fallen citizens by picking them up and bringing them to the nearest ambulance (which will be marked on the map) and the system is an interesting one, which ensures you constantly need to be aware of the metre.
Click for larger imageSuperman Returns does have its highlights, such as being able to switch to an evil Superman and compete against an enemy in a time-restricted destruction derby, but overall there was little variety in the gameplay. The game is littered with small annoyances, for example : Once you’ve defeated some of the enemies who are terrorising the streets, you’ll see numerous casualties lying around that you can save in order to replenish the city’s destruction metre, but by the time I’d dropped a couple off and headed back to that area they’d totally disappeared. The same goes for the destructible environment and although it’s entertaining to blow a car into oncoming traffic or pick up a fire engine and throw it into a building, the damage and the overturned cars disappear if you pop round the corner and come back. By the far the biggest irritation was the fact that you can see straight through any solid object that you pick up - what's that all about?
