Superheroes That Should Be Games

Shamus Young

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Superheroes That Should Be Games

You'd think that superheros and videogames would be a natural fit. Both are good at portraying the classic empowerment fantasy, and the audiences have plenty of overlap. But for some reason the genre is a graveyard of failures and missed opportunities.

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Falterfire

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I'm really surprised we haven't gotten an Iron Man game given how perfect he is for a video game like progression from weak to strong since there's a very good explanation for getting more powers over time.

Also, I think you missed the other really successful superhero games; Ones where you play a non-established protagonist like inFamous and Prototype. Those both did very well (Prototype 2 isn't a thing shutup) and didn't need an established name to back them up.
 

ZZoMBiE13

Ate My Neighbors
Oct 10, 2007
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The Punisher for PS2 and Xbox was a really good game already. I'd love for them to expand on that or even just a remake using the same basic setup. It was made by Volition and it captured Frank's lack of any empathy for the guilty criminals he punishes.

Also, the Captain America movie tie-in game was better than it had any right to be. It followed Arkham's lead in the combat, though significantly less refined than Rocksteady's offerings. Still, when you incorporated the shield in to combat, it had a very satisfying "THUNGGGG" sound effect as it bounced off of HYDRA agents skulls. Recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, albeit short, Cap game.

As for what I'd personally like to see, a proper sequel to HULK: Ultimate Destruction and another good Spider-Man game.
 

Fanghawk

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The Punisher actually did have a game [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Punisher_%282005_video_game%29] that (I felt) captured the character really well within the context of the Marvel Universe. It wasn't open-world, but there were a lot of interesting and humorously violent set pieces that really worked for the character.
 

rofltehcat

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Green Lantern would probably be a fit for a game in which you "draw" or "paint" stuff. Touch screen (and maybe even Kinect?) controls would surely work very well with that. (I'm currently also playing Okami <3) It really doesn't necessarily have to be in 3D either. Think of something like Scribblenauts: use Green Lantern's powers to fight enemies and solve puzzles with a few hundred items in a 2D sidescroller.
He is also interesting because is extremely powerful on one side but in the end just mortal when his ring runs out of power. So there could be some really spectacular combat moves without all the Superman problems.

Captain America: Could work but I think outside the USA people aren't so much into him. The acrobatics/Prince of Persia stuff would also be interesting but I guess I'd just prefer a proper Prince of Persia (the cell shading one) sequel.
Wolverine: Weren't there some Wolverine games already? Anyways, he'd probably do well in a spectacle fighter.

Overall, most superheroes named (and many many more unnamed ones) lend themselves well to generic spectacle fighters. However, I think the appeal of the Arkham games isn't actually in the spectacle fighting. Sure, it is an integral part to it but huge parts of them are also exploration, clue hunting and many more. Imagine how boring they would be without the detective work.
Superhero games really need a lot more than starring a big name and some fighting. Where that might come in I cannot say. Of course it would be interesting to see more superhero games.
 

Veylon

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I have to ask: why not let Superman (or some other hero) fly through walls and otherwise smash the place up? Half the fun of Red Faction was destroying inconvenient architecture with oversized vehicles and bombs.

It would perfectly in character for Supes to burst in through a wall, rescue a hostage, and burst out again (ideally, through a different wall) before the goons can do any more than gape in astonishment. In fact, let him be invincible most of the time and have the challenge rotate around not making a godawful mess and killing people. If the villain is plotting to dump a zillion gallons of boiling sentient acidic poison on the city, it'd probably smart not simply trash his lab and accidentally release the stuff.
 

RedmistSM

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I think you're too quick to dismiss Superman, Shamus. He holds back his strength to not kill his opponents, so it's easy to imagine this manifesting sort of like in Bayonetta. Regular punches for regular enemies, with the end of most combos manifesting in a huge version of the weapon she's using. But when it's time for a huge boss battle, every single attack results in that huge version of her current weapon. He doesn't fly away because he's taken it on himself to protect endangered people, he doesn't use his full strength in order to not endanger people. I think he'd be a bad fit for a sandbox game, except for a sort of saints row 4 alien invasion metropolis thing with good flying, but I don't have a hard time at all imagining an action game.
 

Robyrt

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Going a little further afield than the open-world brawler, the X-Men are perfectly suited to a mid-budget, turn-based tactical combat game in the style of XCOM or The Banner Saga. There's dozens of them with two or three unique abilities each, most of them are durable but mortal, there's a strong interpersonal relations and teamwork focus, and the setting is a mishmash of real life and sci-fi that gives you license to go pretty much anywhere. (This is a series where the classic Dark Phoenix story arc takes place alternately in Central Park, a gentleman's club, a psychic illusion of Colonial America, and alien ruins on the moon.)
 

Robot-Jesus

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A non bullet proof iron-man could work, you would just need to show that it takes a lot of firepower to leave a scratch. So the number of mooks range in the hundreds for a level. any one group is not much of a threat, but if you don't take them out efficiently then you might be in some trouble at the end of the level.


You could also go with a cell shaded look. Fewer textures would mean it would be cheaper to make a huge world to run around in, and it would show a contrast to the movieverse.
 

Buckshaft

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Night Thrasher!
I mean, sure, there's not so much there in the way of superpower, But... Night Thrasher! He's both obscure enough to attract non-comic-readers, and has enough interesting hooks and storylines to make a decent game from.
 

StriderShinryu

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My choice would be Daredevil. I think he's a great character, but I also think he would make a very good videogame protagonist especially if they include some of the courtroom stuff alongside the superhero stuff.
 

ComicsAreWeird

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As others said before, The Punisher already gad a great game back in the ps2 days. The torture system designed to make criminals talk was pretty well implemented and fits well with the character's M.O.

Both Iron Man and Captain America had games recently - both games were pretty bland.

As for Superman, there are a shit-ton of ways to make the game challenging. He's vulnerable to magic, kriptonite and he has a respectable rogues gallery - Parasite, Lex, Metallo, Doomsday, Brainiac, Toymaker, Darkseid and the list goes on and on.
Getting supes to do challenges that fully explore his abilities would be key to make a kickass game.It has a ton of potential.

Wonder Woman could have a decent setting á la God of War. Flash has one of the best rogue galleries in comics and the comics have shown that he can do a lot more than just "run really fast" to provide variety in terms of gameplay. Barry Allen's CSI duties could also give the game an interesting investigative angle.
 

rofltehcat

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Robyrt said:
Going a little further afield than the open-world brawler, the X-Men are perfectly suited to a mid-budget, turn-based tactical combat game in the style of XCOM or The Banner Saga. There's dozens of them with two or three unique abilities each, most of them are durable but mortal, there's a strong interpersonal relations and teamwork focus, and the setting is a mishmash of real life and sci-fi that gives you license to go pretty much anywhere. (This is a series where the classic Dark Phoenix story arc takes place alternately in Central Park, a gentleman's club, a psychic illusion of Colonial America, and alien ruins on the moon.)
Oh, I'd love myself a tactical X-Men RPG. Freedom Force feels so old and clunky now :(
 

Ibbathon

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Feb 22, 2011
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Superman in a brawler is either boring or inaccurate. But what if we copied (and heavily modified) the gameplay of Shadow of the Colossus? Superman vs. Kaiju, anyone?

No grip gauge, no reason to reduce Superman's power level, some tactical combat through ordering around your super-buddies ("Hal, shackle its right leg! Diana, pull its left leg away!"), gigantic sky boxes with little need for object detail (unless the Kaiju attacks a city), and the sort of ridiculous concept which practically sells itself.

You could even translate the "shoot arrows at lizards" side quests into "save random civilians from muggers." If you wanted to add different gameplay, you could have the player find these muggers by using Superman's super-senses. Batman has Detective Vision, Superman has X-ray Vision.

I doubt this will ever be made (except possibly a non-Superman version by indies), but it's still fun to think about.
 

Drummodino

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Jan 2, 2011
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I like the list, but there has already been an Iron Man game on consoles. It came out after the first movie. I never played it but I remember the demo being fun.

I did play the PSP Iron Man game and I really liked that back in the day. You could fly around and shoot missiles and repulsors at bad guys, what more do you want from an Iron Man game?
 

Rebel_Raven

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Can we get some Wonder Woman love please? She could easily escalate from mortal thugs to gods, and demons same as a lot of protagonists do, and it's not like she hadn't done it in the comics. Yeah, she's more likely to kill people, but she doesn't have to. I mean she's in the DC Holy trinity, and I doubt she'd stay there if she worked like Kratos... all the time.

Could be a golden opportunity to get some less than well known characters, too.

Maybe have the game broken up into chapters based off story arcs. She could help out the Birds of Prey, fight Greeks, fight other amazons, demons, what have you.

It's not like she's had her own game in recent history like most of the list. I wouldn't be surprised if she NEVER got her own game. Can't be arsed to research right now. :p

I still say Catwoman needs her own game based off the comics as opposed to the movie. Gotham City Sirens style arcs maybe. She could walk the line between Superheroine (She does have some light super powers, IIRC in photographic reflexes.) and the catburglar we know her as. It's not like resources for that don't exist.
 

Vzzdak

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Some of the more difficult heroes mentioned, such as Superman, Green Lantern or Dr. Strange, would likely translate well to a TellTale game, ala Walking Dead. In particular, Dr. Strange would be a stand-out here because as mentioned in the article, much of his work involves exploring unusual realms and making decisions about how to resolve some manner of Cthulhu-like horror.
 

Ruisu

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Jul 11, 2013
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Ibbathon said:
Superman in a brawler is either boring or inaccurate. But what if we copied (and heavily modified) the gameplay of Shadow of the Colossus? Superman vs. Kaiju, anyone?

No grip gauge, no reason to reduce Superman's power level, some tactical combat through ordering around your super-buddies ("Hal, shackle its right leg! Diana, pull its left leg away!"), gigantic sky boxes with little need for object detail (unless the Kaiju attacks a city), and the sort of ridiculous concept which practically sells itself.

You could even translate the "shoot arrows at lizards" side quests into "save random civilians from muggers." If you wanted to add different gameplay, you could have the player find these muggers by using Superman's super-senses. Batman has Detective Vision, Superman has X-ray Vision.

I doubt this will ever be made (except possibly a non-Superman version by indies), but it's still fun to think about.
Well, superman vs humansized supervillain is also really good, and usually better than superman vs giant monster. I think it would be fantastic if we could make a game about flying invunerable superhumans going all out agains each other in a semi-open world.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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I tend to agree with a lot of people that Green Lantern would be very doable, and it would give people something to do with all of this otherwise pointless touchscreen technology. Truthfully when you get down to it, Green Lantern mostly does a few basic things, hit people, constrain people, or move things when it comes to his powers, albeit he does it in different ways with different constructs. Doing a game based around him could say allow you to design your own custom energy constructs to tie to his basic abilities so they look a different way (perhaps even rotating through your collection as you use the same ability). You might start with a construct strike that is a big green fist, but if you want it to be a hammer instead, you could draw one and put it into the game. Albiet this would also mean those with sick minds could draw absurd or perverted things of course.

When it comes to Superman, he's not really franchise material as far as churning out a game about him every year. His stuff would take some work, but it's quite doable since his rogues gallery is full of threats on his level, and his stuff tends to not exactly be short on the action when it comes to the high end punch-ups. While Superman gets into a lot of routine "I show up and solve the problem with no difficulty" stuff, he also gets called in frequently when some truly powerful being is on a rampage, and then has entertaining fist fights that result in tons of urban demolition. The trick to doing Superman well might be to do the game on a global scale, and have him respond to "hot spots" where specific things are happening, and otherwise have the ability to visit different cities/environments when the story isn't calling him somewhere, to do something. I admit that something on the scale Superman would require would take a lot of money, and again, the interest in doing it without being able to squeeze one out every year or too easily wouldn't appeal to the current corporate mentality.

As far as Wonder Woman goes, there are a number of different ways that she could be used, but that's kind of the problem to doing the character since she's really hard to satisfy the fans with. Consider that she basically started as a combination bondage pin up and lesbian empowerment fantasy (Bob did a thing at one point about the guy who created her, his wife, etc...) and has been redefined almost constantly. The thing is that you COULD do almost anything with her, but at the end of the day almost nothing you do with her is likely to make the fans happy and totally avoid controversy. For example if you basically just copy pasted Wonder Woman onto what amounts to a "God Of War" game I doubt that would actually wind up making her entire fan base particularly happy.

To be honest I've always thought Wonder Woman might be a decent character if they ever wanted to do a very "M" rated game or risk actually going for an AO title, simply because you could elaborate on all of the sex stuff, and still have a pretty solid character for doing other things with.

That said, I've always thought Yahtzee's old idea about playing as an actual super villain in a sandbox game might be interesting. It would also be a way of using a lot of hard to write heroes, since what doesn't work if used as a protagonist might work as a boss for a villain game. Looking at "Saint's Row" or "Grand Theft Auto" for example it might be interesting to say play a game as "The Joker" in Gotham while Batman is indisposed, embark on your heists and stuff, and the ever popular "sandbox rampages" could also be put into the game as a part of it, as opposed to being something you do while bored between playing the game regularly. After all The Joker running around killing people randomly and making a big mess is kind of what you expect. It's also ideal for an inevitable "you lose" ending without it being a total downer because honestly... who really wants The Joker to win and kill everyone? :)

I've also felt that some of the super-thief characters like say "Catwoman" or "Black Cat" would be interesting choices for a stealth based game, they can do the action thing, but at the end of the day aren't really supposed to be brawlers. I kind of saw the potential for this in the second "Arkham" game.

On top of all of that I'll also mention flat out that I think the best thing that could be done with the whole idea is to simply not attach specific heroes to the universe franchises. To be honest, having played all of the hero MMOS (Champions, and before it City of Heroes/Villains, DC Universe Online) there is a lot of fun in creating your own character, costume, etc... and being a hero your way. One of the big problems with the MMOs though is that the material becomes unusually generic when you have to work around MMO tropes and mechanics, you just can't do the kind of world building and story telling that you can with a single player game. I saw the potential for this heavily in "Infamous" especially as the powers diversified, and it occurred to me that it could work with say "City Of Heroes" type character generation if they did it right. Granted you wouldn't wind up being able to define the player character the same way, but at the same time being assigned someone like Cole does kind of ruin the personal empowerment fantasy that super hero stuff thrives on.
 

Objectable

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Fun fact: A while ago, a company made a demo for a Flash video game. It was cancelled, but video was released online.
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