Superheroes That Should Be Games

[Grimh]

Wasn't there a pretty good Downey Jr. impersonator in at least one of the movie tie-in games?

Anyway I'd totally be down(ey) for a (good) Iron Man game. There's plenty you can do there. Two things could be either open world city sandbox, or maybe a central hub (Avengers HQ or Stark's home) you walk around out of suit and talk to people and upgrade and stuff and also choose missions that can be all over the world or something like that.

 

[Lazule]

Saints Row 4 has all the bases for a good "Super Hero Sandbox" game. (It isn't better than Batman: Arkham City imho but Batman isn't actually a "super" being anyway)

 

[Agayek]

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.

This would actually be all kinds of awesome. A nice subversion of the genre - You'd have to play to be careful.

 

[gorfias]

Punisher, Iron Man and Captain America all got games. Do we sense a pattern here?

A complex one. They all got meh reviews and did not do well money wise.

I've played some of Punisher's games and like them a lot. I played the Iron Man demo. Very meh. Needs better gameplay, graphics but the idea is pretty good. Armor and weapons + flight can equal a lot of fun. Of them all, only Cap did I play and love all the way through. Me and a buddy had to laugh a lot every time Cap would stop to pick up a Faberge egg or something.

It was a poor man's Batman but with its own charm. Most particularly, they'd make a game of getting from point A to point B, while, certainly in Arkham City, Batman could go just about anywhere he dang well flt like.

Oops, and Green Lantern. Playing coop with a drinking buddy and we are having a blast.

So, given they actually have made games of so many of these guys without success, what will it take to really make them successful?

 

[Kaymish]

ok how about hawkman/girl they have slightly higher strength than a regular human they are extra durable but still mortal they can fly so mobility is not an issue and you can have some fun with aerial battles they are both cops and or archaeologist's so you can have detective like game play that people liked from batman and while they don't eschew modern weapons completely they prefer to use more archaic weapons the mace being the preferred option
or hey stick both of them in and have a romantic co-op

those 2 characters would make an excellent game

 

[immortalfrieza]

Superman is right out. Not to knock on Supes, but he's too powerful to work in a conventional game. In most action games a vast majority of our gameplay hours are spent defeating identical mooks, and Superman is too strong for mooks. Who can pose a credible threat to him? Who can keep him from just flying away (through walls, if he needs to) if a fight goes against him? Who can endure more than one punch from him? What could the game designer possibly do to keep Superman contained in the gameplay area and prevent the player from just flying over or through all the obstacles? And even if we do contrive some mooks for him to fight (say, space aliens) are they going to be interesting and varied enough to support a whole game? And can we count on them for sequels?

It's not that Superman's too powerful (or rather, that most versions aren't) but that nobody gives enough of a damn about putting him up against things that could stand a chance in hell of actually beating him without having to weaken him. There's plenty of ways to put Superman up against viable threats without having to weaken him, guys in power armor, throw some kryptonite around, robots, space aliens, you name it for the standard enemies, throw in some massive 30 story tall robots, monsters, or whatever, members of his rouge's gallery, and so forth for boss battles, it's not that hard really. The real reason that Superman games have always sucked is because thus far they've all just been lazy cash ins with no real thought put into them, just being "LET'S USE THE SUPERMAN CHARACTER FOR EASY CASH!!!" crap. Batman games were pretty terrible too for the same reasons until the Arkham games showed up, all Superman really needs is somebody who actually gives a damn about making one feel like the actual superhero like Batman eventually got.

 

[Antonio Torrente]

I'm kinda surprised Shamus didn't mentioned the browser game Marvel: Avengers Alliance. Oh sure it's a Facebook game, ones that use the free to play(or more precisely pay to win) model and those kind of games don't have a good reputation among us here in the escapist, but at least they are still comic accurate and respect the source material when it comes to the characters (maybe except Heimdall).

Ok let's sort out the good and bad stuff about this game, let's start with the good ones.

Good

1.Awesome Art
I mean just look at their character art, sample: Agent Venom (Flash Thompson)

Spoiler

Doctor Strange:

Spoiler

2. Slightly less horrible when it comes to PR than other developers of the same business model.
Here's the thing, Playdom the developer makes mistakes but at least they acknowledge it and try to fix it as fast as possible.

3.It's not another stupid cow clicker.
The game is a turn based one, think of Final Fantasy or those early JRPG meets the Marvel Universe
Here is a sample of the gameplay:

4.Introduce me to obscure characters that I don't know exist in the Marvel Universe.
If weren't for this game, I wouldn't have known who Nico Minuro is:

Spoiler

or Valkyrie:

Spoiler

or Thundra:

Spoiler

or Sunfire:

Spoiler

you get the point.

5. Tie-ins are not that bad.
When there is a Marvel Studio movie about to be shown, expect this game to have a tie in event. It happened during the Avengers in the form of new costumes, again in Iron Man 3 with that special event and costumes from the movie, also happened with Thor: The Dark World.

Bad

1. Sucks to start right now.
If you didn't start near during it's launch, well to bad you missed a lot of heroes you would have able to recruit.

2. The game is really buggy and sometimes unfair
If you are gonna play this prepare to be frustrated because this game has some performance issues and the ai in pvp can be unfair most of the time.

3. The customer service sucks.
As I said, the developer compensates if majority of the playerbase suffers. But try contacting the cs and well they questionable at best down right horrible at worst.

4. More focus on characters Disney/Marvel has adaptation rights to.
Are you a Spiderman, Xmen, or Fantastic Four fan? Well too bad, their movie rights are owned by FOX and Sony so less focus on them.

So like I said I'm surprised he didn't mention it, considering this game has been active since March 1, 2012 almost two years now.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

While we're developing fastasy games with limitless budgets I say go all in and make a JLA game.

Make a big open world game with maps covering Gotham, Bludhaven, Metropolis, Themyscera...Gorilla City.

From there give players a roster of playable characters to choose from and some AI team mates all of which can be swapped out in between missions to let the player play as they see fit. Add a few character specific missions and blammo. Instant JLA game.

Hell one could conceivably go all out and offer DLC based on major events currently playing out in the comics.

 

[immortalfrieza]

While we're developing fastasy games with limitless budgets I say go all in and make a JLA game.

Make a big open world game with maps covering Gotham, Bludhaven, Metropolis, Themyscera...Gorilla City.

From there give players a roster of playable characters to choose from and some AI team mates all of which can be swapped out in between missions to let the player play as they see fit. Add a few character specific missions and blammo. Instant JLA game.

Hell, they've even got a decent format they can use for that. Something similar to the X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance games would work well for exactly that purpose, though it would help if they removed the top down perspective.

 

[vIRL Nightmare]

The Green Lanterns. The comics are great, so much material for entertainment, yet all we've gotten is a subpar movie.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

I actually think Superman could work in this context: have the game open with the forces of Apokalips besieging Metropolis and capturing Supes back on the planet, then have the rest of the game more or less be an extended prison break: escape from Apokalips prisons, break others out of Apokalips prisons (Big Barda anyone? Also maybe they imprisoned more Metropolis heroes during the attack, that could give you Steel, Booster Gold, etc.), escape Apokalips and/or take down Darkseid's regime.

 

[Flammablezeus]

"Superman is right out."

Stopped reading there. Superman would perhaps lend himself to be one of the most unique superhero games created. I bet all this guy wants is more of things we've already got. Probably complaining about Superman being too powerful without realising that that is the whole point half the time, with the other half being about him not being powerful enough. It would make a great game in the hands of somebody who would respect the character and build the game around him.

Too many people go "oh I want a third person action game with " instead of "I want to see a game about this character doing what they actually do, facing challenges that make sense for them to face."

It doesn't even take much thought about how to do a decent Superman game. It would just be so different that there's nothing currently out that we can compare it to.

 

[Flammablezeus]

Superman is right out. Not to knock on Supes, but he's too powerful to work in a conventional game. In most action games a vast majority of our gameplay hours are spent defeating identical mooks, and Superman is too strong for mooks. Who can pose a credible threat to him? Who can keep him from just flying away (through walls, if he needs to) if a fight goes against him? Who can endure more than one punch from him? What could the game designer possibly do to keep Superman contained in the gameplay area and prevent the player from just flying over or through all the obstacles? And even if we do contrive some mooks for him to fight (say, space aliens) are they going to be interesting and varied enough to support a whole game? And can we count on them for sequels?

It's not that Superman's too powerful (or rather, that most versions aren't) but that nobody gives enough of a damn about putting him up against things that could stand a chance in hell of actually beating him without having to weaken him. There's plenty of ways to put Superman up against viable threats without having to weaken him, guys in power armor, throw some kryptonite around, robots, space aliens, you name it for the standard enemies, throw in some massive 30 story tall robots, monsters, or whatever, members of his rouge's gallery, and so forth for boss battles, it's not that hard really. The real reason that Superman games have always sucked is because thus far they've all just been lazy cash ins with no real thought put into them, just being "LET'S USE THE SUPERMAN CHARACTER FOR EASY CASH!!!" crap. Batman games were pretty terrible too for the same reasons until the Arkham games showed up, all Superman really needs is somebody who actually gives a damn about making one feel like the actual superhero like Batman eventually got.

You're definitely on to how to handle Superman action scenes. I think that's only part of it though. Superman can hear practically everything going on in a huge area. A big part would be prioritising who to save, which crimes to stop and doing it all before something goes wrong. Then have a failure state when you allow too many things to go wrong, like Superman Returns did.

Then there's being Clark and using powers discreetly in investigations or simply stealthily saving somebody as Lois turns around for a brief moment. The possibilities are endless.

 

[immortalfrieza]

You're definitely on to how to handle Superman action scenes. I think that's only part of it though. Superman can hear practically everything going on in a huge area. A big part would be prioritising who to save, which crimes to stop and doing it all before something goes wrong. Then have a failure state when you allow too many things to go wrong, like Superman Returns did.

Then there's being Clark and using powers discreetly in investigations or simply stealthily saving somebody as Lois turns around for a brief moment. The possibilities are endless.

Well, I'm not sure I like the idea of having to obsessively keep watch on the entire city of Metropolis all the time and not being able to just dick around whenever I want or I end up losing. Being able to do that is basically the best part of an open world game.

The thing with Superman is that the possibilities are endless, but nobody who has yet to get the IP to make into a game gives enough of a damn to effectively explore those possibilities.

 

[Flammablezeus]

You're definitely on to how to handle Superman action scenes. I think that's only part of it though. Superman can hear practically everything going on in a huge area. A big part would be prioritising who to save, which crimes to stop and doing it all before something goes wrong. Then have a failure state when you allow too many things to go wrong, like Superman Returns did.

Then there's being Clark and using powers discreetly in investigations or simply stealthily saving somebody as Lois turns around for a brief moment. The possibilities are endless.

Well, I'm not sure I like the idea of having to obsessively keep watch on the entire city of Metropolis all the time and not being able to just dick around whenever I want or I end up losing. Being able to do that is basically the best part of an open world game.

The thing with Superman is that the possibilities are endless, but nobody who has yet to get the IP to make into a game gives enough of a damn to effectively explore those possibilities.

I'm not sure a good Superman game would be up your alley then. Nothing wrong with that. Although it would be easy enough to have a Bizarro mode or something (again, like in Superman Returns.)

That brings me to another thing though, people want everything to play as something that they'd enjoy. A good Superman game might not appeal to the mainstream as demonstrated by the complete lack of games available where you play as a hero. Instead, we get games like the Arkham series or inFamous which is pretty much centered on beating up or otherwise incapacitating your enemies. That kind of gameplay would lend itself just as well (even better in my opinion) to being a super villain, not a super hero. Prototype, SRIV and Deadpool are games that got this aspect right.

It's like how the new Thief game is more about being a QTE assassin instead of a thief, like the previous Thief series. Things get changed to the point that they make no sense and alienate the people interested in the concept. They try to appeal to people that they really shouldn't try to appeal to. That's the one pitfall that a decent Superman game would have to avoid. In fact I hope more devs start avoiding it, as all it does is tarnish otherwise promising games.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

I`m in for a mission based Punisher game but i don`t think it needs to be open world. Larger places to explore and the posibility to plan your strike would be nice. As someone else already said: Bring back T.Jane. He did an awesome job with the last game and take a script from G.Ennis.

For an open world game i would love to see the Tick or the Savage Dragon (in his early cop years) with a frost bite like engine where buildings could take damage.

 

[duchaked]

I've played the Wolverine, Iron Man (1 and 2), Captain America, and Green Lantern games

I enjoyed the Wolverine game and would love to do that some more. Captain America was fun to play in combat, but the game he had was poorly constructed. I can def see potential for fun there. the Iron Man games...I had a blast on some levels! seriously it had its moments, but I just wish the games were...you know...properly made and not just rushed products haha

lots of potential there. can't really say the same for the Green Lantern tho lol

 

[warmachine]

I want a sequel to Rogue Trooper where he chases the Traitor General all over Nu Earth, visiting all manner of battlefields, seeing the hell and propaganda that is war, and evading Millicom and the Nort War Marshal with a vendetta.

Yeah, I'm a 2000AD fan.