Superman Returns. Hands. Down. The movie tie-in curse, released early in the 360's lifespan, AND the Superman game curse? Was like a black hole of voodoo. Only reason I finished it was because I turned on cheats, and had rented it, so damn right I was going to $&#%^# finish it. >.>
The worst part about it was that it did, legitimately, have such potential behind it. The first perhaps five and a half minutes were actually legitimate, nerdy bliss, because I started on the street level, pressed a button and WHOOOSH, flew hundreds of feet into the air in seconds. (The city was eighty square miles in size.) I could fly at, according to the article I read, up to eight hundred miles an hour, release super-breath so intense it could clear an entire highway of cars (I did this often,) blast heat vision, literally run faster than a locomotive... the stamina bar that allowed the use of most of his powers would charge faster if up in the sky, in direct sunlight! When it came to making you feel like a Kryptonian God, this title had it all, and for those three hundred and thirty seconds, it was absolutely glorious.
Then trickled in the crap. I couldn't really enjoy the powers, because instead of a health bar for Superman, there was a health bar for the city itself, the idea being that you have to protect it from ne'er-do-wells who might smash it. This meant that aforementioned blowing-cars-off-highway glee could actually get me 'killed,' as could so much as sprinting carelessly through the streets. A cheat activated Unlimited Health, though, so it helped.
Then I realized the 'plot' was basically a string of random encounters against the same six or even enemy-types (and, trust me, when there's hundreds of the fiends, six or seven types isn't that much,) making even the enjoyment of super-speed chasing incredibly fast robots through the street an inevitable chore. Mini-map shows trouble, Superman flies to trouble, Superman beats up trouble while reciting the same five $*@&$# catchphrases, rinse and repeat. The occasional boss fight punctuated it, or a twenty-second cinematic that looked terrible. There were no interiors at all, with the entire game occuring in the open city, which meant there wasn't even the nerdy option of wandering around dressed as Clark Kent.
Then I finally reached the final boss.
A tornado.
A %*#&$&% tornado.
I won't spoil the thrilling way THAT climactic encounter came to an end, but suffice to say, after its defeat... well, that was it. No more enemies. At all. I just spent half an hour wandering around an empty city, throwing cars and intercepting them in midair half a mile away before they could even hit the ground. Not that there weren't side activites! I think you could find collectible cats scattered around the city! Dat's right! CATS! There was also a mini-game where you played Bizarro, and basically were supposed to smash the city up, and that was kind of fun... but it was a timed mini-game, with no option to free-roam as the crazy clone.
Anyway, what made this game worse was, again, potential. It was a movie tie-in, so it probably ran out of time, or money, etc, and therefore turned into a rush job that wrecked it. It also probably solidified the Superman curse, which is a shame, because it at least shows that a proper approach, perhaps on the next-gen consoles, could come up with something really special. ._.
Some gameplay footage below. Recommend skipping to around 5:15, see some of the flying about. Looking at it now, Jebas the graphics are dated beyond all measure, but this was out around the same time the PS3 was being released, so I hadn't had many glorious sparkly 360 titles to raise my expectations yet. x3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obsqyBzpKD8
