Current Events > IYO, how do you make a great Superman video game?

(+) Yeah! (+)

They've all been bad to awful to unplayable to kind of okay (the SNES game).

How do you make a good one in present day? What should it focus on?

Just say "fuck it" and let Supes be awesome, like the Lego games do.

It's mind-boggling to me how impossible it is to make a good video game out of a character who can fly, punch, and shoot lasers. Superman is bulletproof, yes, but that isn't a problem if you make the enemies space aliens who are strong enough to hurt him. Just have Darkseid and his parademons for baddies. That would have been my strategy in the 1990s. The best Superman game is Super Mario World when Mario has a cape. Replace the spin attack with a punch and add auto-flying levels where he can shoot laser beams at enemies.

Today, I don't know if it's even possible to make a great Superman. Superman's reputation rivals Bubsy the Bobcat for sheer awfulness in gaming. Anything he does right, people are just going to project and write it off as bad simply because it's Superman. Then you have the society factor. People want antiheroes. They want Dark Souls, Arkham Knight, Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, etc. If they try and make Superman edgy, it's just going to be cringy. If they let him be the bright and shining hero he was meant to be, it's not going to connect. Probably the only way around it is to make the game bright and colorful, with simply controls, and market it directly to children. Somehow, I don't see Warner/DC throwing money at that.

Just let him be op?

Maybe introduce various forms of kryptonite at some point?

dont focus on weaknesses. focus on decisions he has to make...who to save, who to fight where to be.

Superman returns had the right idea in that Superman did not have a health bar, Metropolis did.

I agree with others, make him OP. Literally, what's the point of putting Superman in a game if you don't actually get to feel like Superman. He's not a flying Captain America, he's Superman, make him broken.

As a matter of fact, broken characters have never been a problem, I'd argue most characters in gaming are "broken" in comparison to their enemies and trials.

https://youtu.be/bYTqBVaa-cQ

There's nothing to do but the framework is there for a real game.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


>I'm a Marvel
>"[making a Superman game] is literally my dream"

I think we know your plans for the competition:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/9/2/AAdlC_AADeaQ.jpg

Give him a hidden reputation meter, for each innocent he kills, building or property he destroys the meter goes down. If it drops far enough, the people turn against you and the army breaks out their kryptonite weapons. Saving people and property can add the the reputation meter. For his powers, let him have everything he has in the comics, Superman doesn't need a skill progression system. He has plenty of enemies who can match him physically, and hurt him.

I thought Prototype was a good prototype for a superman game with some obvious tweaks of course

Tyranthraxus posted...

https://youtu.be/bYTqBVaa-cQ

There's nothing to do but the framework is there for a real game.

That looks great

Make all the enemies carry pink kryptonite

Go the Cuphead route and just make it amazing boss battles. Skip trying to make stages and baddies. Go all out with insane set pieces for long drawn out boss brawls. Hell, even go the hand drawn art style too but comic instead of old toons.

Or if you reaaaally wanted something between bosses. Make it so the stages are playing as Clark Kent and youre navigating a normal life between battling monsters and demigods. Think Persona meets Cuphead meets DC.

HudGard posted...

Go the Cuphead route and just make it amazing boss battles. Skip trying to make stages and baddies. Go all out with insane set pieces for long drawn out boss brawls. Hell, even go the hand drawn art style too but comic instead of old toons.

Or if you reaaaally wanted something between bosses. Make it so the stages are playing as Clark Kent and youre navigating a normal life between battling monsters and demigods. Think Persona meets Cuphead meets DC.

Manchester Black would be PERFECT for this

My idea has been a open world city game where superman doesn't have a life bar the city does. Bit you also have a bar relating to how much the public likes you. So you have to balance the two bars. You let this bank robbery happen public trust goes down. But their is a alien invasion on the way. You can fly out and stop them before they can do any damage or you can stop the bank robbery then hope to stop the aliens before they do too much damage.

Make a 30/40s period piece where you go around fucking up gangsters, the kkk, nazis, and mad scientists. Go all in on the classic pulp aesthetic, maybe even have the Justice Society make occasional cameos.

Superman is ridiculously strong in this game. Like, if you push forward on the thumbstick he flies forward like a bullet, so you gotta be careful. Combat is similar. The harder you press R2 the harder he hits. In order to not kill someone you gotta like hold down R1 to guard and then lightly tap R2 with the lightest tap. You mostly fight aliens tho and the game punishes you for killing living things. But yea He can devistate buildings in a single blow which can collapse the level around you, for example. It's actually an amazing game.

Imagine like idk Force Unleashed meets Asura's Wrath or something

The laser eyes are crazy. Also really deviating. You can sweep the area with them or fire them in bursts. The trick is finding ways to fight without killing enemies.

The sprint is crazy, you can smash through traffic with it. Like it propels you hundreds of meters in a few seconds, destroying everything in your path.

The jump is super weighty too, and when he lands the shockwave shakes everything and you see the ground crack and a small crater form and little debris fly up.

Fluent, similar to Arkham but more like piloting a vehicle tbh

The way he flies is in big arcs a comet, you have to boost at certain intervals to maintain speed and Superman actually tends to drift a lot, and he changes direction really easily or gets somewhat unstable when you boost because the boost is pressure sensitive like the attacks. There's an easy stance where he will act mostly passive and a super Saiyan mode where he just goes hard even if you tap lightly but that takes a lot of fun out of the game. The control is where this really stands out, similar to Spiderman so you're not just like a floating character. Superman can hover but drifts and you gotta rock the L2 on medium pressure.

Also it's all about the boss fights and enemies have pink kryptonite they throw at you

Zone of the Enders with ragdoll physics for the pc

Tumbling into walls and recovering with style gameplay

Noumas posted...

I thought Prototype was a good prototype for a superman game with some obvious tweaks of course

Agreed. Make Superman as OP as he should be & turn the players loose.

destructible environment and alien invasion
throw in some timed crimes here and there, take a breather as clark then make something like a news station from gta and report all the crimes superman couldn't stop, whether he was late or sleeping, there will always be crime that 'you' didn't stop
or just play as clark for a long time, then people would wonder where were you

I'd avoid trying an open world for the first game, the basics should be made well first. The first game itself would either have Superman unlock his powers through growing up or have gold kryptonite used on him early on so learning new abilities comes gradually.

There's plenty that can be done to make a great Superman game.

Open world game that expands the entire observable universe with millions of planet filled with npcs and cities. Have superman be able to fly at trillions of times faster than light and be able to destroy celestial bodies.

So like a mixture of no man's sky and that one indie game that let's you fly trillions of times ftl around its universe and shoot purple beams that can blow up planets. i forgot the name of that game but the main goal is to prevent an alien invasion.

My guess is that the only way it'd work is to nerf him before you play by exposing him to some kryptonite via some villain. Your objective would be go through the story talking to some people to find a location and get a component to make some concoction that would slowly cure him of kryptonite positioning, unlocking more of your abilities along the way. And save the world from some alien invasion in the process I guess.

Worse than the 64

Imagine the thumbnails

just make a musou/warriors game.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/7/6/AAatkdAADebk.jpg

Ratchetrockon posted...

Open world game that expands the entire observable universe with millions of planet filled with npcs and cities. Have superman be able to fly at trillions of times faster than light and be able to destroy celestial bodies.

So like a mixture of no man's sky and that one indie game that let's you fly trillions of times ftl around its universe and shoot purple beams that can blow up planets. i forgot the name of that game but the main goal is to prevent an alien invasion.

Thatd be amazing