Customer Reviews

Superman Returns

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I'm still playing the game, I'm only about 3 hours into the thing and somewhere around 80% completed according to the game, and I'm not having fun any more, and this really bothers me. I just shelled out $60 something and I can't say I've ever had a feeling during this that I was doing anything meaningful other than saving a block of Metropolis idiots (they run into you while you're punching your opponents and are sent flying).

I'm trying to do one of the side missions where I fly around and collect things, but Metropolis gets attacked every 10 seconds by a band of flying ice dragons and their companions the fire dragons. Or I'll get wrapped up in a fight with the guy who multiplies over and over again yet only manages to have 3 or 4 lines and they're so freaking corny it hurts.

I really wanted to like this game... honestly, I got sucked in because of the demo being so short... I thought "there has to be more to this game, and it's probably frickin' awesome"... I'm really not finding the frickin' awesome.

There's a large beautiful city here every 3rd building seems to have the same texture, in the distance you can see a giant dam which looks like it would be fun to fly over to, but forget about that. Metropolis is a huge series of islands with an unreachable mainland and no possible way the citizens could reach it. No airports, appears to be a sea-based town only. The mainland, if I am guessing right, has a cliff facing Metropolis that is roughly 25 miles high, which is about the same height as the unreachable dam that you also can't visit.

And there're numerous problematic dichotomies - one example is you are charged with taking care of the city, keeping things from getting damaged, and yet you get achievement points for things such as ripping the globe off of the Daily Planet and throwing it down the streets. Another is you go to take a challenge and turn into Bizaro and have to destroy as much of the city as you can to advance.

And for the Man of Steel, I feel more like I'm playing the man of pretty darn strong rubber. I can lift 60,000 pounds in this game, and throw it, and it bounces off any buildings it hits. I can hit a pedestrian while in a fight and they get right back up but if one of the opponents hits them, they go down instantly. I try and pick up the injured person to take them to the ambulance (where I then drop them 20 feet to their rescue) and will manage to pick up the wandering pedestrian who is walking through a burning car to get in my way.

Metropolis takes a little too much damage and Superman drops to his knees and looks like he's crying. It takes the same amount of damage in two back to back fights and, well, for some reason it's fine.

While playing I also learned that when the game spawns 15 flying enemies in certain areas the game will lock up for a while. Friend of mine was watching and said my XBOX had shut down due to overheating and I pointed out that you could still go the menu and to wait for a bit, and then it did whatever it was doing and started speeding up, and that it was always when there were that many flying enemies. Duplicated the problem a few times.

I don't know what I did exactly, but I blew one of the bosses into orbit for a while, and when he came down he landed in the ocean. He did not move, nor could I swim or fly underwater. I tried using my heat vision to hit him but noticed all I was doing was damaging Metropolis. I was fighting Bizaro at one point and I knocked him into the one highway that exists... could not get to him. Both these incidents I had to reload the last save.

I've gotten to the point where I save every single event due to bugs like these.

I wish I had my money back, or the game I expected

There is a a good foundation in this program for a really great game. It is unfortunate that the developers obviously ran out of time to put any of the game elements in. If you were to refer to this as a "Sandbox" game then "Grand theft auto, Saint's row and Bully" would be the playground that, that sand box was in. To give you a rough idea of my game experience with "Superman Returns"; approximatly 2 hrs 27 mins and 16 seconds into the game (according to the game clock) I had 65% of the game complete... and 95 % two hours later... Worth Sixty to you? Only if you go into this expecting a Simulator and not a game. The only gameplay elements i.e. fights and boss battles are more annoying than challenging... Electronic Arts obviously knew thay had a short game here so rather than adding more gameplay they opted to make Superman weak and boss fights tedious to the brink of making you want to throw your controller. I did buy this the day it came out and I will probably keep it if only to get a feel of what it would be like if I really could fly around metropolis. I highly recommend renting this before making a purchase. There is alot of potential with this engine, let's hope that EA/TIBURON makes use of it and expands on this.

Where to begin? Let me start by saying that ever since we were treated to ET on Atari, with rare exception, movie-based games have generally been pretty awful. The reason for that is simple, a developer knows that a product's name will entitle it to a certain number of sales just because of the name. There's no "extra-incentive" for you to inflate the budget of a product if you don't expect to recoup that dollar amount in sales. 'Superman Returns', I really thought, wasn't going to fall into that developer trend.

My expectations were raised, oddly enough, when the game was delayed and the demo was released. 'Superman' was originally supposed to come out in May of '06 to coincide with the release of the feature film. When it was delayed, I mistakenly thought that was the staff at EA saying to itself, "OK, there's more interest here then we thought, lets sink a little more time and effort into this one." The game was subsequently pushed to November to match up with the film's DVD release. Then the demo for the game hit xBox live and I was legitimately impressed. Metropolis was huge, the environment was interactive, the flight mechanics were solid; it reminded me of 'Ultimate Spider-Man', just with Superman. The graphics and the combat system were a little below-average, but I wrote that off as a problem they're working on. It was just a demo after all, I expected it to be a little rough around the edges.

While nothing that I enjoyed about the game was changed, I'm disappointed to say that none of these issues I had were fixed for the game's final release either. Not to mention, there's very little to the game outside of the demo I played. Instead of using the extra time EA took to get 'Superman' released to add content, EA seemed to just seem to multiply what was there already. Just for example, there isn't enough diversity in the enemies Superman will confront. You fight Metallo and his minions fairly early in the game. You'll be fighting those same annoying robots the whole game. There are only about five or six actual boss fights in the game, none of whom I found particularly difficult. One of which is the same character twice! I'd have loved to have seen more of Supe's rogues gallery.

There aren't many side missions you have to distract yourself with either. It would have been awesome to involve more of Superman's supporting cast to pass along side objectives. As I said before, there's not more diversity, it's as if they just doubled what was already there.

As far as the previous 'Superman' games go, this is definitely king of the hill. Some of those games were flat-out awful, this is at least playable. It's just that I wish they took the nugget of a good thing they had going and fleshed it out a lot more. For now, it's nothing more then a "... could of been." Rent it if you want to check it out.

i loved this game. the graphics are awesome and i can not express how much FUN it was to fly around such a Large world, inbetween buildings, underpasses, along bridges and then dive from about 500,000 feet in the air straight into the ocean and skim along the water at TOP speed....it is truly an amazing thing and has made me LOVE this game since iv played the demo and then rented it...but something buggs me...

too many robots :| youd think youd be able to save some people...put out a some fires...stop some thieves...a couple shoot outs...meteor showers...stop a plane from falling out the sky...maybe even a few spats with Lex Luthor wouldnt hurt. and things that Superman does in everyday life. but for some Dumb reason...every 10 seconds, the city is being attacked by what? Robots :| annoying...hard to kill...wayy toooo mannyy of themm....robots. after about the 10th battle with a STREET full of robots, youll be tired of it...

then i heard something about Dragons from one of the reviewers on here as well. thats just too much Stupid for me :| i dont want to fight anymore robots...and definately not Huff the Magic Dragon and 100,000 of his friends.

Buy it used at Gamestop for 20 bucks and return it in 7 days for something else...ill stick to Spiderman 2 on the original xbox for my superhero high...

iLL .

Superman Returns is based off the movie of the same name, with a little bit of added goodies. The story is basically Superman must take down Lex Luger while fighting off other villians of the Superman universe... interesting right.

Anyway, you control Superman (obviously). You can jump high into the sky and fly as high and fast as you like, but you can not just do a normal jump (lame). Moving on you can use heat vision, super breath, and freeze breath. You can throw enemies, fly, beat up more enemies, throw cars, fly..... yeah. Thats the whole premise for the game. There are these mini games with that. Mr. Xplyztk or whatever his name is... basically all it is is racing around metropolis, collecting 100 kittens (uh huh..), and playing as Bizaro for a limited amount of time to destroy Metropolis... it makes no sense, nor is it really fun.

While your fighting enemies, the city of Metropolis can take damage and lose health.. yeah, the city you are in can actually be destroyed and guess what? Once it loses all its health, your game is over and you have to start over. Thats real fun when a tree catches fire, cars are being blown up, citizens are being hurt and need to be brought to a nearby ambulance, and you have to fight about 500 enemies who seem to all have kryptonite all at once. In otherwords this games difficulty is ridiculously hard.

As you progress through S.R., you can gain experience which lets you gain levels. When you go up a level you get stronger heat vision and all that stuff.. Also you unlock different outfits which are all lackluster anyway and you probably could care less for them.

And the enemies you fight.. oh boy. First your fighting robots, then robots and dragons, then robots & dragons & some monsters. What the f.... whatever. It makes no sense... I mean, DRAGONS!? Come on.

The graphics are blarf besides the Superman character model & the city of Metropolis. Besides those two, everything else is just bad, blurry, and smudgey. Terrible for a 360 release.

Music.. is terrible and so is the voice acting. The only cool thing is when you're flying for a bit and you break the sound barrier... thats it. Otherwise, once again, terrible for a 360 release.. even a game.

To be honest, I had higher hopes for this game but sadly it fell flat on it's face. How can EA make such a smash hit like The Godfather, then make & release this vomit? Not even worth a rental.

Hi, i'm a big Superman fan and have played many of the older and newer Superman games, with the exception of the Ninteno 64 version, in this review i'll get into some of the high and low points of the game and my overall feeling.


High Points:

You can't get much higher than flying Superman to the top of the world. The overall graphics and visuals on Superman Returns for the Xbox 360 are absolutely stunning. And the sound through my 5.1 digital surround system is amazing, (less impressive is basic TV Audio output). Between the stunning visuals and 5.1 surround, it truly looks and feels as if you're in a living breathing city. You can be standing on the sidewalk one moment, watching the city, vibrant and alive, people and cars passing by, then the next moment, super-speed fly as high as you can, looking down on the fabulous skyline. In super-speed flight, as you accelerate you make a couple of sonic booms like in the movies, which is a nice effect.

The Super Powers of Superman that are rendered in the game are done very well, although you don't have command of "all" of his powers as you may have been lead to believe, you do still have most of his important / best known abilities. As you progress through the game the power and effectiveness of his powers increase. You can also vary the strength of his abilities, for example you can use Superman's super breath to cause a light breeze and gradually poor on the power using the right trigger till you're at tornado strength winds, or super-size his power with a charged up super burst of super-breath, heat-vision, or freeze-breath.


Overall Gameplay:

In this game Superman does not have a health meter, instead the city has a health meter and Superman has a "stamina" meter for when he gets hit or uses his super abilities such as heat-vision, super-breath or freeze-breath. If Superman completely looses his stamina he'll be down for the count for a few seconds then get back up. To prevent any down time you can fly Superman towards the sun for a quick stamina re-charge.

You can lift up most any object in the game, people, cars, trucks, statues, signs, parts of buildings, heat them up, freeze them, use them as weapons, throw them, etc.

The game is loosely based on the movie with the occasional cut scene showing off similar key moments which go in line with the Superman Returns movie. None of the enemies you actually fight in the game itself were in the movie. Some of these enemies include Mongul, Metallo, Bizarro, robots and other strange unidentifiable creatures.

If you want to fight some baddies you can fly to the top of the world, looking down you will eventually see markers appear across the city indicating where bad things are / will happen when you fly to that location. You get to fight the above mentioned baddies, over and over and over again. For you button mashers out there it can get a bit tedious and more difficult to beat, but for those of you who think outside the box you can find many different and creative ways to tackle your foes, always keeping it interesting and changing up your attacks. My advice is to use some of Superman's better combo's as they become available, they're not difficult to master and much more effective. Also throwing cars, and other random objects are also highly effective against certain enemies, sometimes more so than just hitting them.

When fights insue across the town you will have ample opportunity to rescue downed citzens and fly them to help. There are also the occasional 5 alarm building fires you get to blow out.

They're races you can perform against Myxilplick (don't mind the spelling). The races add a nice little diversion from the normal game play. They're also 100 hidden kittens all over the city which will add powers-up's to the city's health and I don't know what else. You can also play as Bizzaro and have some fun tearing up the town or go bowling with the daily planet globe (which you can do as Superman as well)


Low Points and Suggested improvements:

The missions get very repetitive, but using some creativity in how you handle them or tackle your foes will help to break up the monotiny.

The city is beautiful and huge, but it would have been nice if you could have entered some of the buildings, maybe change to Clark Kent, maybe add some more interesting and diverse missions, puzzles or tasks rather than the same boring baddies over and over.

Unlike the games claims that you have "All of Supermans powers" you don't. You don't have most of Superman's Vision abilities, which include X-Ray, Telescopic and Microscopic visions. It really would have been nice at minimum, to have had Superman's telescopic vision, so that I could be positioned anywhere in the city and zoom in on any location with his (unfortunatly non-existent) telescopic vision.

The 100 hidden cats in the game that you can rescue can't be touched if bad guys suddenly show up unannounced or unexpectedly. This was a major irritation when I finally found some kittens and as I approached the kitten the game decided to throw some bad guys at me. When this happens the game doesn't allow you to save the kitten, so you're only option is to either fight or run, and hope you can find the kitten again when you get back. Again, this was majorly annoying and happened a few too many times.

Superman can't dive into the water or land on boats or cars (although you can toss them). At minimum you should be able to land on to the boats at the piers. It would have been a great bonus to submerge into the beautiful oceans as well, but I guess we can't have everything.

I don't like that once I pick up a car or object that the "only" way I can put it down is to toss it away, it would be nice to just be able to gently pick something like a car up, and place it back down again without wrecking the place if I don't want to.

When you're trying to save injured citizens, if there happens to be a non-injured citizen walking by or standing next to them, Superman has often picked up the healthy citzen instead of the one that's hurt. This has happened a few too many times and can be quite irritating. This can also happen during a fight where I may have intended to pick up an enemy or an object and instead end up picking up a passing by citizen.

The flying is great fun, though I would prefer a couple of changes in the control scheme, which would include being able to invert the up / down controls for flying. Also removing the necessity to press the "Y" button to take off or land. I'd much rather Superman automatically land when he aproaches / touches any ground surface, and using a tap of the Y to initiate a jump, (which Superman can't currently do) and holding Y to do the super take-off or maybe a super-jump.

Once you're done with the game you can't go back and select any bad guys or chapters to go over again, though not many "sandbox" style games allow you to do that. It would be nice to be able to fight Bizzaro or Mongul again on demand, or at least make them randomly appear in the random happenings that go on in the game once the story line has been completed.

I can see why they created a city "health bar" but at the same time it sucks if you just want to wreak some havoc and smash things, because if you do too much damage to the city (unless you're playing as Bizzaro) it ends the game. Thankfully there are cheat codes available to give the city unlimited health, as well as a code to play as Bizzaro.


Final Conclusion and Summary:

Overall I enjoyed the game, Metropolis looks spectacular and it's great fun to fly and use Superman's abilities, even if you don't have them all. Sadly though, the overall game play and missions become very repetitive with the only way of making them more interesting lieing in your ability to become more creative in how you tackle your enemies. It took me about 10 / 11 hours to complete the Story line, and about 12 / 13 hours for 100% completion (even though I didn't rescue all the kittens)

A better overall Superman game was for the PS2 called Superman, Shadow of Apokolips, based on the Animated series, and utilized Superman's other abilities, gave Superman tasks to peform as both Superman and Clark Kent that were fun, interesting and challenging, some of which requiring use of his X-Ray Vision to see through things, not to mention being able to use Superman's telescopic vision to help with different strategies.

For those of you who aren't die hard fans of Superman then this is only a "rental" quality game. But for those like me, I'm always going to have fun going back to the game from time to time so that I can have fun soaring the skys as Superman, (even though there's nothing much else of extreme interest to do when the story line's complete), then I would suggest buying it, either used or new. If the game had more elements like in the PS2's Superman Shawdow of Apokolips, it would have been a much better game.

Truly a masterpiece of schlock (sp). I was probably more excited than most when I saw the expo for Superman Returns in er.. I think it was Electronic Gaming. Anyways the screenshots were amazing the sheer immensity of Metallo was staggering and very impressive. To make what could be a long review short I must do two things with this: 1) tell all potential buyers not to, I will expound in a moment, and 2) create a new word to describe this game.

To any potential buyers of this game, please note that a rental is far more worth it. The true and ONLY fun this game offers is the first hour or so during the prologue and immediately after during your first 10 minutes of exploration around metropolis. There is NO depth to the game. The combat system stinks to high heaven, the voice acting and music are terrible, the boss encounters mightily disappointing, and the variety of encounters/missions are .... well, they're not even there.

Rent it, if you must, play it until your rational mind and dignity can't stand the beating any longer and send it to the mothers of these shameless video game producers who, once again, have duped some poor sap out of his (my) money.

Lastly, to describe my utter loathing of this game. Superman Returns is ridiculous and shameful in its complete lack of loyalty to all the Superman fans out there. To think that this would do the Man of Steel justice. It is also very retarded, yep, that's right retarded. Therefore combining the ridiculousness and retardedness of this game is best summerized in the word RETARDULOUS

...but failed to deliver! Superman is arguably one of the best comic book super heroes. I had such high hopes for Superman Returns. Unfortunately this game is by far the worst game I've played on Xbox 360. Viva Pinata and Lego Star Wars are better than this game. In fact I can honestly say this is the worst game I've EVER played. (and I have a pretty sizeable game library) I'll start with the good, since there is so much wrong with this game.

Pros: 1) Breaking the sound barrier while flying. Hands down this is the best part of the game. If you want to experience this, download the demo on XBL.
2) Huge open ended city. This city is designed to be seen from a distance. If you look closely you'll notice the programmers used copy and past for a lot of buildings and textures
3) Easy Xbox 360 achievement points. You can unlock all of the achievement points in about 12 hours of gameplay. (even less than that if you don't go for the "12 hours of gameplay" achievement)
4) Ummm... that's it!

Cons: 1) REPETATIVE!! The bad guys in between bosses are all the same! There's no variety! The main bosses all have about 3 lines that they repeat over and over and over again! To quote Will Ferrell from Zoolander, "They're all the same!! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
2) Not fun! This is the greatest sin a video game can commit! The game started off fun, but after 6 hours of playing I'm so frustrated I can't take it anymore. My wife even commented that it's not even fun to watch.
3) Poor controls. The controls are great if you're just flying around exploring the city, but once you get into a battle things quickly devolve. The lock on system is terrible. If you lock on to the wrong thing (a pedestrian or car instead of the bad guy) you can't just cycle through the available things to lock on (like every other game where you can lock on to things) you have to unlock, get your curser right on the guy you want and try to lock on again. As bad guys are constantly moving this quickly becomes a game of trial and error. The super speed button is great when you start flying and want to go straight up. It's also great for flying far above the city, but trying to use it while close to the ground or during a battle is horrid. For these situations it needs to be more of a gradual speed up. You're going 20 mph one second and 200 the next. It's very easy to fly right past your target and run into cars and buildings. That's another complaint! If you're superman, the man of steel, flying faster than the speed of sound and you run into a building, that building won't stop you. You should fly right through that building, not the case with this game. You simply leave a small dent in the building as you come to a complete stop. It's the same story while running and being completely halted by cars.
4) No story! In between fighting the same guys over and over you see clips from the movie. (They're not really from the movie; it's animated but the voice acting sounds like the stars from the movie)
5) Did I mention how repetitive this game is?

To sum things up, breaking the sound barrier is fun; everything else about this game is NOT! Now that Superman Returns is in the bargain bin, it MIGHT be worth it if you're really hard up for quick easy achievement points. But those points come with a price; it may be the longest 12 hours you spend in front of your TV. For the same monetary price I'd recommend Lego Star Wars. It's a lot more fun! The achievements take a lot longer and are a lot harder, but it is a truly fun game.

As far as games go, I can understand why this one has recieved such bad (at best mixed) reviews. I myself am a huge fan of the man of tommorow, and can't seem to put this game down. I've been waiting for a game to come along with just the right innovations to really make you feel as though you were playing the part of the worlds greatest hero. And for me, this game does just that.

The flight is extreemly innovative and cool (surround sound is superb for breaking the sound barrier) and the whole environment comes to life as you fly through it.
Sound design may well be the very best aspect of this game, as every little thing seems to make its own unique noise, and the soundtrack tempo changes with altitude and atmosphere.
The fight mechanics unfortunately offer nothing new other than the strength of a thousand mortal men, which is just fine for me, though I will admit the cammera tends to hinder things.
The biggest downside to this game is the short play time, and innevitable repetitiveness once the story is complete.
While the greatest aspect is the true feeling of being the man of steel, fighting with vilians is a constant juggling act. Take for example a battle with mongul, blast him high into the air with your superbreath to bide time as you race around the city saving the civilians he's harmed and putting out the fires he's caused, then race back with superspeed to land a few punches just as he touches down.

This is by far the greatest Superman game ever created, and yes I know that's not saying much, but it may also be the best superhero game I've ever played. If you are a fan of the man of steel, no matter how big or how small I'm positive you will enjoy this game, nothing delivers on the experience of being the big blue wonder better than this. (No not even strapping on a towel and belly flopping onto the couch.)

This is Superman Returns: The Videogame, not Superman Returns: the Movie. With that said it's only fair to review this game from a videogame's perspective and not compare it to the movie. Yes, it has some elements from the film, but those elements were obviously too few to make a great game. And so, the developers wisely added additional elements that are derived from Superman lore, to include 70+ years of Superman history!

I liked the fact that even though Superman is invincible, Metropolis is not. The city takes damage as chaos reigns. This feature has to be one of the greatest decisions ever made for a videogame. After all, protecting Metropolis and its citizens from all danger is Superman's prime objective. And why ask why there are dragons in the city? Can you say Mister Mxyzptlk? Anything, and everything thing happens with that guy around.

This game also gives you the ability to save your progress at anytime. So there is no excuse and reason to start over from the very beginning of a chapter.

Overall the final product is astonishing; this is the BEST superman game ever made. Ever wanted to be the man of steel? This is your chance!