Superman is finished! After 14 weeks of 23 separate Superman games, we can put the Man of Tomorrow behind us. What have we learned about the Big Blue Boy Scout in that time? Well…
Brainiac is apparently Superman’s Greatest Foe
Sad but true: whether alone or in a party (/league), Superman’s most common foe is not Lex Luthor or Darkseid, it’s Brainiac. The Big Brain am winning again in many titles from the 80’s straight through to 2017’s Injustice 2. And that’s a fighting game! What is a dude known for his smarts doing in a fighting game?
Then again, maybe that is the appeal of Brainiac. Lex Luthor is an nth level intelligence, but has to get the handicap of a robot suit or Lexor Mech to actually join the fray. Brainiac is an alien with augments from across the galaxy, so Supes can wail on him to his heart’s content. And if we want to claim Brainiac is the reason Krypton exploded? All the better! Pathos and laser beams do make for the perfect final boss.
And the other reason Brainiac works so well in gaming…
Superman hates Robots
Superman is super, man, so it is downright unsporting for him to battle an average dude. Give ‘em guns or Apokolips technology or whatever? It doesn’t matter. Superman is going to tank a few hits and then punch through their torsos with the same effort you or I would use to order a pizza. And this isn’t a Batman or Spider-Man situation where you can mentally justify that this hero might be pulling their punches; no, Superman just tossed a car over the horizon. If he wallops that crook, Metropolis’s Public Works is going to be power washing his intestines out of the sidewalk for the next week.
But robots? Brother, Superman can punch robots all day. Nobody cares about robots, and you can even claim the robots all have super strength or other enhancements. Never mind that a supervillain could “take over the Earth” by simply selling a robot as strong as Superman to any given construction company. No, they all must be homicidal and justifying their glowing, red eyes. And Superman’s greatest foes churn these things out like they’ve got an assembly line! Brainiac has so many random robots lying around, Superman is doing him a favor. Too much inventory? Gotta stop by Earth and have a few put down by the kryptonian.
In a pinch, though, you could use a parademon or two (thousand). If Darkseid is not sharing this week, stick Supes in a virtual reality where nothing is real. It worked in the arcade, and it worked on the Nintendo 64, so what could possibly go wrong?
The preferred assault vehicle for attacking Superman is the helicopter
Forget tanks or spaceships: the humble helicopter is Superman’s number one vehicular foe. This… has to be based on something, right? Because helicopters cannot be known for their durability in the same universe that contains known robot-man Metallo. Maybe Lex Luthor just owns a bunch of ‘em? Whatever the reason, helicopters pop up a lot in Superman games, and not once do you get the ability to grab a rotating blade and watch the whole thing drop to the Metropolis sidewalk like a bag full of flour tossed off the Daily Planet Building. Major missed opportunity.
Superman does not have colleagues
Let’s stop looking at the foes and move over to the friends. Bad guys are a problem for everybody, but good guys inevitably make Superman worse.
Even within the context of his earlier games, Superman is a protagonist with a laundry list of superpowers. And these are good powers for videogames! Flight grants you mobility options, heat vision is an accessible projectile, and ice breath or super breath allows for some light “puzzle” gameplay with freezing/moving skills. Superman can do it all, and he should be as skilled at adapting to new videogame challenges as everyone’s favorite flying wrecking ball, Kirby. He’s got all the moves to make any scenario fun/fight elder gods!
But you put Superman in a group, and suddenly his usefulness drops by half. Martian Manhunter is the only Justice Leaguer that approaches the same number of powers as Superman (and even that fact is more of a clerical error of people forgetting J’onn’s arsenal over the years). Once you get past the green guy, you have a series of heroes and heroines that are gifted with powers beyond that of mortal man… but still mostly only have one thing. Hawkgirl flies. Flash runs fast. Black Canary screams. And they all have martial arts expertise or equivalent, but nothing like Superman’s literally Earth-shattering strength. Even the superheroes that have flexible abilities, like Zatanna with her magic or any Green Lantern with the wishing rings, fail to ever hit on something as instant as “Superman has a button for eye lasers”. You can technically program a videogame to star a character that can do anything! Why is Green Lantern only slinging three separate constructs!?
So when Superman has to pal around with his buddies, his abilities are similarly neutered. He can’t unbalance the scales, so his punches are reduced to Batman level. He can’t have a million superpowers, so his “special” button is just as rigid as when it is used by Green Arrow (he fires an arrow). And even in fighting games, where Superman busting out Super Ventriloquism with a fireball motion could be his whole deal, he is restricted to a handful of special moves. Raiden at least had the excuse of accepting mortal limits in Mortal Kombat, what is Superman’s defense for having no more options than a land-locked Aquaman?
And speaking of Superman being reduced by his friends…
The Man of Cheap Cardboard
There are two iconic images of Superman. Close your eyes, and you either see Superman soaring through the clouds with a weirdly perfect horizontal orientation, or you envision a spit-curled hero flexing as bullets bounce harmlessly off his chest. And while flight was (almost) universally adapted to Superman’s gaming adventures, general invincibility rarely made the cut. Superman (Atari) had a Superman that could be penalized by Kryptonite, but was otherwise indestructible. From that point on, however, Superman had a rapidly decreasing health bar like any other gaming protagonist. In fact, some titles (like Superman [Sega Genesis] or Superman: The Man of Steel) saw a not-so-Superman that would go down in all of five hits. He’s supposed to be invincible, guys! At least throw him some i-frames!
Somehow, the situation gets even worse when invincibility of some kind is included. Superman Returns gave us a super-Superman, but he had to protect the whole city at all times, so “losing health” was equivalent to misfiring an eye laser into the crowd during a robot fight, or accidentally freezing an ambulance (now everyone inside just needs a jacket! No big deal!). The New Adventures of Superman saw kryptonite weapons that could temporarily de-power Superman, which just meant you failed the mission as badly as if you were losing health, but with the added benefit of it taking longer. Hooray!
In 46 years of Superman videogames, the only game that managed to still have “challenges”, be entertaining, and allow our boy invincibility was…
Justice League: Cosmic Chaos
Huh.
And he had a pile of special moves in that game, too.
Welp, guess we learned one thing from this whole experience. Cute Superman is the best Superman.
Next Week: After talking about Superman so long, Even Worse Streams is taking a week off so I can talk about when Superman was terrible.
