Game #1008: Superman - Shadow of Apokolips

  Superbad

 Superman has never had much luck with videogames, and Superman: Shadow of Apokolips is no exception. The game looked promising enough, and while I was never a fan of Superman(At least until he became Superman Blue and Red) I did somewhat like his animated series, although never as much as Batman's.

 The game controls are a bit on the awkward side. Tap X to punch or hold it to pick up stuff. But if you want to drop what you picked up you must hold down X, in order to throw it... double tap X. Because that makes sense. Holding down triangle performs heat vision but double tapping it does the incomparably more useful heat blast. You hover with the right analog stick but fly forward holding down R2, you can't reverse down-to-fly-up/up-to-fly-down which was super awkward. Flying speed is mediocre, but you can hold down R2+Square+X to perform the Speed bullet flying attack... or just to move faster while flying. You have X-Ray vision, which you only need in a single level, by holding down L2 to go into first person and then holding down circle to make walls appear transparent. It's so dumb, thankfully you never need to use it again. You can also use heat vision in first person, but you'll never ever need it. As a matter of fact, since it roots you to the spot, you'd better not even try to use hit vision in first person mode.

 The crux of the problem is not only in how cumbersome the controllers can feel, or how choppy grabbing things can be, since Supes awkwardly tries to reposition himself before trying to pick something up, but in how weightless everything feels. You're playing as the man of steel, you hit harder than a truck, yet your punches feel so week when attacking enemies, Supes throwing speed is so pathetic.... it really feels super unsatisfying. It doesn't help that the game is rather boring, because animations lack any oomph behind them the game is ANYTHING but exciting.

 Oh and some mission objectives are timed, you must endure enemy fire WHILE you try to figure out what to do. Some of these timed objectives are so harsh that a single mistake will force you to retry. And there's no quick retry option, so if you notice you messed up... you have to wait the timer out. Eventually I figured out that on this missions it's better to just take the enemy fire and ignore enemies, otherwise you won't have enough time to complete them. It's so dumb!

 Speaking of dumb, after I cleared the second level and the end-level cutscene played out... Superman got stuck running against a wall instead of going through the door, clearly a sign of things to come! Oh and the final four levels are bosses, they aren't even hard but they are SO boring. The final two fights against Metallo last FOREVER. Jesus....

 I... I didn't like this game. For whatever reason I had some kind of hope that the game was halfway decent, but it was boring at best and annoying at worst. If I had to say anything good about the game... I guess the presentation was on point, with colorful, simple graphics that evoked an episode from the show, plus, I'm pretty sure the original voice actors lent their voices to the game, which was pretty neat.

 3.0