Movies
“Superman Returns: The Videogame” Hands-On Report
FEAR AND LOATHING IN FLORIDA: SUPERMAN RETURNS
By Neal BaileyThis will be a three part review... firstly, a detailing of the trip to EA, secondly a review of the game in question (with plenty of images), and lastly, a series of videos taken during a presentation and question and answer session.
In short, everything you ever wanted to know about the Superman Returns video game... and more.
PART 1 - THE TRIP
I got the word from Barry Freiman, without whom this whole affair wouldn't have been possible, that he had a line on something called an "EA Community Day."How euphemistic, I thought, not knowing what the heck that meant. Barry said that I was a bigger computer geek, which is true, and so he sacrificed what would essentially become an all-expenses paid trip to EA in Florida that I might go and debauch in the name of Superman information, journalistic integrity, and free food.
For this, Barry, I salute you.
My usual schedule is approximately noon wake-up, followed by writing and construction work until about two in the morning, two hours of unwinding and eating, and then sleep. But for Superman Returns, I would adjust myself to eastern time, waking at approximately 1 AM after a three day turnaround (not bad for a guy who never uses an alarm clock), and fly trans-continental to meet people I'd never before seen.
My contact, Jonathan Long, booked me a fine several flights, which I enjoyed. I liken takeoff to love, a rush, the ears pop, a feeling lighter than air. I love planes and plane rides. You're sure you're going to die and yet you never do, and when you hit the ground you're always grateful to the point of optimism, rare in a journalist.
The first plane ride I sat next to an annoying little hunk of human waste who was too self-absorbed and impolite to assert himself, while asserting himself annoyingly in several ways. By which I mean he asserted himself in a superficial way, dressing for success in the oh-so-original khaki pants and a button-up shirt. He arrived late, delaying the plane, and when he sat down he threw his things onto the chair, hitting me. I put my arms on the very edge of the arm rest, reading my book quietly, but when the guy sat down he actually had the gall to take his arm and SHOVE me off the armrest.
Well, I'm no slouch and I'm not one to be pushed around, so I planted my arm right back where it was, added a few inches, and set it in full construction mode. The weasley little b#$t#rd couldn't move my arm, but oh, for the rest of the flight he tried. He slammed his arm into mine, pushed me, slapped papers in my face. Basically I think he thought because I had long hair and act politely I would act like anyone else he barked or looked at funny and show my belly.
The best moment came when, halfway through the flight, he popped open the expensive flashy laptop he'd slammed into the chair (and me) and found that despite a full battery, the thing wouldn't turn on. He'd broken his laptop with his haughty demeanor.
I managed a laugh, pushed my arm in a little further, and he stopped pushing me for the rest of the flight, pausing only to berate a waitress for something that five minutes later meant nothing to anyone but likely ruined her day.
The guy stood and held up the aisle when we arrived twenty minutes late thanks to baggage check rules imposed by the TSA after 9-11 that don't really prevent any terrorism, just add bureaucracy, and the captain came on, asserting that some people were almost too late to get their transfer. I was one of them.
He blocked the aisle, and people began shouting out their connection times. His was an hour after the plane landed. I shoved him out of the way this time, and ran for broke.
In Denver the gates were close, so I blasted my way through and came in at the final boarding call, seating myself next to two very kind individuals who allowed me arm room, didn't flash their cash, and said please and thank you to the waitresses. A pleasant, albeit expected surprise. Humans should just be human to one another, right?
The Orlando airport is the most confusing known to man. I arrive at 3:26, walk down the transom, and immediately my face begins to melt in the liquid heat. I pull the cape a little higher, they take me into the journalist vampire lounge and give me a few pints of blood, and off I go to the rail that takes me to baggage claim, where I meet Jon and a few other folks from the gaming world and online fiefdom. Great guys.
I've always been out of my mind with fear and apprehension at the idea of swag and free anything. Even the idea of getting paid to write, which I have yet to do, really, beyond a few books (and at that I remain in the negative column in spending, so is it really making money?) is enough to curl my toes and make me swat at the air around me. There's a certain unmitigated finkishness to the people who would turn art into a commodity, and they're everywhere, just beyond the fog and waiting to put me into their conversion machine.
Imagine my apprehension, then, when I haven't really been able to stay in a hotel, say, ever, or fly until this year (and that at a great cost in debt) to deal with the moral implications of a corporate entity flying me 2,700 miles, putting me up in a swanky hotel (free Starbucks and everything), showing me a game I'm sure to love, offering me swag, giving me meals, open bar, you name it. How can you not shill?
The answer to this and the reason I accepted is because if the game had been a violation, an affront to God and a stink-o-rama, I honestly know in my heart I would say so to you guys. I mean, I know people in the comics and TV industry, that doesn't stop me from flaying their work if it sucks, even when, maybe, who knows, had I thrown a fight or two along the way, I might be a welterweight champion, or perhaps at very least a fill-in writer on Birds of Prey?
My relief, then, when Jon turned out to be a normal, cool, gaming and Superman fan like me, you can't imagine. We shot it, he, I, and the rest of the journalists, and padded our numbers until we had sufficient troops to mount an assault on the main camp at EA. Delayed flights and terminal confusion brought things down to a slow crawl, but it was good, because it allowed me to get acquainted with my fellow writers, including SUIT COAT GUY, a wry, affable type who spent a good deal of time assuaging my socially maladroit style of human dialogue, and who put up with about fifteen hundred threats to Alex Rodriguez's life when we watched the Yankees lose to Detroit on Saturday. (Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners over money and thusly deserves to have his liver eaten and regrown daily.)
We go out to what I expect to be a van, and instead, there's a stretch limo. Never been in a stretch limo before, so it was neat. I piled in, and there were sodas, drinks, all kinds of stuff. Nobody took any, but the leather seats were soft, nice.
We yakked about Superman, the state of Smallville. General consensus was that most kids think Smallville IS Superman, and have no definition beyond it, and we spoke to that a bit.
It takes a long time to drive around Orlando, which surprised me, but it was pleasant, if low country. The foliage on the east coast is coarser and more mean somehow than it is here. Swampy and darker and a bit staccato.
At EA Games, they walked us through into a giant, corporate looking foyer with high glass walls and impressive architecture. Archetypical, yes, but what looked like a fine place to work.
I got a badge that asserted I was press (Mwu ha ha ha, my second despite 420 articles), and we were allowed to walk through security and into the building, where I immediately began pulling anything that wasn't nailed down off the walls and into my pouch. Well, nah, but that would have been fun, because there was a LOT.
We went up into a board room, where they had on display the models of the city that were shown a long while back. There were also signed copies of all the Identity Crisis comics on the wall by Brad, and a ton more people who had arrived before we did.
We watched a video that shows off the features and villains of the game. A roster includes: Metallo, Overload, Bizarro, Riot, Mongul, Mxyzptlk, and more. The video was impressive on the big screen, even if the size was smaller because of the computer screen. We took some pictures of the varying models (shown in this article) and took off for food.
At Wildside, the restaurant we went to, it was open bar, open food, good times. I had some alligator, I believe it was. Better than the frog I had in Chicago. Tender, awesome. I'm going to have to eat one of the ones in my trap door.
The waitresses were bloody HOT. I know waitresses are pretty much always on the decent side, the business being what it is (much to my denial of promotion in the field as a youngster despite moderately attractive breasts), but here, cat whistle, my friend. Cat whistle.
But I had to keep my integrity, so I turned my attention to Jeff Peters in front of me, asking him about the specifics of creating a game, writing a game, and his private assessment of the game outside of the auspices of PR. It'd be shooting himself in the foot to knock the game in private, so yes, I took it with a grain of salt, but typically I'm pretty good at assessing a person, and Jeff obviously very strongly believed in the project.
I conducted an unprofessional geekgasm minor Q and A before I was supposed to, and learned many of the things which will be in the review. Needless to say, Jeff has worked on a lot of games, and obviously seemed incredibly passionate about the game. So much so that despite the fact that I hadn't played it, I was psyched. Not with encouragement from him, even though I expected to be inundated with PR and wasn't, but more just because a few beers were downed, we started gabbing about the game, and he had an obvious passion. He'd worked on games from Crystalis to now, and I know he knew what he was talking about and doing. It was cool to interact with a professional.
We ride back to the hotel, and get our room keys. Of course, I'm somehow not on the list, so they try to charge my card. I tell them, "No! We're hired geeks!" in my best Johnny Depp/Hunter Thompson, and Jon comes over and clears things upÊpost haste.
I TOTALLY missed my opportunity to swagger drunkenly (though sober) and state, "HI THERE!" (pause) "My name is... uhrrrrrRaoul Duke. On the list. TOTAL COVERAGE. I realize that his name is not on that list... but WE MUST HAVE A SUITE! What's the score here?"
I did manage to turn on the way up the elevator, however, and say, "PLEASE! Tell me about the @*#%$ golf shoes!"
Okay. Be calm. Name, rank, and press affiliation. Nothing else.
Inside my room I had the opportunity for debauchery. I was never the kid who snuck out in the middle of the night at camp, though. I find it enough of a relief, after months and months on end of writing and writing and constructing, to simply watch police chase videos and Bill Maher that I can't afford on HBO.
The pool, just off my room, sat empty. I considered going out there alone, but... meh. Instead I simply looked around this 450 dollar a night hotel room that I would never and will never be able to afford, wondered why the heck a breakfast toast with orange juice costs fifteen dollars, and looked at the bed three times larger than my own with apprehension before sinking into it and falling into instant sleep.
The next day I sprint out an hour early, thinking I'm ten minutes late. Jon politely informs me that I'm early. I inform myself that I'm mentally retarded, drink coffee, then return to the vans, which take us to EA.
We go through the studio and see a number of notable rooms. The room where the stars recorded the dialogue for the video game, the rooms where they playtest, the rooms where they unwind on modded arcade cabinets (too awesome).
I also saw concept art for things that didn't make the eventual game, including The Parasite, and an incredible homage to the first Superman cover, only over the new city. Photos can be found in part three of all of this awesomeness.
All around were copies of prototype games. I wish I had no morality sometimes, because it would have been a fun few days before they hauled me off.
The game designers had some awesome computer setups, including buffered rooms so they can crank up the sound and playtest and remove bugs. It's a dream job, really it is.
Then there was the "cubicle" area, where people were packed in like sardines. Most were fanatical Superman fans, lining their walls with Superman statues. This is obviously a dedicated crew.
Then, we visited Heaven. Er, rather, the EA Games store. We walked through the door and were told to get two games for our "get" bag.
"What's a get bag?" I ask.
"Swag." I am told.
"Oh."
We learn that we can buy stuff too, so I peruse the aisles. Tons of games that I've wanted to play, none that I've been able to afford at fifty dollars a pop. If anything could test my loyalty to honest reviewing, this would be it. The guy behind the counter was actually in a red suit with horns. Well, not really, but that would have been funny, and apt.
I took Godfather, and Battle For Middle Earth 2, and decided to flat-out buy Command and Conquer, because I've never played it and heard it was great.
They charge me ten dollars.
TEN DOLLARS.
I fly back to the shelf and grab two more games. And a coffee cup. And before they can stop me, a yo-yo.
Forty bucks total. The place was like your first trip to the military commissary when you're poor and hungry. "What? Fifty cans of tuna... for ten bucks? Not five?"
Military families will know what I mean unless that's changed in the last ten years.
We sit down and watch a few presentations and do a Q and A, most of which is on the videos in part three of this report. I apologize for the grainy quality and the sound. It's the best camera I could afford last time I refinanced (and as a Mini-DV is still not too shabby), but it was a dark room during a multi-media presentation, and the sun was going in and out of clouds (that's why it gets dark sometimes). Regardless, it's exclusive here, pretty much, because no one else got video, and it's also a TON of great info if you're willing to listen for it.
If you miss the answers to any of the questions on the video or have any of your own, I'll monitor comments and answer away.
We then sat down to play, which I'll save for the game portion.
Finished, we got our get bags, an Xbox hat, an EA shirt, a CD holder case, and the games. Really kind of them, actually.
I look at it in two ways. They could have sent me an advance copy of the game with an Xbox 360 for about 500 dollars, and then I could have a very in-depth review, or instead, they spend 2,000-2,500 on a flight and a hotel stay. The experience was incredible, and I'm totally grateful for it, and I'm still psyched for the game, I'm just a bit confused. I think it's because... and maybe this is the discovery of the trip for me, even though I personally can't be bought, I'm noticing the media can.
Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that the trip rocked, the game rocked, the people rocked, the entire trip did nothing but reaffirm my faith in this game and gear me up for it, which I didn't expect from a complimentary wooing.
We went to a basketball theme restaurant and yelled at the Yankees. I ended up talking too much about my crazy neighborhood with the guys. No one ever believes the story about the crackhead who fell into my foyer and demanded a ride is true, but it makes a good story, anyway.
I tried one of the basketball games and got six points in 45 seconds. My game is baseball. Universal Studios loomed in the background, and I heard the Chili Peppers playing. Or at least, it sounded like a karaoke version of the Chili Peppers. But thinking back, I think it was the real Peppers. As I recall, their live shows reflect their singular lack of charisma with me. Fake, sad, almost punk/pop/funk. But a decent backdrop for people in a giant, fluorescent cocoon. Beautiful.
Back at the hotel I couldn't sleep. It's like a guy who lives in the woods sleeping indoors. I can't go from a place with gunshots at night and people rattling my door in the middle of the night, where screams down the street and sirens are regular, to a nice, quiet, clean hotel room that's huge without feeling out of sorts.
When I woke up in the morning I went to the plane with Jon, said my goodbyes, handed out a few copies of Madly, and sat down for my first non-stop transcontinental flight.
The decision to flee came suddenly. Or maybe not. Maybe I'd planned it all along, subconsciously waiting for the right moment. The bill was a factor, I think, because I had no money to pay for it. Our room service tabs had been running somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty-six dollars per hour, for forty-eight consecutive hours. Incredible. How could it happen? But by the time I asked this question, there was no one around to answer it. That rotten attorney of mine, Dr. Younis was gone. He must have sensed trouble.
The feeling of love back in my chest, beginning my ascent, I looked out past the wing and saw the world falling away and thought, "Man, the EA store is better than this."
But not by much.
PART 2 - THE GAME
I'm guessing you skipped right down here, and I don't blame you. HOW WAS THE GAME, you scream, pounding on your scroll button.I disclaimed above that I would not pull any punches. No matter how much they pay for or offer me, I will call this game EXACTLY as I see it.
Thankfully, it is a rewarding and fulfilling experience. The game overwhelmed my expectations and forced me to acknowledge, grudgingly, that it's a system seller. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get an Xbox 360 for this game. It's THAT good.
You know how when the technology shifts, there's always a moment where there's a game or part in a game that's so cool your utility meter suddenly shifts from "Oh, that's kind of neat" to "MUST OWN. NOW!" That was my first moment with this game. That moment where you're actually jerking WITH the game, and fighting with the controller for more power, dodging the debris flying at you onscreen in real life. The "OH WOW" moment of gaming that makes you feel either too old or on the cusp of the next wave of technology.
No 360 title has done that for me before this one.
The basic premise of the game is Grand Theft Auto without the "questionable" content and plus, well, about eight hundred ways to use powers, no load screens, and an increase in scope.
I played San Andreas top to bottom, and there's a LOT to be said for exploration. The game is unique, and there are things that game offers that no other game could, like beating the bejesus out of people to pop off steam. But Superman Returns essentially places you in a similar role. You start out on Warworld fighting Mongul and a host of his baddies as a tutorial (which in itself is a massive level), and then, once you're acquainted to the controls you're dropped into the city of Metropolis and left there for the remainder of the game. Many will likely complain about this. This is a shallow complaint to me, as, which you'll realize when you play, the city is eighty square miles in size. To give you an idea, San Andreas was seventeen square miles in size. The city is HUGE and will leave you more than enough room to explore. If you've played GTA, you realize how utterly huge that is. If you haven't, realize that it takes about 40 hours to fully explore GTA.
This game can be completed by an expert in five hours. There are twelve hours of major battles for the average gamer. There are, however, over a hundred side missions, including the Bizarro ones I'll mention, and I'm guessing personally that it'll take me between twenty-five and forty hours to complete this game.
As another factor, in Grand Theft Auto, when you do take to the air after arduous campaigning, you fly straight up into the air and can only go to a certain height, and the city basically loses its detail. In this game, you can fly up to a factor of ten almost instantaneously at 600 miles an hour, then look down and still see every detail.
The graphics are incredibly tight. Everything is smooth. I played the game on a 24 inch LCD screen, which you might not be playing on, and I played the Xbox 360 version, not the Playstation 2 version, but nonetheless, I'm almost positive it will translate.
The best part of this game, which surprised the heck out of me, is the gameplay. I mean, I saw the screen captures, and my first impression was that the game would be a tour-de-force of graphics for the Xbox 360, but probably fail miserably like the other Superman games in the past in terms of play.
The controls are very basic. Super speed on the top, right trigger for powers and left trigger to lock on. Directional pad to select power. Movement with the left joystick, and direction with the right. Y takes off and lands. X punches. A picks things up and throws them. B drops things and blocks, which you can use to execute a quick dodge at literal superspeed. Not only is the enemy surprised, you're surprised with how fast you got behind them.
Intuitive, the game play is easy to pickup from the start. You begin with punching, throwing, flying, and powers, all of Superman's abilities except x-ray vision. Hearing is simulated through the GTA style "event" exclamation points. You can ignore them, or follow them, but either way, you hear them from afar, which is a neat way to use the power, I think.
The game uses the Havok engine. No idea what that means. You might. All I know is that I liked it.
As the game progresses, you learn more combos, get handier with the controls, and it's really less of a leveling experience, which works well, because leveling doesn't make as much sense with Superman. Rather, it's an improvement, as through experience. You start out with heat vision, and then gain the tactic of using it to nuke a city block. Or you know how to punch at the start, but through practice you can use flurries of blows and combinations, which continue and are not overly complex but nonetheless multitudinous.
The experience system is in place as a way of unlocking combos, but doesn't really hinder the power. They raise the threats to meet the new tactics, which is cool, because you fight heroes on Warworld who later come to Earth, and then it's easier to fight them, but you employ the new tactics on them when they attack in concert. It's a smartly designed reward system, up to and including a dynamic difficulty level. If you lose, it subtly adjusts the difficulty imperceptibly, so you feel like you're doing better but playing at the same difficulty. I had to be told by Jeff that it went down a bit. That's one heck of a reward schedule there, and it's impressive how flawless they ironed that out.
The best part of the game, hands-down, is the flight. You go at a steady pace until you burst into super-speed, which literally makes you lean back. It goes from the 150 MPH steady flight to 600 MPH in an instant, and plateaus slowly after that, still gaining speed, until you break the sound barrier not once, but twice.
Yeah. And it's pretty accurate, you feel the booms. I can't imagine what it'll be like with my subwoofer, but I'm giggling already.
You blast through the city, which compensates for the intensive speeds by allowing you to shift left and right quickly near objects, as Superman would, and you can drop from flight to superspeed running without any pause, and then back to flight. You can fight at 600 MPH without difficulty, and I still don't know how they heck they did that.
The chief flaws people will complain about is non-linear progression if you're a level fan (bah!), the fact that there's no Clark Kent level (which is addressed in the video, what the heck are you going to do as Clark Kent anyway?), and two mitigating factors. One, why can't you go through buildings, and two, why no x-ray vision? Well, and why can't you throw people into the distance, but I'll get to that.
The reason you can't go through buildings is that with such detail, the engine is already incredibly taxed. That's the real answer, and it's a fair one. I would rather have the features I have then less detail and play control and the ability to mindlessly bash through buildings. The PR reason is that DC wouldn't allow it because Superman wouldn't do that. I buy that too.
The x-ray vision wouldn't really add anything to this game, since there are no interior levels and no real benefit to having it, really. Maybe in the sequel, but I don't regret it at all. In the few attempts I've seen to do x-ray vision in a game, it always sucks, because you just have to go halfway. There's no way a game can make it so you can see through everything. It's just not possible. I like it being subdued. It makes it into cut scenes, that's fine by me.
And the fact that it's an open-world sim and you can't decimate is rectified by the fact that you're forced to decimate. Superman doesn't, because it's out of character, but Mxy steps in, turns Superman into Bizarro, and makes him decimate as much as possible in as little time as possible, which is awesome. Flying a hundred feet into the air and using super-suck breath to yank people into a giant pile of cars and masses before blowing them up with heat breath is incredible.
Don't think you won't get to feed that inner destructive demon. It's there.
Another very selling factor in this game is the "life" system. You use your powers, and, true to the character, you need to rest. Like, for instance, if you go postal with heat vision for half a minute, you've got to stop for a minute, but it charges quickly. And yes, if you fly up toward the sun, it recharges much faster. Sky battles with dragons next to flaming dirigibles (yes, I just wrote that) are particularly awesome.
That's the powers, which are separate and unending. Superman can't die and nothing takes away his powers (a large factor in deleting the Parasite level), so you keep having fun.
The only thing that can stop you is a profound sense of guilt at having failed to save the city. Wooooooo, tah. Do they get it, or what? The more property damage, the more the "city's" life meter goes down, and when it's destroyed, you lose. Which means you just start the battle over again. It's not frustrating, there's no super-hard level in the middle of a super-easy string. And it's not fast, either. It takes a lot of damage to lose faith.
You can use the surroundings in a dynamic way, and use illogical or logical but uncommon ways to solve problems. For instance, if a building is on fire but you can't stay on all four sides, you grab the fire truck that's pulled up and is spraying water, stick it on a nearby rooftop aiming at the fire, and get the other side of the building while it covers you from the roof. Don't worry, the cops get themselves down.
You can swing posts like baseball bats. You can pull off water towers, and one of the first awards, of which there are many, is bowling with the Daily Planet.
Enemies can literally be blown a mile away from the battle and have to work their way back to fight you.
The battles are incredible. Dragons, aliens, Mongul, Metallo in several forms, tornadoes you unspin, all kinds of really, really great stuff. Riot's even in there for you fellow Carlin geeks.
There are little Easter Eggs all over, too. A Big Belly Burger, complete with the statue you can tear off and throw around. The Hypersector. Suicide Slums.
Marv Wolfman helped to write while he did the novel, and there are even bits of the Return to Krypton sequence. Flint Dille, a well-known video game writer, also worked on the game.
Simply put, not only is this a must for Superman fans, it's a bloody incredible game outside of the context. Call me a shill if you want, I was blown away by this game. If you think I'm saying this because I got the trip, check my other reviews where I openly declare that the product was swag (what few there are). I've ripped apart stuff people have given me for free. Those of you who know me know I can be really, really hard on stuff. This game leaves little to criticism.
This game is a Superman fan's dream come true, and a benchmark that future Superman games will have to try and beat.
Outside of the game itself, there's the stuff surrounding the game, which I'd be remiss if I didn't go into.
They worked with the movie division to create the work, but the game is independent of the film. It works around the story, touching big points in the plot but not following the game linearly. The explanation being the movie is two major action pieces and an hour and a half of characterization, which is more than fair.
They had an airplane level originally, but it was hard to make the play dynamic, mostly because you're just controlling the speed of descent, which has nothing on the wide array of playability the rest of the game has. It would be a step back, and I buy that.
They worked with Sam Huntington, Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, and Kevin Spacey to create the cutscenes, some of which are in the video section of this report. All in all, the cutscenes are nowhere near as good as the film, but serve as a good, interesting bridge to more of that awesome gameplay. It's also neat to see the scenes re-imagined.
Yes, there will be multiple suits unlockable as you progress. There are a hundred kittens strewn throughout the city to rescue, and a ton of side quests that unlock, gradually, a ton of special stuff. I know there will be a Golden Age suit, but they were mum on others, simply stating that we'll be pleased.
Superman fights Mongul in the silver suit from the return to Krypton, which is another unlockable suit we know of.
Bits of development fluff... originally, they had planned on a Casey style Mxy with a more malevolent bent, but instead sacrificed it on DC's insistence to a more light-hearted affair. Also odd, DC nixed the Superman original cover homage, and... PHONE BOOTHS. Yeah, they were apparently stringently against phone booths beyond debris. They're trying to disassociate Superman from the phone booth, allegedly. I won't say who alleged, but I trust the person.
Anti-phoneboothistas! DC, you're on notice.
They cringed whenever we mentioned the delay. Word is that it's because of the forced presentation of E3 and the desire to have the best game possible (which they succeeded in doing). The impression that I got was that the E3 situation forced you to stop developing the game and make a one-time only flashbang for fanboys instead of focusing on the work. The team seemed relieved that E3 was cut back, not out of fear that they had a bad game, but because it's like showing a comic book when it's being broken down and expecting a fair judgment.
I'm glad they chose a better game over money, myself.
They did cancel the PSP version because it wasn't good enough to meet their standards. Most art-for-money endeavors don't really care about quality as long as there's a chance to make money. They also delayed the game for quality. That seems like a strike to some people. To me it's a boon.
I got a strict "NO COMMENT" on next-gen or other systems, including the PC, beyond the already announced. I did hear a "Wouldn't it be cool to use the Wii stick on this game?" that got a "Yeah, wouldn't it? But no comment" reply. It seems obvious to me that this game will be a success and get ported out to other systems, though. I would bank on it, even though they wouldn't give me odds.
You CAN visit the Fortress. Not fly around it, but that's where you access the concept art, of which there's a lot, where you check the combos, watch cut screens, pick how to spend your exp, and other cool stuff. It's the pause menu, essentially. It's neat.
You can fly up into the stratosphere, but not into space. Trust me, it's high enough. Yeah, space would have been neat, but honestly, with as high as you can go, you don't really need it or miss it.
There are no airplanes, just dirigibles, because planes would have slowed the graphic engines. You don't notice it unless you're looking for it.
There is no Smallville. Just Warworld and Metropolis. Trust me, it's big enough. Eighty miles.
You cannot enter buildings. But there's enough open air it's not a hindrance.
The Parasite was cut despite an awesome picture in the concept art you can see because it would have required more time, but also because it was a bummer to take away powers when they're so cool. I agree. More stuff for the sequel.
Another, really beneficially cool thing they mentioned is the fact that the game has NO sponsors. You're not going to see a Coke billboard on the city. I asked them if it wasn't perhaps foolhardy to turn down production money for more content to take that ad hit, playing devil's advocate, and their response was essentially my own, that integrity is important, and they're already satisfied with the game. Of all of the things I saw that weekend, that surprised and pleased me the most, especially from a large corporate entity like EA you'd think would be about the cash.
All in all, a great game. Any additional questions, you can drop a line in the comments, I'll be here. Otherwise, enjoy the media!
Neal Bailey
FEAR AND LOATHING IN FLORIDA HONOR ROLL (courtesy Jonathan Long):
Chris Gray - Executive Producer
Jeff Peters - Supervising Producer
Tony Marinello - Software Engineer
Sergio Bustamente - Associate Producer
Sam Hoffer - Video Specialist
Peter Lehman - Audio Specialist
Jesse James Allen- Audio Specialist
Mathias Lorenz- Art Director
Jim Ferris - Product Manager
Andy Vittor - Marketing Assistant
Jonathan Long - Community Manager Electronic Arts
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Pre-Order Links
You can pre-order the game from Amazon.com using the links below, and help support the Superman Homepage.
- Type: Xbox 360
Title: Superman Returns
Produced by: EA Games.
Date: November 20, 2006
ASIN: B000F1UK3Q
Product Description:
When villains run rampant, only one man can rescue a world in peril. Will you be able to master your super powers to save Metropolis? Inspired by the Warner Bros. feature film and more than 60 yrs. of DC Comics' lore. As the Man of Steel, you'll hone your unworldly super powers such as Flight, X-Ray Vision, Heat Vision, Super Hearing, Strength, Speed and Breath. Play through this huge open world exactly how you want to at your own pace; nonlinear gameplay leaves the experience completely up to you. With villains like Metallo and Parasite and colossal challenges only Superman can overcome, you must monitor and protect Metropolis from destruction. - Type: Xbox
Title: Superman Returns
Produced by: EA Games.
Date: November 20, 2006
ASIN: B000F1WG9M - Type: PS2
Title: Superman Returns
Produced by: EA Games.
Date: November 20, 2006
ASIN: B000F1YI3E - Type: Nintendo DS
Title: Superman Returns
Produced by: EA Games.
Date: November 20, 2006
ASIN: B000F1TIMK - Type: Paperback Book
Title: Superman Returns: The Videogame Signature Series Guide by BradyGames
BradyGames' Superman Returns: The Videogame Signature Series Guide includes the following:
- A comprehensive walkthrough of the entire adventure.
- Detailed area maps pinpointing critical locations.
- In-depth item and equipment lists.
- Game secrets revealed!
- Signature Series guide features bonus foldout and more!
Platform: Xbox 360, Xbox, PS2, PSP, DS
Genre: Action/Adventure
Product Details
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Brady Games (October 3, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0744008077
Part 3 - Videos
EA Games sent us the following new video trailer for the game. You can download it as a 44mb WAV file or watch it online via YouTube.NOTE: Presentation videos have been temporarily removed awaiting final approval from EA Games.
Here's a list of articles written by other attendees of the same 2-day Community event: