It’s no secret that Superman games suck. I know the truth hurts, but sometimes it needs to be confronted. I myself am a huge fan of the Superman movies, and had truly high hopes for this game. I figured that it would have to be at least better than most existing Superman games. I thought it would be cool to free-roam an independent Metropolis. I couldn’t wait to fly around and get the next-gen Superman experience. As soon as I heard the words “playable Bizarro,” I knew I’d have to be in for something good. Last night, with fingers crossed, I popped in the disc and hoped for the best.

Right away, you’re set into Metropolis, and Jor-El (Superman’s father) begins instructing you as to how you can use each of your powers. In this training level, you’ll start off learning to fly, progress to extinguishing building fires, and then stop a swarm of meteors from raining down on the poor unsuspecting city-folk below. This introductory level was not only one of the most intense and immediately immersive initial levels of any game in recent memory, but for the first time in any game, the feeling of Superman’s power will absolutely rush through your controller. As you speed around preventing this destruction, you’ll get somewhat acquainted with the camera and map, both of which seem to behave rather well. Then, with one final push, you’ll stop a giant meteor from coming to obliterate everything, and you get the first taste of successfully completing a super-task.

And then, suddenly, with little explanation, you’re whisked away to Warworld – the Mongul’s artificial planetoid spaceship for an arena gladiator battle. This scene is intended to teach you the melee controls and familiarize you with the combat system, but the actual effect is quite different. First of all, the beginning of the scene will have you fighting the same enemy about 9 times – a theme that repeats incessantly throughout the rest of the game. Then, it’s on to the first of the overly-challenging boss battles. I don’t know if you guys maybe missed the memo, but this is Superman. He can beat up, um, anybody, save for those who possess kryptonite. It’s not that the fights are too difficult; in fact usually they’re far too easy. The problem is that Superman feels more like PrettyGoodMan when his might can’t compare to his lesser challengers.

Unfortunately, this is only scratching the surface of the flaws in this game. If you’ve got the patience to make it out of the overly-tedious Warworld, you’ll be sent back to Metropolis. The first of the super-villains you’ve got to take out is Metallo, and he’s brought along an army of robotic minions that are out to apparently try to frustrate you to death. As you chase these far-too-bland squadrons of robots around the city over and over and over again, you’ll start to learn that the camera has a big problem. There’s a sort of snap-back effect that happens when you’re looking around, and while it may make things look cinematic, it makes aiming or flying with precision much more difficult than it should be. And then there’s the mini-map…There’s little consistency to where the icons will pop up on your screen, and they frequently lead you on a very long and irritating chases or into the side of a building; or even (my favorite) directly into the ground. Not only that, but since the icons you’ll be hunting for missions are red, if you’re heading directly toward one, it will disappear into Superman’s boots. You might wonder how it’s possible for me to praise the camera and map in the training level and then criticize it so harshly, and to you I say thanks for paying enough attention to catch that. See, the thing about this is that the training level takes place almost exclusively in the sky. Once you start to throw buildings, people, and the multi-tiered layout of Metropolis into the system, it just plain stops working.

So, let’s face it, the gameplay is bland and boring, and will find you almost exclusively fighting practically defenseless armies of robots hell-bent on destroying Superman and his city. These robots have what seems like almost no AI at all, and will frequently be found doing inexplicable things that only serve to make the missions worse. Even with all of my previous gripes, I found that the worst part of this game was to be found in the Metropolis health meter. Sure, Superman’s gotta protect himself, but if his beloved city is trashed then it’s game over for you. The way the developers convey this is by having two health bars – one for our hero, and one for the city. If Superman’s health bar is drained, he always just seems to get back up. If the city’s health is low at the end of a battle (and it will be), there’s really no way to bring it back up before another mission starts. Frequently, you’ll be trying to save citizens from the aftermath of a struggle (this is the only real way to refill the city’s health), and another skirmish will start right on top of you, making all of the injured citizens disappear. When this happens, the Metropolis health bar gets to an unrecoverable low, and you’ll frequently be forced to repeat chapters consisting of numerous missions that weren’t really fun the first time. I wouldn’t normally actually recommend that you cheat at any given game, but I found this game almost unplayable without the Metropolis infinite health code.

There are a couple of cooler fights in the game like when you fight the giant Metallo, but even these are so boring and sparse that it’s just not really worth trudging through the other stuff just to get there. The mini-games, like Bizarro or the Mxyztplk races seem like more of an afterthought than anything, and don’t serve the greater good of this game.

The bottom line here is that we’ve been waiting just as long as you guys have for that inevitable amazing Superman game. I’m sorry to say, however, that game looks to be still part of the distant future. This game starts off with a big bang and ends with not much more than a frustrated grunt. I love some elements of this game, but it just doesn’t balance them well enough with the crappy robot fights. Does this mean I’ll stop wanting a Superman game I can enjoy? Hell no. Does it mean I’ll be a little less optimistic next time? Actually, no, it probably doesn’t.

Note to self: When a good Superman game finally comes out, see if the Captain can do that “around the world to go back in time” thing from Superman II so he can bring me a copy NOW!