Why Don't Superhero Games Work?

This topic is one that I have been trying to get an answer to for quite some time and I believe I have some insight as to why superheroes rarely get a good translation into video games. While some games have been able to showcase a superhero and be really good (Arkham Asylum comes to mind) most are pretty bad (Superman 64 comes to mind) I believe that the first main issue is that most superhero games are only released in conjunction with a movie and that almost always spells disaster.

Superheroes seem to be the perfect characters for video games, they have colorful back stories, a rogues gallery of villains, and a slew of awesome abilities that players would love to be able to harness. The first main problem with superhero games is that many of them are tie-ins with movies that are being released. Companies want to cash in on the success of a superhero movie by also releasing an officially licensed game based off of the movie. The problem with this is that it takes a much longer time to make a quality game than it does to make a quality movie. Add to that the necessity for the movie to be in its final stages of development so the game story can match up and you have a recipe for a rushed product.

This accounts for many bad movie tie-in games but why don't games that showcase a superhero work from a gameplay standpoint? I think part of the answer to this is that no one knows what it is like to have those abilities. We know what it is like to shoot an M-4 so that experience can be translated to a game pretty well. No one knows what it is like to throw a supervillain through a brick wall or shoot fire out of their eyes. This lack of real world experience makes putting it into a game difficult. This is why a game like Arkham Asylum or a fighting game like Marvel vs Capcom can work well because the combat is mostly based on hand-to-hand fighting and that is something that can easily be experienced in real life.

However, super powers themselves aren't difficult to showcase in video games, look at the biotics in Mass Effect or the force powers in The Force Unleashed. These are all great examples of things that aren't experienced in real life, yet still work in video games. So there is something more than just inexperience. The superheroes we all know and love are, mostly, comic book characters. These characters have been arond for a long time and their powers and abilities have gone through many changes since their inception. Video game characters, like Commander Shpeherd in Mass Effect, have been created specifically to be used in a video game. His powers and abilities are suited for video game combat more so than a comic book hero whose powers were designed to be interesting and useful in the comic book world.

But what about characters like Jedi in Star Wars games? The powers of a Jedi were well known and shown off in movies and television shows before any games truly captured them. The main difference here is that there are numerous Jedi with similar powers whereas a superhero is unique. Other heroes or villains may have overlappng powers but each character has some special combination of powers that make him/her special. Also most superheroes, like Superman, consciously hold back their strength so as to not kill someone. How can the power of Superman be truly harnessed in a game when we don't even really know the extent of his power. There are only a few times when Superman cuts loose and uses all his power but if the game was like this all the time, what makes Superman special, his ability to control himself and stick to his morals, disappears.

But the moral depths of a superhero are not the only reason why it is difficult to recreate their powers in a video game. Most game developers wouldn't worry too much about things like why Superman does what he does, so there has to be an even more engrossing problem. The big problem, from the developer's standpoint, is that there isn't a great mechanic for using the super powers. Most superheroes spend as much time saving people from bad guys as they do acutually duking it out with the villain. These saves are usually done at superspeed with a hero's super reflexes. Gamers don't have super reflexes so everything the hero does needs to be slowed down.

More importantly, many super heroes' powers are altered based on the needs of a story. In stories involving Superman, his powers change to allow the villain to get an upperhand on him. If Superman was truly always at his peak power, a gamer could control him and take out the bad guys very quickly. If you've ever noticed in superhero stories, the hero is kind of slow to react and allows the villain to monologue for quite some time, allowing the villain to spring a trap. This is one of the most frustrating parts of superhero stories but without it the hero would wipe the floor with the villain in milliseconds. Look at a hero like the Flash, sometimes he runs around the world faster than light but sometimes he hesitates to stop a criminal with a hostage because he wouldn't be able to save the person before the bad guy shot the hostage. This is not at all consistent but it is necessary to allow for a villain to pose an actual threat.

To pose a threat to the hero, a villain needs to be either as strong or stronger than the hero himself. Look at Superman's best villains: Lex Luthor, Darkseid, Doomsday, Zod, Brainiac, the one thing they all have in common is that they are stronger, smarter, more ruthless, or some combination thereof, than Superman. While some villains actually hold that power over a hero, most don't. The stories allow them to outsmart the hero or pose a threat by altering the hero's powers.

So, in order to allow for an intriguing plot, many stories alter the powers of a superhero and this makes putting together a consistent experience difficult. Superhero games that work, like Arkham Asylum or the Spider-Man games, utilize the superheroes that are the most vulnerable, and thus, the easiest to present a reasonable challenge to without changing the character's abilities too much. Heroes like Superman or the Hulk are too strong to use in a video game where challenge is one of the most important aspects but Batman or Spider-Man, while powerful in their own right, can still be harmed by conventional methods without some explanation. If Batman is shot he goes down but it Superman is shot, unless there is some weird explanation, the bullet should bounce right off of him. Vulnerability is important in video games where you can lose and invulnerable characters make that a difficult task.

To wrap up, there are many reasons why superhero games aren't always the best but it seems that the largest issue is that many of the marquee characters are too strong to be challenged in a video game. Harnessing all of the power of a juggernaut like Superman and then bringing up reasons why he can't use all of his abilites only takes away from and frustrates the gamer. Games with more down to earth characters, like Batman, are consistently the best because instead of taking away, the game can actually add abilites (like new gadgets) and this makes the game more fun instead of more restrictive. While there are some games that do well with powerful characters, they are few and far between.