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"Batman Arkham City:" Can Anyone Make a Good Superhero Game? [OPEN THREAD]


batman imagePoor superheroes: They do so much to save the planet time and time again and we can't even make a decent video game about it. Superhero video games are commonly a wasteland of awful, which isn't entirely their fault.

They're usually attached to a film and are given shorter development times. The tie-in with major movies also means that the games don't have to be great in order sell.

There are, of course, wonderful exceptions to the rule. Some superhero games like the 1992 X-Men Arcade game or 2009's Batman: Arkham Asylum turned out experiences that tapped a franchise and delivered an enjoyable game. However, for every success, there are raspberries like Superman for the Nintendo 64 or the recent Iron Man video games.

This fall there are a trio of big-name games hitting consoles, including Batman: Arkham City, a sequel to the Dark Knight's first successful high-def romp.

Previewing Batman: Arkham City and playing around with two other superhero games — X-Men: Destiny and Spider-Man: Edge of Time — gave us a little bit of hope. X-Men: Destiny had us running around as one of three new mutants who beat up thugs. It's nice to fight with iconic characters like Gambit or Cyclops but too much of it felt like a series of tasks — talk to a person, fight some bad guys, talk to a person, fight some bad guys — rather than a story. The game looks pretty good and the fighting, albeit simple, serves its purpose.

Spider-Man: Edge of Time pits you as two, parallel universe Spider-Men, the modern day Spidey and one from the future. The game plays great but runs into the same problems most other Spider-Man games face: How do you approximate the spatial awareness, agility, speed and reflexes of Spider-Man into a controller? Well, you do the best you can. Web swinging and sending out zip lines are fun and a special button lets real-world Spidey enter a Matrix-like slow-mo highlight his speed. Of course, the camera gets lost during these acrobatics and it can be disorienting to automatically zip to something you can't see on-screen.

One of the reasons the new Batman video game series has done so well is because Batman is based in (relative) reality. Batman can't fly or cling to walls but instead gameplay is based on sneaking around, using gadgets and setting ambushes. Combat still feels a bit like a min-game (you time button presses to avoid attacks and there are few innate combos) but the game really lets you feel like a modern-day Bats. The game now encompasses all of Arkham City with a more open-world, Grand Theft Auto-style atmosphere.

It might be marginally easier to make a Batman game, but the development team at Rocksteady has clearly put in some time to make sure the game isn't just another one of those awful superhero games you hear so much about. Which leads us to ask:

Why is it so hard to make a good superhero game?

Let us know in the comments why you think superhero games are so often a disaster and tell us your own favorite games that finally got it right.

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