An Update

Things have been, as they often are, quieter here than I'd like. I've mostly been busy with work, and the remainder of my free time has been looking for other work. I'd much rather be writing blog posts than cover letters, but that's where I'm at right now. But now I have a moment or two to procrastinate, so have some bullet points! Spoilers for summer movies ahead.

• I started reading Greg Rucka's novel Alpha. It's still pretty early in the book, so not much has happened, but I'm enjoying it so far. There are some interesting quirks with how Rucka describes and words things, and I'm trying to determine what's his style versus what's his choice for the narrator's voice. Aside from the way he refers to military minutiae like a seasoned expert, it doesn't feel much like any of the other stuff I've read of Rucka's.
  
  The lack of pictures may be a contributing factor to that.
  
• I picked up "Scribblenauts Unmasked" and beat it in fairly short order. I was going to outline my thoughts here, but I think I'll put together something more substantial shortly. In any case, I quite liked it.
  
• I saw "Amazing Spider-Man 2," and was underwhelmed. I quite liked the first installment, but this one was (as I might have predicted) overstuffed and rushed. The Electro plot, Harry's illness, and the mystery of Peter's parents could easily have taken up a whole flick without shoehorning in the Goblin and the bridge scene as well. I frankly would have liked another movie with Gwen in it before the inevitable end, and especially one without the college girl equivalent of being one day away from retirement. On top of all that, it felt like there was just so much dialogue (the entire graduation speech, for instance) that felt too convenient, too on-the-nose, too plot-driven. Sony's clearly on a mad dash to make their own "Avengers," without learning from the mistakes of "Spider-Man 3" or the successes of "Avengers"--specifically, laying the groundwork for that movie over the course of years, through several other films, where the worst of them also happened to be the one that diverted too much of its energy to laying the groundwork for the team film. Argh.
  
• Seeing "Godzilla" made me realize that I haven't actually seen a Godzilla movie outside of the last American Godzilla movie. This new one was better by far. I especially liked how incidental the humans were to everything. They set the plot in motion by unleashing Muto, but humanity went mostly unnoticed by the creatures, which followed the basic drives of nature: mate and eat. Including another monster was a smart choice (making it look like the Cloverfield monster: doubly smart), because it shifts the narrative. When Godzilla is the only monster, the plot becomes humans vs. Godzilla, which in the "Godzilla" franchise, can end in a stalemate at best. "We drove the creature back into the sea! Yay, I guess? But, like, he's still right there. In the sea." Pitting Godzilla against a bigger threat makes us root for the titular monster, and just hope the humans don't screw things up too badly.
  
  I think the one thing I would have changed is letting the generic protagonist disarm the damn nuclear bomb. They were setting that up for the whole movie, only to have him stymied by a panel that he could easily have pried off with the harpoon he found there on the boat. It was tough to watch the happy ending reunion scene at the end knowing the radioactive fallout from the detonation of a nuclear warhead just off the coast of California was going to render half those happy families dead from leukemia within a few years. I get that part of the message is that nature points up the folly of men, but at least let some men solve their own follies maybe?
  
• I was interviewed this weekend for the Chippewa Valley Geek podcast, where I talked way too much and way too incoherently about some topics regarding canon and comics. It was tons of fun, and I'll post a notice here whenever it gets uploaded.
  
• I'm still working on that Superman QuizUp question set, though I hope to finally finish it up soon. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Some more snippets

New Doctor Who starts this coming weekend! I'm excited, even if Torchwood has been doing a decent job of filling the Doctor-shaped hole in my life. I've caught some of BBC America's lead-up specials, doing the VH1-style talking heads thing. It's a little disappointing that these "Best of" showcases are limited to the last two seasons, because I kind of doubt that "the Siren who turned out to be a holographic nurse with terrible bedside manner" would show up on anyone's "best Doctor Who monsters" list. But it also has Natalie Morales and Mark Sheppard and Paul F. Tompkins, so there's that.

One thing that's become clear from these clip shows is how long Steven Moffat has been laying in the "Doctor is his own worst enemy" theme. I thought the twist of the mid-season finale, that the Doctor's "I'm super-badass and you all should be afraid of me" speeches have finally come back to bit him in the ass, was particularly inspired. But now I see that Moffat laid the same twist into "The Pandorica Opens," where the Doctor is seen to be the greatest threat in the universe, but we still side with him because the ones who think he's dangerous are his enemies. "Amy's Choice" gave us the Doctor's self-loathing made manifest, threatening his companions; meanwhile, "The Doctor's Wife" showed just what kind of danger the Doctor has put those companions into just by bringing them into his massive, insane time machine. Even "The Lodger" has what appears to be the Silence putting the world in danger by trying to imitate the TARDIS.

It'll be nice if this means that the series scales back a little; ending every season with the destruction of everything is going to get really tedious after awhile, if it hasn't already. I would love to see another "Black Orchid," for instance.

---

I finally got a Wii. It's not something I've been exactly itching to buy, but there are definitely some games I'd like to play on it--not the least of which are on the Virtual Console. I downloaded Super Mario World and Chrono Trigger--the latter of which I missed out on years ago--and I'm excited to get into those. The newest Mario Kart proved to be as entertaining and frustrating as previous iterations for me, and I got WiiFit because I'm really trying to get into shape.

But the reason I mention it here is Batman: Brave and the Bold, which I picked up the day I bought the system. I'd heard good things about the game, and the show is fantastic, so it was kind of a no-brainer. I haven't played much, and it's certainly no "Arkham Asylum," but it's a damn fun game. It's old-school action platforming similar to "Scott Pilgrim," which is still a great game, but Batman: Brave and the Bold goes one better by including Batman. So far, it's everything that I've loved about River City Ransom, the "Brave and the Bold" TV show, and the Animated Batman game for the Genesis/SNES era. The controls, animations, and collision detection are sometimes a little clunky, but otherwise I'm having a blast.

---

Siskoid's recent Superman post has me thinking about Super Friends again. The show was just a little before my time (an ad for the then-forthcoming series appeared in one of my Mom's comics that I read growing up), but I watched several episodes when it was on Cartoon Network while I was in high school. It's one of the few media incarnations of Superman that I haven't really looked into, and the relative dirt-cheapness of the DVD sets on Amazon has me thinking about giving it a shot.

There is one teensy problem, which is that there are an awful lot of DVD releases, with no really clear order--not surprising, for a show that ran for thirteen years in various iterations. That, and from my own experience and proclivities, I know I've liked the Wonder Twins and New Gods years than some of the others. Then again, I've more recently been getting more partial to the Silver/Bronze Age mentality that has been on-display in some of the episodes I've seen, so maybe the Wendy-and-Marvin years are where I should start.

So I put the question to my legions of knowledgeable readers: if I want to start watching Super-Friends, where do I begin?

'Spider-Man': Threat or Menace?

By now you've probably heard about the disastrous Spider-Man musical's preview night, but it's still worth reading all the crazy crap that went wrong. At this point, I'm almost convinced that it's some big meta-joke, a budget-busting show about a character who lives paycheck-to-paycheck, a media disaster about a character who is loathed by the media, a threat to audiences and a menace to actors. I would be completely unsurprised if J. Jonah Jameson himself were bankrolling the project, sitting backstage and shouting "No, no, make him get stuck above the audience! I want him humiliated!" while chomping on a cigar.

Despite that, I've been getting into a Spider-Man mood lately. I picked up "Shattered Dimensions" on Black Friday, and it's gotten me back into watching "Spectacular Spider-Man" on Netflix. But at this point, I'm itching for some good modern Spidey comics, and I'd like to kind of stick to trades. I haven't been reading the Brand New Day era religiously or anything, but I've liked what I have read (BND volumes 1 & 3, "New Ways to Die," and the Mark Waid two-parter with the Shocker). So I'm looking for some recommendations: which current Spider-Man trades should I be picking up? What's the best of the best of the Brand New Day era? What should I avoid?

Incidentally, I'll spend the meantime reading Marvel Masterworks Spider-Man vol. 5, which finally just came out in paperback. I've been waiting for that since I was an undergrad. And I'm kind of shocked to see how Ditko-esque the early Romita style was. Definitely not what I was expecting.

No Passing Zone

Lately--that is, ever since I put Bayonetta away knowing that killing God would take more time and effort than I had at the moment--I've been playing Left 4 Dead 2 as my go-to leisure time video game. I really enjoy the Left 4 Dead series, though I thought the first one did a better job with some of the ambiance--namely, the writing on the walls in the safe rooms. In the first game, a lot of the writing was darkly humorous, reminiscent of the rat-man's ramblings in Portal; the second game has made the writing a lot more straightforward, and that's kind of disappointing. But, I like the addition of melee weapons a lot, and I dig the increased variety of both normal and special infected, so I play the sequel most of the time.

Brief digression: what really sold me on the series was the way they sidestepped any issues with realism in terms of plot, characterization, or dialogue. Instead of playing a group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse, you're playing as characters in a zombie movie. That subtle difference allows, I think, for much greater suspension of disbelief with respect to the aspects of the story and the stereotypical characters than you'd have if it were all played straight.

Consequently, I was really excited when the new DLC, "The Passing," came out. It offered not only another mission for a game I enjoy, but also had the new survivors meeting up with the survivors from the previous game. Unfortunately, I was flat broke when it came out, so I didn't get to play it early on. I got paid last week, though, so I added some Microsoft Points and picked it up.

And wow, what a disappointment.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I'd kind of hoped for some playability to the original survivors. I anticipated online modes with eight survivors against the horde, and I suppose that might have been excessive. But I certainly think it could have been more than it was. The mission has three stages, which is paltry compared to the other levels, which typically have four to six--and the last stage is essentially the same as the end of "Dead Center." The encounter with the original survivors is limited to a couple of cutscenes and cover fire, which is a real let-down, and I think it introduced a grand total of two new weapons. There are some neat new designs for some of the infected, I guess, but overall it really doesn't feel like it was worth $10. When Left 4 Dead 2 came out, people complained that it felt less like a sequel than like DLC add-ons, since it only added new levels, a new weapon mechanic, and a few new infected types. Now, the actual DLC add-on feels like half of what it should be for the price.

I guess what it all boils down to is that I'm much happier with the other thing I spent Microsoft Points on this week: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game. Which is pure, unadulterated awesome.

As long as they're still making video game movies

The galaxy is at war. The valiant starships of the Earth Alliance struggle against their ruthless enemies, but every day more of their number fall to the alien fleet. Veera Ryder, Earth's most decorated commander, leads an elite team on a daring mission behind enemy lines, hoping to turn the tide in Earth's favor.

But something goes terribly, terribly wrong.

Now, Veera must lead her team back to Earthspace, fighting the endless waves of aliens along the way. But how do you defeat an enemy who can take control of your allies and turn them against you? When friend becomes foe, it will be Veera Ryder, alone, against The Galaga.

Rocksteady Studios: Call me

Now that Warner has acquired the folks who made Batman: Arkham Asylum and are presumably going to make more games based on the DC characters, you know what story would make for a killer video game?

Superman: Emperor Joker

It'd work for a lot of the same reasons that Arkham Asylum worked: potential for dark, surreal environs, the opportunity for Mark Hamill, a hero who is continually outnumbered and outclassed, etc. But starting the game off in the normal world, fighting villains and thugs and establishing Superman's powers and world and the basic game mechanics, then stripping him of all but a fraction of his power, turning him into the villain, placing him in a surreal world under a madman's control, and pitting him against much stronger villains like Bizarro No. 1, Ignition, and Lois Lane, all so he can slowly regain his powers and take control away from the Joker, would make for a pretty epic gaming experience.

Otherwise, just a game where you're up against Mr. Mxyzptlk would be cool. But Emperor Joker would be a blast.

You know, if I had the Infinity Gauntlet, I could just make this happen

I haven't finished playing "Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2" yet (though sadly, what I heard while making my way through the War Rocket Ajax archives doesn't bode well for the rest of it), but I'd like to make a suggestion for the next game in the series:

The Infinity Gems.

Seriously, has there ever been a more video game friendly plot device than the Infinity Gauntlet? It's a boss battle MacGuffin and a fetch quest all rolled up into the same object! Granted, the Infinity Gems are a bit '90s, and some of the plot points would likely be fairly similar to the last Infinity Gem-based Marvel game, but I think centering the plot around the Infinity Gauntlet would solve a lot of the issues that this game has had. For instance:

• Scope: The first M:UA took you from New York to Asgard to the Moon to the Skrull Homeworld. It felt like a grand tour of the Marvel Universe, showcasing some of the best-known locales. From what I've seen of the sequel, the farthest you get is Wakanda. Even the plot has quite a bit of downsizing, going from "Dr. Doom becomes a god" to "heroes fight each other, then they don't." Traveling around the universe to prevent a reality-altering superweapon from falling into the hands of a death-obsessed Titan (among other potential villains) would bring back that sense of grandeur. Plus, it would open up great new places to visit: the Shi'ar Empire, Kree-Lar, Ego the Living Planet, etc. Which brings us to...
  
• New character options: Frankly, I've been a bit disappointed in the character lists between the two games. From the first game to the second, we lose Blade, Colossus, Cyclops, Elektra, Ghost Rider, Hawkeye, Nightcrawler, Dr. Doom, Sabretooth, Silver Surfer, and Spider-Woman, and we gain Gambit, Green Goblin, Songbird, Jean Grey, Penance, Carnage, Cable, Iron Fist, Juggernaut, and Psylocke. Wait, the first game had more characters? That's ridiculous! And frankly, I'm not thrilled with the substitutions. Sure, it's easy to hate on Gambit and Penance, and I like finally getting Iron Fist in there, but what does Psylocke add to the game? Or Carnage? While I thought Elektra and Blade were generally pretty worthless in the first outing, I'd trade Ghost Rider and Silver Surfer for almost any of the new characters.
  
  Anyway, the Infinity Gems would open up a bunch of new playable characters who don't suck. Maybe it's just because the Marvel cosmic stories are what I've been enjoying most from the company in recent years, but I'd really like to be able to play as Nova, Captain Marvel, Adam Warlock, and--dare I even hope?--Quasar. Sure, I wouldn't expect to necessarily have Gladiator and Rocket Raccoon on your Change Team page, but it'd be cool to bring some of those Cosmic Marvel characters into the mix.
  
  Plus, given her not-so-long-ago connection to the Power Gem, it'd be a good excuse to make She-Hulk a playable character, which they should have done ages ago.
  
• The Enemies: I haven't been terribly disappointed in the boss battles in M:UA2, but they have tended to seem both a little brief/easy, and occasionally a bit nonsensical (like the Anti-Reg battle against Bishop. Really?). I think it's largely a consequence of the plotline; in M:UA, you were going up against the Super-Skrull and Loki; in M:UA2, you spend most of your time fighting other heroes, and somehow that doesn't quite seem as compelling. That may be my bias as someone who hate-hate-hated Civil War, though, so take it with a grain of salt.
  
  What would rock my socks, though, is fighting your way through a series of bosses who are amped up due to the possession of an Infinity Gem. Vulcan with the Power Gem? Phoenix with the Mind Gem? Annihilus with the Reality Gem? The possibilities are awesome.
  
• The Downside: The biggest problem with a plot like this is that it runs the risk of being too similar to the plot of M:UA, where Doom steals Odin's power and remakes Earth in his image. I think the biggest way around it is to change the stakes and the venue; sure, you're still going to battle a reality-altering tyrant in the end, but his concerns are going to be a lot less "make Stark Tower look like Doomstadt" and more "unmake the universe." Without the 'egotistical villain's wish-fulfillment' plot for the final levels, I think the game would avoid feeling like a retread.

The other big thing that I'd like to see return is the character-specific training missions. Granted, some of them were frustrating, and some were nonsensical, but I'd much rather blindly fight my way through AIM headquarters as Daredevil than escort some random prisoner through random corridors in a stealth mission in a game which lends itself neither to stealth nor escort.

Now that I finally have a weekend, I may try to finish the game. In the meantime, feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!

A Question of Tremendous Importance

I love The Who, but I'm not too keen on the "Best of The Who" pack for Rock Band. The included version of "My Generation" is awful, and I really only know "Eminence Front," "Amazing Journey," "Baba O'Riley," "Behind Blue Eyes," "Going Mobile," and "Who Are You." I feel no particular yearning for a live cover of "Summertime Blues," and I'm just kind of ignorant about the other tracks.

So, should I drop the 1600 Points on the full pack, or should I just spend 800 on the ones I want?

Fighting Words

I rented Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe yesterday.

You may recall that I did not have high expectations for this game. So, unlike Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, I was actually pleasantly surprised.

First things first, I realized while playing MKv.DCU that I hadn't played a current-generation fighting game since, like, Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the Sega Saturn. I'm not entirely sure why; as a kid, I loved fighting games, but I haven't played one in years--with the exception of the Smash Bros. series, which is pretty far removed from the Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats of my youth. I think a lot of my love for that genre was because every game was a multiplayer title, and it didn't take long to make it through several rounds. These days, that niche in my life is usually filled with Halo 2 or Rock Band. It's interesting, though, realizing how the limitations and developments in technology have influenced my taste.

Back to the game, it's more or less what I expected. All things considered--the ludicrousness of the concept, the bloated pretentiousness of the Mortal Kombat storyline, the general quality of DC Comics games--the plot for the Story Mode is actually pretty good. I only played the DC half of the plot--I frankly have no desire to explore the Mortal Kombat side of things--so I'll give you the basic run-down. Superman blasts Darkseid with some heat vision, destabilizing the Boom Tube he's in and ultimately causing the DCU and MKU to start merging. Heroes are trading places with Mortal Kombatants, and all the while characters are getting infected with a glowing yellow rage energy that causes them to see friends as foes and attack ruthlessly and indiscriminately. Our heroes and villains team up on a quest to save the two universes and stop Dark Khan--the nasty amalgam of Darkseid and Shao Khan at the top of the whole thing.

The graphics are good. We've come a long way from the motion-capture characters of the early Mortal Kombat games, who had something like five stiff animations each. None of the characters, I'm happy to say, are simply recolors of other characters with slightly different powers. When characters get hit, their costumes show damage, so by the end of a three-round fight, the fighters can look pretty torn up. As you jump around the room, your opponent follows your movements. The animation is done very well; the special abilities look good, and overall the gameplay graphics are pretty well awesome. There are still some issues; the characters in the cutscenes often look oddly-proportioned--faces too small for heads, heads too small for bodies, long necks. The knockout moment tends to be kind of funny; you'll hit the character, who will then recover, resume the fighting stance, and then fall rod-straight backward onto the ground. I wish they'd put as much effort into making that not so goofy as they did into making sure that Catwoman's breasts jiggled in the cutscenes. There's a lot more blood than I expected there would be, though not nearly as much as was in the old-school Mortal Kombat games, where every character was a thin-skinned hemophiliac with skyrocketing blood pressure.

The voice acting is...off. It's not terrible, but all the characters sound kind of weird and flat. It could be the dialogue, which was often terrible. Also, Liu Kang makes nearly the exact same goofy noise when doing his bicycle kick that he made back in 1992, and I'm pretty sure I heard Raiden say "Hadoken" at one point. The Joker, though, is pretty much spot-on, somewhere right between Mark Hamill and Cesar Romero.

Gameplay hasn't changed much at all since those days. And I'm not entirely sure why. Either the controls or the characters are sometimes a bit sluggish, reacting just a little more slowly than you'd expect. The weirdest part of the whole thing is that the game required me to use the D-pad rather than the analog stick. The D-pad controls normal motion, the left analog stick controls sidestepping and other "3-D" motion, and the right analog stick sits unloved next to your button-mashing thumb. I've never actually played a next-gen console game that required me to use the D-pad to move around, including the '80s games I've downloaded from XBox Live Arcade. Fighting games used to be designed for joysticks, which were basically big analog sticks; why on Earth would this one force me to use the awkward and generally pointless D-pad? Why not assign the "3-D" motion to the right analog stick and normal movement to the left stick?

All I know is that for the first time in years, I have the makings of a blister on my thumb. It's nice nostalgia, but it's kind of a pain in the...thumb.

I played a bit of the Arcade Mode to start, and after each fight it gave me the old "Finish Him!" routine. In my entire history of playing Mortal Kombat (which, admittedly, stops after the fourth game--Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3) I think I've only been able to pull off one fatality, and that was one of Sub-Zero's early ones. I simply don't have the patience to learn the ridiculously complex button sequences and practice them enough to pull them off reliably in the short time frame. Meanwhile, there's nothing in the game or the manual about the fatalities, and GameFAQs doesn't have anything about the game yet, so I'm at a loss. I wondered briefly how people found out how to do fatalities in the days before the Internet, then I realized that that was the entire reason for magazines like "Tips & Tricks."

I do wonder about the game's difficulty. I've never been particularly awesome at fighting games, so I'm always a bit wary when I do well early on (also, shooters. It's because I was so good at it that I realized what a crappy game Darkwatch was). I don't think I lost a round until Scorpion, the first of the MK characters, showed up in Story Mode. After that, I found that the MK characters generally seemed a little tougher, faster, and stronger than the DC ones. Your mileage may vary on that one, though. Even though I had to play several fights repeatedly (Dark Khan especially), the Save feature made it easy to return to where I left off (though it kept making me watch cutscenes over) which was nice, and I was able to breeze through the story mode pretty quickly.

Bottom line, if you're fond of fighting games and fond of the DC characters, you might give this one a rental. I don't know how well this will play with the Mortal Kombat fans, given the toned-down blood and gore. But I do know that it's far, far better than Justice League Task Force. And as long as you're not expecting too much from it, it's fairly fun.

I don't say this nearly enough

You know, for all the times I've ragged on them in the past, for all the energy and enthusiasm I focus on the competition, and for all the abuse I heap upon their current EIC, there's something that often gets left by the wayside:
I Love Marvel Comics
Maybe it's just the video games talking; maybe it's the fact that I have three unread issues of Marvel freaking Apes sitting on my desk, but I really do love Marvel Comics. Not everything about them, mind you--as you might guess, I go through periods where my love is on the down-swing, but there are a lot of things about the Marvel Universe that just hold a special little place in my heart. So, for the next few days, I'm going to wax a little poetic about the House of Ideas.

And where should I begin? Well, I've been playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance again recently. The first time I played through, my main team consisted of Captain America, Spider-Man, Thor, and Luke Cage, who occasionally got swapped out for the Thing (though I can't quite remember why). This time around, I've been playing a bit more with some of the in-continuity teams. The X-Men are fun, since there are so many combinations, and it's been neat to watch everyone mourning the death of Nightcrawler...even when he's in my party. I do wish Cyclops weren't such a wuss, but what else is new? The Classic Avengers are fun, especially since I already keep Cap and Thor in their original costumes, and Iron Man's classic armor has better boosts than any other early-unlockable suit. I was chomping at the bit halfway through the game so I could unlock Ghost Rider and build the New Fantastic Four team, which is sadly about as effective as it looks. I still need to get the Joe Fixit outfit for Hulk so I can complete the look. As soon as I unlock Silver Surfer, I'm going to put together an erstwhile Defenders team (aren't they all?). But more than anything, I keep coming back to the Fantastic Four. In my first play-through, it seemed like Thing was the only one with anything useful to contribute, but after playing with them a bit, I see what an incredible group they really are. Johnny's fire powers are all so good that I have trouble picking which ones to keep active; Sue's force field ability and "Unstoppable Force" skill make her nigh-invulnerable; Thing has a great set of upgrades and abilities. If there's a weak link, it's Mr. Fantastic, who still has some pretty devastating attacks. Maybe it's just because I rock the game's socks, but playing as the FF has given me quite a bit of insight into why four folks with relatively tame powers can be one of the most formidable forces in the Marvel Universe.

I'll admit that as a kid, I never really got into the team. I bought the title for a short time around Infinity War (with all the doppelgangers running around) and again when Reed was "dead" and Thing was wearing a mask, but they never caught my interest. The next time I regularly bought the World's Greatest Comic Magazine was during the Waid/Wieringo years--specifically, the storyline where Dr. Doom turns his ex-girlfriend into a suit of skin-armor. Contrary to how that sounds, the book was incredibly fun, and is among the best things I've ever read by Mark Waid. The thing about the Fantastic Four that I think tends to get lost in the shuffle is that the best stories, whether they take place in the Negative Zone or the suburbs, are ones that center around the interactions and relationships between the FF family members.

And that, I think, is why the FF is the only group in the Marvel Universe who can make a transition from New York street crime to global supervillainy, to space invasions and otherdimensional entities, and do it seamlessly. They are, quite literally, the close-knit family that can handle anything. When written poorly, the Fantastic Four are just another superteam; when written well, the Fantastic Four is totally unique among comic book superheroes.

And that's pretty fantastic.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Wow, it's been awhile since I last posted. I apologize; I've been pretty gosh-darn busy, and consequently I've had almost no time whatsoever to read comics or do the other various geektastic things that I tend to talk about on this blog. Things have freed up somewhat now, leaving me a little more time to do the nerdy things I enjoy so much.

And one such nerdy thing, which has also eaten up a bit of my comic reading/blogging time, is playing video games. I recently managed to acquire an XBox 360, which means that for the first time since the Sega Saturn, I own a current-generation system.

My first purchases for this new and wonderous white rectangle of joy, as you might have guessed, were Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and The Incredible Hulk, since I already knew I loved the former, and since the latter looked like it might be picking up from the spirit of Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, which is a fantastic game. I'm a little disappointed with how that turned out, but that feeling may or may not be balanced out by eventually getting to play as Hulkbuster Iron Man.

Apparently not contented with those and the half-dozen other assorted XBox games I've managed to pick up on the cheap, I went out and rented Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. You might recall that I'm a pretty big fan of the Ultimate Spider-Man game, which in my experience has had the best combination of mechanics, writing, and voice acting of any of the Spider-Man video games to date. I never got around to playing Spider-Man 3, and while I was impressed by the inclusion of the Prowler, I didn't give Spider-Man: Friend or Foe more than a single rental. I'd heard a lot of hope and hype about Web of Shadows, so I was excited to try it out and see if it'd be a worthy successor to USM.

First, the good: the game is gorgeous. New York City is huge and feels very realistic; the animation is fluid, and the character designs (with one notable exception so far) are spot-on. The action sequences are fast-paced, the combat is fluid, and the web-swinging mechanics are just about perfect (largely because they're just about the same as in USM). The storyline so far is fantastic; there's the obligatory in media res part at the beginning, and then a good, slow build-up to the main plot, with some of the usual side-quest stuff, involving the street gangs and the Kingpin. One thing I really like is that most of Spider-Man's powers work in boos battles about as well as they do in regular combat, which is a nice change of pace, since usually bosses seem to be immune to webs and various other special moves. The option to switch between the classic and black costumes, and the different powers that go with each, is fantastic. The moral system accompanying the costumes also works well with the plot and Spider-Man's character in general. The game feels very open; the only time I've encountered any problems was when I tried to go across one of the bridges while exploring early on, and hit up against an invisible wall. I haven't yet gone to see if there are other bridges in the city, but it seems to me like a Spider-Man game ought to contain a traversable bridge. It really doesn't matter which one--George Washington, Brooklyn, Queensboro--I can't tell the difference, and apparently neither could Stan Lee when Gwen Stacy was thrown off two of the three.

Now for the bad. The first thing I noticed that raised my hackles was the flash effects. Pretty much every time Spider-Man throws a punch, his hand creates little trails of light, which get bigger and brighter and more explosive as the combos increase. Last I checked, Spider-Man had not plunged his fists into Shou-Lao the Undying, and thus should not be demonstrating the iron fist--let alone the iron knee, and every other iron body part he happens to use in the game. For a game with such realistic-looking characters and landscapes, these cartoony effects really hurt the sense of immersion. I don't think I'd have noticed if they were more understated--speed lines, a flash when hits connect--or if they were limited to special moves, but it's every gosh-darn punch.

The next thing I noticed was the voice acting. Actually, that's not fair--so far, most of the voice acting is very good. Wolverine is spot-on, Venom and Black Cat were great, and even the stock phrases sound fine. Luke Cage is good, though I think my opinion is tainted by the fact that he doesn't sound like the version in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and thus sounds a little off. No, the biggest problem with voices is Spider-Man himself, and to a lesser extent, Mary Jane. Spidey does pretty well with the humor, but otherwise he's way too whiny and high-pitched, which makes listening to him more than a little annoying. In fact, the same complaints could be levied at MJ as well, but you don't actually hear much from her, except over Peter's "hands-free cell phone." This may, again, be because I'm spoiled by previous games--Ultimate Spider-Man had pitch-perfect voice acting pretty much the whole game, so it's a little jarring to hear bad choices now.

The game is occasionally glitchy. I haven't experienced any of the freezing and restarting that the Newsarama review mentions, but early on I had to fight one enemy who was stuck below the street. Later, a cutscene played toward the end of a battle, and one of the remaining enemies turned invisible thereafter. That wouldn't have been too problematic, except that the game's targeting system stayed inexorably locked onto him until he was beaten.

That targeting system is the biggest gameplay flaw. Well, the targeting system and the camera, which are related flaws. First, targeting has a tendency to never quite lock on when you want it to. Sometimes it'll decide that what you mean to be aiming at is not the symbiote creature who is gnawing on your face, but the Kingpin squad trooper minding his own business eight blocks away. Sometimes you can change which enemy you're targeting by moving the right analog stick--something rather difficult while you're already trying to juggle your left stick, buttons, and triggers in the midst of a heated battle--and usually that results in switching to an enemy nine blocks away.

The camera, ostensibly, moves to center whichever enemy you've targeted. Sometimes it does this well; other times, it locks onto Moon Knight halfway across the city and outright refuses to be swayed in any other direction. Part of this is because the right analog stick is used to control both the camera angle and which enemy (or ally) is being targeted at any given time, and it's never the one you want when you want it to be. Not being able to see who or what I'm web-shooting at has been the single most frustrating problem of this game so far.

Especially when that problem interferes with the game's moral system. See, the moral system operates on "Red Points" (good deeds) and "Black Points" (evil deeds), which you're awarded...well, pretty much randomly, I think. As far as I can tell (since there was no manual with the rental copy) there's no way to see how many points you have in either column, even though presumably the points determine which allies you can call and what direction the plot goes in. As long as Luke Cage and Wolverine are still coming when I call, I guess I have to assume I'm still on the side of the angels. Sometimes it's easy to tell when you're doing the morally right thing--after big cutscenes, the game usually makes you explicitly choose between Red and Black, which dictates your next action and presumably results in you receiving oodles of points one way or another. When you save civilians, you get red points. When you fail to save civilians, you get black points. I really like that aspect; it seems to me to fit Spider-Man's personality to a T. There are few other heroes with moral compasses so finely tuned that they'd beat themselves up over civilians they failed to save while in pitched battle with the forces of villainy, so that much is spot-on.

After that, though, it gets a little muddy. Sometimes collateral damage gets black points, sometimes it doesn't. After awhile, there's no apparent Red Points reward for saving civilians. During the fight with Wolverine and a bunch of symbiotes, red and black points seemed to be awarded more or less randomly. There's no color point reward whatsoever for stopping crimes or other criminal activities, as far as I can see, even after the police decide Spider-Man's a menace and shoot at him as readily as the bad guys.

Ultimately, it seems that the game seems to really, really want you to show off that black suit and play as a bad guy. Only the black suit has the power to detect symbiotes-in-disguise; only the black suit gives you the power to throw cars, which the game tells you to do so that you can stun and defeat the giant mecha enemies, even though throwing a car nets you two Black Points. No Red Points are awarded, so far as I can tell, by beating the mecha with fists and webs alone. And most obnoxiously, you'll occasionally be in a battle, with the glitchy and unresponsive targeting and camera system, when you'll get a flash of blue spider-sense around your head (good luck noticing it with all the other colorful flashes in the battle), and you might notice a tiny note at the bottom of the screen about there being a civilian in danger. Once in awhile, it'll tell you more explicitly to use the Left Trigger to target the civilian and the Y or B button "while near them" to rescue them. Fail to do this, and you'll get a very clear notice that you earned 10 Black Points. Do this, and I'll hail you as the god of button-mashing, because I've only ever been able to do it through sheer dumb luck. See, things slow down a little when the civilian's car explodes, launching them into the air, but Spider-Man slows down too. Which makes it darn near impossible to right the camera, lock onto the civilian, jump up to them, and press the right button while near them in midair. And that's assuming that hitting Left Trigger actually locks onto the civilian, and not whatever the nearest bad guy you're fighting is. I realize that the evil path is supposed to be easier, but the good path shouldn't be impossible, especially not in a game centered around a superhero, and especially not just because the targeting and camera mechanics are crap. As long as your Red Points (which you ought to be able to monitor) are in the lead, targeting and camera should automatically lock onto civilians in danger, and spider-sense shouldn't slow down Spider-Man. That's the whole point of spider-sense.

On more minor notes, this game seems less diligent than previous installments in making sure that your webs are actually sticking to something as you swing around the city. After a few instances of wondering what I'd hooked onto, I've looked up to see, in fact, that Spider-Man has managed to web the sky. Perhaps in addition to acquiring the iron fist, Peter also managed to get the Power Cosmic (he presumably took over for Golden Oldie). It's a small thing, sure, but it's another contribution the game makes to killing the immersion. Besides that, there's the matter of the black suit itself. I know my "Maximum Carnage" better than most, and consequently I know that symbiotes--or at least, the Venom/black costume symbiote--are weakened and hurt by sonics, heat, microwaves, and electricity. Consequently, I find it odd that a symbiote would be able to take over Electro. Besides that, I was a little annoyed when I managed to find an in-game church tower, with a giant bell, that rings if you hit it, that did absolutely nothing to my symbiotic costume. The game was clearly made by comic geeks with a real attention to detail--the billboards advertising careers in A.I.M. and S.H.I.E.L.D. are a testament to that--so failing to include one of the most iconic scenes in the black costume's history seems like a glaring omission.

I'm sure I've missed some things, but after a review that long with a reference to Aunt May's stint as a Herald of Galactus, I feel like I've reached a good stopping point. Bottom line: I'm planning on buying the game, but I won't drop $60 on it. A good story with some great moments and decent mechanics makes Spider-Man: Web of Shadows at least worth a rental.

Supermonth: The Game of Tomorrow (Part 4)

Superman has a bunch of superpowers.

I know, I'm as surprised as you are. But that's how these things go, sometimes. You never know how they're going to change your favorite characters.

I mean, look at some of the older Superman games; they knew how to treat the character right. On the Atari 2600, Superman could pretty much just fly. I think. It's hard to tell with that game. And then on the Genesis, he could do a bunch of stuff, but really only if he got special power-ups. Otherwise, he could be killed with a few punches by pretty much any enemy. And that's the Superman we know and love, right?

Video games have long had problems dealing with the matter of Superman's abilities. If he has unfettered access to all of them, it can become something of a game breaker, in the same way that many writers have called his abilities a story breaker. Especially invulnerability. Playing an average Superman game could be precisely as tedious and effortless as playing Sonic the Hedgehog on Game Genie with unlimited invincibility.

Thankfully, Superman Returns tackled that particular problem. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of issues left with the rest of Superman's prodigious set of abilities. Chief among these, and one that games have long struggled with, is which ones should be included? As far as I'm concerned, these are the important ones, ranked more or less by necessity:

• Super-strength
• Heat vision
• Flight
• Super-speed
• Invulnerability
• Super-senses (especially super-hearing and X-Ray vision)
• Journalism
• Freeze-breath

Most Superman games are pretty good about touching on all of these, at least in some fashion. Here's a brief run-down of how they're often utilized:

• Super-strength: Superman is strong. Duh.
• Heat vision: Superman's primary ranged attack; usually some kind of special move, usually drains some kind of power meter, sometimes used only in certain levels (especially flying levels).
• Flight: Sometimes it's pretty much useless (Justice League: Heroes, JL: Task Force, most side-scrollers) as Superman hovers a few feet above the ground. Sometimes it's only used in specific levels (the Genesis Superman game had R-Type-style shooter levels that were all flying, and Superman 64 is apparently a long flight practice game); more recent games (SR, Shadow of Apokolips) incorporate it as a major, if not the primary, mode of movement.
• Super-speed: Often ignored; sometimes only present in certain moves (the Genesis game had a power-up where you'd spin around really fast to drill through the floor). In SR, you can run or fly at super-speed by holding down a button.
• Invulnerability: Discussed at length in the first post.
• Super-senses: Often ignored or triggered rarely in specific places. SR and Shadow of Apokolips use a radar icon to simulate the combined senses, notifying you of events and enemies in the general vicinity. You can trigger X-Ray Vision in Shadow of Apokolips, but it only works on certain things--specifically, things in areas where you're supposed to use X-Ray vision. Doesn't exist at all in SR.
• Journalism: I'm using the term loosely here to encompass the set of Clark Kent's specific skills--sneaking about, investigating things, interviewing, gathering information, etc. As far as I've played, only Shadow of Apokolips uses this to any degree.
• Freeze-breath: Generally present as Superman's second projectile attack. Freezes enemies on contact for a period of time. In SR, it can also be used to put out fires; Shadow of Apokolips basically combines this with the more general super-breath, which can move things.

While I like a lot of the choices in Superman Returns, the power set isn't really one of them. Strength is hard to screw up, their solution to the invulnerability problem is pitch-perfect, and the flight system in the game is almost flawless (I think the next post will be just on flying), but after that, things fall apart a bit.

Speed is the first issue, and this was largely the case with Shadow of Apokolips as well. In the games where super-speed is an option, you usually lose fine control when you move faster. That makes a lot of sense, really; it's how speed often works in the real world, and it's been a mainstay of video game logic since at least the days of Sonic the Hedgehog. Most games try to make each power-up have some drawback as well--something simple, like limited duration, or something more significant, like decreased health or control. It maintains the balance of the game.

The problem is that this really doesn't apply so well to Superman; super-speed applies not only to his movements, but also to his reflexes, senses, and thought processing. It's not quite to the degree that the Flash operates at, where he consciously shunts into speed-mode and everything moves in slow motion, but it's certainly similar. And it would have to be; otherwise Superman would constantly be flying into things by moving faster than he could think or react. Sure, he's going to build up some inertia over time, and that should be accounted for, but it shouldn't be quite so bad as it is in SR, where a short super-speed flight will typically send you careening into various buildings. Super-speed should, at least sometimes, shift Superman into so-called bullet-time (as it has in recent adaptations like Smallville and Superman Returns), where everything else is slowed and Superman is moving at a normal pace.

The problem, of course, is limiting this. After all, if you could shunt into bullet-time whenever you wanted, then there'd be no challenge to any battle. So the player's ability to go slow-mo has to have limited duration or limited applicability, while also having some explanation to justify the limitations. It wouldn't be particularly difficult to do that, especially depending on which universe the game is based on, but even just having the bullet-time mode drain your stamina meter (because Superman has to work hard, physically and mentally, to do so much in such a little time) and ending it if Superman gets hit (because it breaks his concentration) would be enough.

Which isn't to say that there shouldn't be a speedy way to get around, too. There's a place for the SR-style super-speed, where you just move faster, but it needs to have much tighter controls and it doesn't need to include such a drastic loss of precision.

My biggest complaint about heat vision is really just a complaint about SR's sloppy controls. Both SR and Shadow of Apokolips allow Superman to do either a sustained beam or a short, powerful burst that drains a lot of the power/stamina meter, and that's fine with me.

X-Ray Vision and the other super-senses are a fairly major sticking point in SR. I don't mind balling up Superman's senses and representing them with a radar display; it worked well for Spider-Man's spider-sense too. My problem is that there should rarely be a situation where I'm Superman, and I can't see what's happening on the other side of a building, or around a corner. I can see through things, I shouldn't have to search so much for the bad guys. I know that making X-Ray Vision a constant option requires a lot more thought and programming into the locations, which is why Shadow of Apokolips only lets you use it in certain places. Still, at least some token attention should be given to it, and systems now are getting able to handle environments of that level of scale and detail. As consoles improve, the excuses for omitting X-Ray Vision dwindle.

You already know my problems with freeze breath as a concept, but I like having it around as a weapon in-game. It's not usually a problem; it's used fairly creatively in Shadow of Apokolips (at one point, Superman has to move a bunch of floating mines without touching--and thus triggering--them), and it's an essential bit of the SR arsenal. But for some reason, SR decided to make "super-breath" and "freeze-breath" separate powers. I'm not sure why; I've not found a single situation in which super-breath is useful and distinct from freeze-breath. It's a waste of a power slot, which could have been filled by something--anything!--more useful. Superman only needs one breath-related superpower in a game.

Which brings us to Journalism, Superman's overlooked ability. One of the nice things, one of my favorite things, about Superman: Shadow of Apokolips, was that it included levels that you had to play as Clark Kent. These levels usually required you to sneak around, take out video cameras, and use your powers in covert ways as you gathered pivotal information to further the plot. While there are other games that involve Clark somehow, it's never been with such a clear eye toward the story, and I've not seen it used since. Bringing Clark Kent into the game allows for many, many more gameplay options, including recon and stealth missions and types of character interaction that you otherwise wouldn't find. Moreover, it would allow the game to make use of some of the supporting cast, which is sadly missing from SR and many other Superman games.

Hopefully I'll get to the cast in a future post. There's not much left to cover; we're almost home free!

Supermonth: The Game of Tomorrow (Part 3)

I understand the impulse to make Metropolis a gigantic, sprawling...well, metropolis. It's clear in the game of Superman Returns that the designers were trying to demonstrate how overwhelmingly huge Metropolis is, spread across four islands, the main one (presumably New Troy, though the arrangement of the city doesn't really map well onto any of the canonical versions, nor even the version shown in the movie) having several tiers of urban plateaus. Metropolis is huge.

Unfortunately, Metropolis is also uniform. There's very little in the way of distinctive landmarks, which makes getting around the city a chore. The screen has a little radar and a note of which general neighborhood you're in, but that doesn't really tell you much, largely because there's no clear distinction between neighborhoods. The Spider-Man games have it fairly easy in this regard, since they're modeled on a real city, and thus have lots of recognizable buildings and areas to pull from. Plus, the layout of the city is mostly pre-determined, so there's no fumbling in that regard either. In SR, the only real recognizable places are the Daily Planet and a couple of Planet Krypton and Big Belly Burger restaurants. And even those aren't particularly easy to find; the best way to find the Daily Planet building is to start the game in front of it.

For practical purposes, Metropolis needs some navigation help. I'm not sure if street-by-street notifications would really help, but labeling key locales on the in-game map might be useful. Shrinking the city would certainly help (paging Brainiac); it can be big without being so confusing, and Superman really ought to know his way around.

Including some other major landmarks and areas would be useful, too. The plot of the movie universe makes it unlikely that there'd be a LexCorp Tower, but what about the GBS building? The Daily Star? The Ace O' Clubs? S.T.A.R. Labs? 344 Clinton St.? The Newstime offices? The Avenue of Tomorrow? Props to the game for including Hyper Sector [sic] and Suicide Slum, but the whole point of Hypersector was that it was more futuristic than the rest of the city, while Suicide Slum is Metropolis's industrial and criminal district; there's nothing to show any of that in the game, and both areas are pretty much the same as any other area.

Part of this is the fault of DC Comics for not developing a clear, consistent layout for Metropolis. This seems to be the general consensus in-universe:
(Image taken from here, but I think it's originally from the Metropolis Secret Files & Origins)
Although that's pretty loose. Even that doesn't note where most of the landmarks are located, just general regions. I know that it's useful to writers and artists that the fictional cities remain flexible, but there needs to be some kind of definition.

Personally, I'd like to see them actually canonically define what states cities like Gotham and Metropolis are in, rather than leaving them vaguely floating around New England. The old DC RPG apparently placed Gotham in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware, which actually makes the most sense to me (especially since it's been repeatedly established that Gotham is north of Metropolis, and that both are island cities on the east coast). "Countdown to Infinite Crisis" placed Metropolis in New York, which doesn't make much sense geographically, particularly in relation to Gotham.

But even that's not entirely necessary, it'd just make things somewhat easier. No, someone needs to actually draft a rough map of Metropolis, establishing where landmarks are in relation to one another, so media tie-ins and comics can have some idea of the layout. It doesn't seem to hamper Spider-Man much that his city is relatively rigidly defined, it shouldn't be a burden to DC's heroes either.

Following that, the ideal Superman game would include as many familiar spots as possible, and should do its best to make the different boroughs and neighborhoods distinct. If the Grand Theft Auto games can manage it, so can Superman. Also, I'd like to see them incorporate the sort of Easter eggs that litter the Spider-Man games: billboards and that sort of thing with throwaway in-universe ads. There are some generic billboards in SR, but nothing related back to the DCU. I'd like to see posters advertising the soap opera Secret Hearts, or ads for Newstime and Wayne Enterprises and the Super Buddies. I'd really like to see benches promoting the services of the Power Company and Kate Spencer.

Other generic landmarks would be nice; I mentioned hospitals in the previous post, and police stations would be nice as well. In fact, the S.C.U. and Science Police ought to have some kind of in-game presence; it needn't be big, but just having them around to assist (or be assisted) in the random battles would be cool. Also, they could serve the very useful purpose of evacuating panicky civilians from battlegrounds.

Oh, and battlegrounds! I've mentioned a couple of times that I'd like to be able to do the typical superhero thing--"Let's take this fight away from the city"--especially since the city has a health meter. Don't tell me that there aren't any condemned buildings or abandoned warehouses in Metropolis, where Superman can take enemies to in order to fight them with limited collateral damage; it seems like the city's full of them (though not so much as Gotham, which apparently has its own abandoned warehouse district).

Metropolis has been around for most of Superman's history, and it has developed a pretty distinctive character of its own. If the games would treat the Big Apricot with a little more detail, it would add immeasurably to the feel of the game.

Edit: One more minor detail: I was playing the game earlier, just to remind myself of some of the layout issues, and I ended up picking up the Daily Planet globe. It's pretty much impossible to set the globe back in its spot; this is partially due to the really bizarre physics of the ball. See, it handles an awful lot like it's made of plastic and filled with helium. If you drop it, it bounces lethargically around down the block, sending civilians into a panic as it wrecks cars and pavement with each landing, until it rolls to a halt against a building or something. Racing it to the bottom to try to catch it is an exercise in futility; Superman basically has a mid-air seizure as you try to hit the catch button next to the falling sphere. I like being able to manhandle the Daily Planet's most distinctive feature, but I wish it would handle like a giant ball of metal rather than a giant party balloon.

Then again, considering how frequently that globe gets knocked around, maybe the city finally decided to replace it with something less expensive.

Supermonth: The Game of Tomorrow (Part 2)

Continuing with the discussion of the necessary elements for a good Superman video game, today we'll be addressing the random encounter/event system.

I really like the trend in games like Ultimate Spider-Man, in which you are free to roam the city, and you get random alerts that you can choose to respond to--crimes in progress, people in danger, etc. It adds to the feeling of actually being a superhero--helping people in need, foiling crimes, patrolling the city, that sort of thing. In general, it makes the game feel a lot less linear.

There are some problems with the way the encounters are implemented, though. The biggest problem with these in Ultimate Spider-Man is a lack of variety; the biggest problem in Superman Returns is that there's very little control over triggering the events. In USM, you're basically on top of the event before it really starts progressing; in SR, the screams and sirens start if you happen to accidentally pass within a few square miles of the dot on the radar. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, if not for one of the things I like about SR, which is the Metropolis health meter. In USM, you can trigger an event and ignore it without any real penalty. In SR, if you ignore a triggered event, mass destruction will ensue to the city, essentially penalizing your health. There needs to be a little more choice involved, and that's easily enough accomplished by tightening up the trigger radius. As with so much of Superman Returns, otherwise decent gameplay is muddied by sloppy controls.

Superman Returns really tries to give a bunch of variety. You fight dragons, robots, mutants, Kryptonite-powered aircraft, giant aliens, and the occasional supervillain. And sometimes, a combination of those. There are tricks to most of them. Some of the robots are very, very fast, others explode violently when hit, others are immune to heat vision and can avoid freeze breath. There are two types of dragon; both are tough to take out physically, but one goes down with a bit of heat vision and the other with a little freeze breath (they are, naturally, color-coded). You can't use the long-range powers on the mutants or they'll grow larger and stronger; if you punch Riot, he splits off a duplicate.

The problem is that, despite the variety of events, fights generally come down to freezing and punching. That's the best way (as far as I've found) to beat the robots, the Kryptonite ships, Riot, most dragons, etc. It's my basic fall-back strategy, but it works a bit too well and too often. I find myself rarely pulling out the heat vision (because it seems to be more dangerous than the freeze-breath) and never pulling out super-breath (which just blows things away without appearing to actually do anything).

The only exception to the fights in these random encounters is the building fire. Every once in awhile, you'll have to put out some towering inferno, which you naturally do by blowing on it. Freeze breath works fine for this, which suggests to me that super-breath is utterly redundant. Apparently you can also pick up and move around the fire trucks to put out the fire, but it's unnecessary and seems pretty tough to do, given the sloppy controls. The infernos represent the only reprieve you get from battle in these events, and they're a bit on the bland side. Where's the rushing into the building to rescue trapped children and pets?

I'd like to talk about how other Superman games have done the random event system, but in my experience, this is the first one to do so. It gets a lot right, but all the random robots and faceless monsters really make me wonder where the familiar villains are. Mongul and Metallo show up in the main plot; Riot pops up now and then in the encounters, but Superman has a long list of villains that would be great for this sort of thing, and would add a lot of variety to boot. Let's see some bank robberies (as in USM) by minor supervillains like Loophole and Barrage. Let's see some creativity to the beat-em-up battles, like being able to stop the mutant rampage by finding Dabney Donovan or Simyan and Mokkari and taking out their control system. Where are the deadly toys and lethal pranks? None of this would be any harder to implement than what's in the game (and similar games) already; there's really no excuse.

The other problem with the random events in SR is with the civilians. Harming the civilians decreases the city's health, and I like that. If the controls were tighter and allowed for more options, this would provide a great way to make the player have to be creative with their powers. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to move a fight to a more sparsely populated area. Even that wouldn't be a problem if the Metropolis populace weren't the dumbest, most oblivious people in the world. They don't run away from a fight, they just wander around aimlessly. Occasionally, they will wander right between Superman and the monster du jour. While Superman's in mid-punch. I know this is the big city, and they're used to this kind of thing, but no one should be that blasé. In USM, people run away as soon as Spidey starts punching, and those are New Yorkers.

So, naturally, any battle leaves several innocent bystanders lying in the street, crying for help. Superman can pick up individual civilians and rush them to nearby ambulances, and doing so restores some of the city's lost health. The usual problem of sloppy controls means that Superman typically grabs at air three or four times before actually finding the injured person next to him, but once they're in hand, he can rush them to the EMTs and drop them off. Then, he can rush back, where he'll often find that enough time has passed that the rest of the injured people have disappeared. If, by some chance, you happen to trigger another event while ferrying civilians, you'll find that the ambulances often don't move between events, requiring even longer trips to rescue bystanders. And sometimes, just sometimes, the ambulances never show up or disappear entirely, leaving Superman to uselessly carry around civilians and drop them off on the sidewalk.

If rescuing civilians is going to be a priority, then it needs to be a priority. Superman should have time enough between events to aid in the cleanup. It doesn't need to be unlimited time--there could even be a clock or counter on screen--but he shouldn't have to choose between saving injured people and stopping another event, just because the triggering radius is too large. Civilians should have a better AI, and ambulances should always be nearby. Moreover, there ought to be hospitals and police stations and such, as a stationary alternative for rescue.

Of course, those would require that Metropolis be a navigable city, which at least in SR, it isn't. Next time, we'll be exploring what Metropolis should be in the ultimate Superman game.

Supermonth: The Game of Tomorrow (Part 1)

In my many years of reading comics and playing video games, I've naturally gravitated toward titles that combine the two. Nine of the twenty-nine games I currently own are explicitly based on comic properties. Besides those, two are Viewtiful Joe games, which borrow liberally from comics, and two are Transformers games, which have their own ties to comic books. And that's just for the PS2 and Gamecube; I've played everything from "Batman Returns" to "Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal."

And somewhere in all that, I've played the vast majority of games that feature a certain cape-clad Kryptonian. And I can say with some honesty that I've found something to like in every one of them that wasn't on the Atari.

Note to readers: I have never played "Superman 64."

There are a number of problems involved in writing interesting stories about Superman, since he can't be harmed and can basically do anything. All these problems are compounded when making a Superman video game. Game designers have to strike a balance between capturing the feel and power of the main character and providing a challenge to the gamer. It's a tough tightrope to walk, and some games do better than others with it. In the vain hope that some game designer will see this, I'd like to explore how games have accomplished these things in the past, and what might be improved upon to create a better console game for the Man of Steel.

To start, let me lay my biases out here: I've been playing a lot of "Superman Returns" on the PS2, and while it's not a perfect game--or maybe even a great game--it does some things better than any of its predecessors. I recently started playing "Superman: Shadow of Apokolips" again, my previous favorite of the available titles, in order to get some comparison. There are fantastic aspects to both games, and I really wish I could combine them both (with aspects of some other great superhero games, like Ultimate Spider-Man and Hulk: Ultimate Destruction) to create one of the best superhero games of all time. Anyway, noticing some of the differences between the games has given me some perspective on the whole matter.

So, without any more of this already-protracted introduction, let's get started, and let's start at the deep end. The superpower that provides the most problems to game developers is obvious: Invulnerability.

The first and most important thing that any Superman game has to wrestle with is how to convey the character's invulnerability without making him completely unkillable. "Superman" for the Sega Genesis apparently armed all the villains with Kryptonite weapons, which had the unfortunate side-effect of making Superman look powerless. Other games, like "The Death and Return of Superman" and the Superman arcade game, have mostly just ignored this aspect of the character. "Shadow of Apokolips" gave Superman a fairly speedy health recovery, while "Justice League Heroes" waved it away with Batman saying "Careful, these robots can hurt even you" (also, I think Superman did have more health points than the other characters to start with). But "Superman Returns" came up with the best solution, one which respects Superman's personality as well as his powers: instead of giving Superman a health meter, they gave Metropolis one.

Hearing about this innovation was what convinced me to buy the game. It took me a little while to figure out the in-game justification for the mechanism (it's not necessarily counting down to the destruction of Metropolis, it's just a metric of the property damage and loss of life in the area surrounding Superman), but I think it's handled fairly well. In addition to this bar is Superman's stamina bar, which functions as a combo power and health meter--draining it doesn't kill Superman, it just makes him unable to use vision or breath powers until it refills, or it knocks him down for a few moments.

Ideally, giving Metropolis a damage meter should cause the player to have to think like Superman--be careful about using your powers too wildly or you'll end up destroying things, draw battles away from heavily-populated areas, tend to civilian casualties, and so on. "Superman Returns" makes some effort to accomplish this, but there are a lot of problems with the execution.

The biggest problem is precision. If damaging the city is a concern, then the player needs to have incredibly tight control over Superman's abilities. Target lock should be strong, there should be no delay between hitting the buttons and activating or deactivating the powers. Superman Returns has a real problem with this, at least on the PS2, which results in a lot of flying or running into walls at high speeds, heat-visioning things after the target has moved, and punching uselessly at the air. All this ends up leading to Superman doing more damage to the city than he really ought to. This kind of system should require you to be careful with the powers, but when the controls force you to be reckless, the consequence is a bit frustrating and self-defeating.

The civilians are another problem. After most events, there are a few innocent bystanders lying on the ground in your battlefield, calling for help. If you pick one up, nearby (though curiously stationary) ambulances show up on your radar. Run or fly the injured civilian to the ambulance and the city regains some health.

It sounds like a great idea, but there are a variety of problems with it that need to be ironed out:

• Stupid Civilians: I realize that crazy stuff happens every day in Metropolis, but people shouldn't be nonchalantly walking through the middle of a battle between Superman and half a dozen hideous monsters. I've had bystanders walk between me and my target while I'm punching them. The start of an event should send civilians either running away or standing around gawking, either of which could put them in danger, but shouldn't result in me having to walk around them to punch the monster.
  
• Someone Call 911! Sometimes, especially if you've done multiple events close together in the same region, the ambulances never appear. You pick up your civilian, but you're eventually forced to just drop them on the sidewalk somewhere. The ambulances should always be nearby (and active!) after a battle. Besides that, there ought to be a hospital or three in Metropolis, rather than just a bunch of generic skyscrapers.
  
• Where'd They Go? Depending on how far away the ambulances are, chances are you only have time to ferry one civilian over to them before the rest of the injured bystanders up and disappear. This has two major problems: one, it undercuts the thematic component of giving Metropolis a health meter by suggesting that there aren't major consequences to being careless; two, it makes it really difficult to restore the city's health meter after a big battle, since you don't get a chance to help more than one or two people.
  
• Butterfingers: This relates back to the problem of precision. It's hard to actually pick up the civilians in the first place. You tend to grab at the air two or three times before the game actually recognizes that you're trying to pick someone up.
  
• Let's Take This Outside: There are a few stock phrases that populate superhero battles. "Hit 'em hard and fast!" "This ends now." And, of course, "We need to take this fight away from the city," and variants thereof. It would be nice to have the option and ability to lure and/or carry the villains away from populated areas, to draw fights into parks or dumps in order to minimize property damage.

Some of this would be fairly simple to implement, some would be a little more sophisticated, but they're all necessary to make the "city health meter" work. And the city health meter is the best solution I've found to the invulnerability problem.

I understand the stamina meter, and it works well in Superman Returns. Yes, Superman's invincible, but that doesn't mean he never takes a beating. The stamina meter allows Superman to be knocked down, disoriented, and taken briefly out of the fight. The only problem with it is how quickly it depletes from using heat vision and other long-range powers. It's not as rapid as the super power meters of previous games (Shadow of Apokolips, for instance) but it still occasionally becomes a problem when it doesn't seem like it should be. It needs some finesse, but overall I think it works very well, and is a good complement to the city health meter.

Over the last twenty-odd years, a variety of approaches have been taken to the problem of invulnerability, and most have failed miserably. It seemed for awhile that a quickly-replenishing health meter was the only viable solution, but Superman Returns' primary innovation solved it by moving the focus away from Superman almost entirely. A little tweaking is necessary to make it really work to its full potential, but the foundation of a solution is finally in place. Hopefully the next Superman game will follow suit.

Next in this series: Events and Encounters.

DC/Mortal Kombat: What the hell?

Recently, it was announced that a "DC vs. Mortal Kombat" fighting game would be making its way to a console near you. And all I can say to that is "why, oh dear Rao, why?"

I mean, let's start with Mortal Kombat. Everyone was all agog over the game when it first came out, way back when. I remember renting it repeatedly for my Sega Genesis, because it was frigging cool to see all the blood and do the one Fatality I could figure out how to do. Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 rode the same wave, introducing bunches of new characters and moves and ways to "FINISH HIM!!!"

But eventually, I realized that, once you got past the blood and gore and the motion-captured characters, the game was pretty damn empty. The character variety was limited by the motion capture system, so most characters were just recolored versions of other characters. The moves were easy to pull off, but combos and finishers were ridiculously hard. The game was designed more to be "cool" than "fun." Once I stopped being in Junior High, the latter started becoming more important than the former.

In order to account for this, or so it seemed, the folks behind Mortal Kombat injected an intricate plot into the series, which grew increasingly more bloated, convoluted, and incomprehensible with each game. This led eventually to the terrible, terrible idea of Mortal Kombat games that weren't straight-up fighting games.

Here's a lesson to all fighting game manufacturers: keep it simple, stupid. This (and the fun factor) is why the "Street Fighter" games are so good: they don't beat you over the head with a wannabe high fantasy plot. At most, they have the basic excuse for the characters to be fighting (a tournament) and some relationships between the characters. Or at least, that's what they had the last time I paid attention to the plot of Street Fighter. And that's a large part of why I prefer SF to MK.

Moving on, there's also the DC Comics side of the problem: fighting games with DC Characters make very little sense. They stretch the suspension of disbelief to its breaking point by pitting such unevenly-matched characters against one another. Didn't anyone play "Justice League: Task Force"? Batman should not be able to beat Superman in a fistfight, period (and Aquaman shouldn't be faster than the Flash, but that's a different complaint altogether).

It's a little different with Marvel (although not much better), because there isn't quite the same power scale among Marvel's big guns. And they can afford to leave some of those more powerful characters out of the mix--Silver Surfer and Thor didn't appear in the Marvel vs. Capcom games (as far as I can tell); they're among the most powerful characters, but not necessarily the most popular.

DC has no such leeway; you can't do a DC game without both Superman and Batman, which leaves you in the unfortunate position of having to provide an explanation for why Batman could possibly beat up Superman, and furthermore, why Superman still has his other, non-invulnerability powers, intact. The mere act of justifying the game starts moving the plot out of "keep it simple," and yet, it's absolutely necessary--otherwise, you end up with "Justice League: Task Force."

So apparently magic is involved in this new game. Which brings us to the place where the worlds collide: the bright, shiny, generally optimistic world of DC Comics, with the gory, blood-soaked, twisted world of Mortal Kombat. How in the hell are they going to reconcile these two universes without compromising one or the other? I'm sure the gameplay will be the usual style of Mortal Kombat mediocre, and the graphics they've released look all right, but what about the blood and fatalities? Are they going to be removed, rather than letting DC characters have their spines removed by ninjas? Or are we going to see DC's largely anti-killing superheroes violating their codes of honor for the purposes of the game? Will Batman be lynching Liu Kang with his Batgrapple? Will Superman burn Scorpion to a crisp? Will Wonder Woman twist Johnny Cage's head around with her bare hands? Oh, wait...

I suspect they'll remove the Fatalities, but what does that leave Mortal Kombat with? A bunch of lackluster characters, a meandering plot, pedestrian gameplay, and a series that hasn't seen success since the Clinton Administration ended? DC hasn't had the best of luck with video games, and Mortal Kombat isn't exactly the controversial cream of the crop that it was in 1993. This seems to be a bad move for both entities, and it looks like they're each hoping to ride the other's nonexistent coattails to success.

Honestly, DC Comics vs. Mortal Kombat? What's next, Grand Theft Auto: Gotham City? At least that would have some guaranteed measure of success. What the hell, DC?

Late to the game

So, after hearing its wonders touted all over the Internets and Podcastings, I finally got my hands on Portal, and played through the main game over the last couple of days. Such a game, I figured, could never live up to the hype that has been generated around it. Spoilers ahead, if you haven't played, and I'm being so sincere when I say that if you haven't played it, you shouldn't read the spoilers.

I was wrong, oh so very wrong. The atmosphere is perfect, the characterization is brilliant, and the black comedy is hilarious. And then, there's "Still Alive."

And, of course, none of this mentions the portal gun, a brilliant device which realizes the utility and entertainment value of the classic cartoon portable hole. I spent a good portion of my childhood wishing that portable holes were real, and pondering the inconsistent mechanics of such devices, so Portal fulfills a long-standing desire of mine, and it's every bit as cool as I could have imagined.

There is one thing that I wish they'd have done something with (though there's always the chance for Portal 2): it's clear early on that there's no reason to trust GLaDOS, but I saw no reason to trust the wall graffiti either. First, much of it was clearly written by people who had lost their minds. Second, how could someone direct me to the exit unless they already knew where it was? If they already knew how to escape, why would they come back to leave directions? Why would I have the portal gun, when you'd almost certainly need it to escape? Why wouldn't GLaDOS do something about the escapees or their routes? No, the wall graffiti seemed like a ploy, either by people who didn't really know what they were doing and were leading me on a madman's journey in circles through the Aperture Science compound, or by GLaDOS herself, leading me into a byzantine trap. I hope future installments take advantage of this, specifically because of the creepy atmosphere in those parts of the game. And I really hope there are future installments, because this game was beyond fantastic.

Let there be cake!

There go my Heroes

In hindsight, that would probably make a better title for the post about the next season finale of "Heroes." Of course, there's nothing to say I won't use it for that too.

So, I've been playing Justice League Heroes on the PS2, and I've quite enjoyed it so far. The game's certainly not without its flaws, but I'm playing through a second time (got to beef up those unlocked characters and see the alternate costumes), which I don't usually do immediately after beating a game.

In fact, the last game I started playing a second time immediately after the first was Marvel Ultimate Alliance, easily one of my favorite superhero video games of all time. Given the similar game mechanics and subject matter, comparing these two games is inevitable. Unfortunately, that's not so great for JLH.

The biggest, most obvious difference is in the size of your teams; Ultimate Alliance gives you four-hero squads, while JLH, probably because of its multiplayer feature, limits you to Dynamic Duos. I applaud the decision to include a two-player option, but limiting the teams to two heroes makes the game feel a heck of a lot more like "Brave and the Bold Heroes." Allowing for larger teams might have required some creativity or flexibility with the multiplayer option, but it would have justified the latter half of the "Justice League" name.

One of the neat ideas in MUA was the team bonus: by combining characters who fit thematically (all women, all spies, etc.) or historically (the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, etc.), you'd get some benefit to your stats. While this obviously makes the most sense with larger teams, there's really no reason that it couldn't have been adapted to the two-person system in JLH. Superman + Batman = World's Finest bonus; Hal Jordan + Green Arrow = Hard-Traveling Heroes bonus; Batman + Huntress = Gotham Knights bonus; and so on. I really think the only reason you wouldn't include such a feature in JLH is that the number of character options might give you more bonus-combinations than normal ones.

Don't get me wrong, JLH has a nice assortment of characters. You start with a pool of seven, ranging from the obvious (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) to the slightly more obscure (John Stewart, Zatanna), and you can buy six more by collecting icons in the game. Unfortunately, I've been spoiled by the sheer number of characters included in Marvel Ultimate Alliance, where in addition to playable characters, you run into all sorts of other superheroes and supporting cast members in the game. MUA is chock-full of easter-eggs and shout-outs to the fans, which really enriches the feel of the universe. JLH has only a fraction of that (though the messages on the Watchtower recorder are fun). And some of the choices made are a little on the odd side; for instance, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, and Hal Jordan are all separate characters with separate voices and dialogue (albeit with the same powers), but Jay Garrick is just a costume for the Flash. I can't for the life of me figure out why they did that, unless it was to save on game size or something, but how much space do a few new lines of speech really take up?

As great as it is to be able to unlock new characters and some cool costumes (black suit Superman is teh awesome; biker suit Wonder Woman, less so), the game isn't exactly new-character-friendly. There are very few missions where you get to choose your own team (and their costumes), and none of them happen until fairly late in the game, which means any newly-unlocked characters are at a severe level disadvantage. MUA offered frequent chances to change your team's composition during missions, allowing quite a bit more flexibility, and making new characters a little less disadvantaged when they entered the fray.

The story is neat (though it borrows liberally from a couple of JLU plots and "Rock of Ages"), and with Dwayne McDuffie at the helm, it's no wonder that the characterizations are pretty well spot-on. Unfortunately, the game is rather short (and rather easy, for that matter), and a bit repetitive. While I don't necessarily have a problem with all the punch-'em-up action against largely indistinguishable grunts, drones, and robots, I do wish there were a bit more problem-solving. The bosses are tough and varied, but I couldn't help but wonder, in this Justice League game, where all the Justice League villains were. There are two Superman foes (Doomsday, Brainiac), a Flash rogue (Gorilla Grodd), a Firestorm villain (Killer Frost), and Darkseid. The only League villains are The Key and Queen Bee, and arguably the unnamed White Martians. Where are the Weapons Master, T.O. Morrow, Starro, Amazo, Kanjar Ro, and the host of other villains with names ending in "o"? It's not as though the existing villains were picked because of name recognition (the Key? Really?). Picking almost exclusively the enemies of individual heroes rather than the League's villains only contributes to the feel that this game is more "DC Comics Presents" than "Justice League."

Like I said, it's not a bad game; I've had quite a lot of fun playing it (both times). I just hope that DC's next Justice League game takes some hints from MUA, and provides the fans with larger teams, a larger cast, a longer story, more flexibility, more Justice League villains, and greater immersion in the universe. I'd also like to see a Legion of Super-Heroes game along the same lines. So get on it, DC!