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Superman Returns [Xbox 360]

Superman Returns

Xbox 360

Developer:	EA Games
Publisher:	Electronic Arts
Releasedate:	2006/11/20
Genre:	Action/Adventure, Sandbox
Series:	Superman

Buy Superman Returns at Amazon.com

Description

As the Man of Steel, you'll hone your unworldly super powers such as Flight, X-Ray Vision, Heat Vision, Super Hearing, Super Strength, Super Speed, and Super Breath to fight villains that only Superman can defeat. Explore your super powers to discover new uses and combinations: use Heat Vision to melt a rogue car or as a focused laser-like beam to cut through thick metal; use Super Breath to move heavy objects or freeze villains into solid ice. You can also combine powers and interact with your environment; for instance, freeze water spouting from a broken fire hydrant into a giant icicle with your Super Breath and use your Super Strength to hurl it at an enemy. 

Get ready to take flight, as Superman Returns' revolutionary new mechanics allow you to take full command of your aerial maneuvers. You're not limited to flying over 800 mph (faster than a speeding bullet you can also corral your enemies, perform stunning in-air acrobatics, instigate Super Speed missile-like attacks, and much more. 

In Superman Returns: The Videogame, you explore and protect the truly living city of Metropolis one that is not only expansive (with 80 sq miles and over 10,000 buildings), but also changes dynamically with you as you affect gameplay. Citizens will run away in terror from newly-erupting danger and also exit their cars to cheer and snap photos as you fly overhead to save them. 

Superman may be invincible, but Metropolis is not. Player choice matters, as Metropolis' destruction will affect your ability to progress. You must face the internal conflict facing Superman at every turn: will you pause your pursuit of super villains to stop a massive tornado sweeping through the city and save its civilians? Every decision made is critical to Metropolis' existence and can affect the collateral damage meter, which ultimately keeps the player in the game. This is not just another movie-based game. This is the Superman game you've always wanted to play. Utilizing more than 60 years of rich history, Superman Returns: The Videogame is the ultimate Superman experience for players. 

<ul>
<li>True to the fiction in every respect, this is the game based on the Superman universe that fans have been anticipating for decades.</li>
<li>From excited citizens stopping to take your picture as you fly overhead to the traffic on the streets, every detail of this vibrant city has a mind of its own. These 80 square miles are brought to life for the first time in a videogame.</li>
<li>Go anywhere and do anything in Metropolis as Superman. Non-linear gameplay allows you to explore and play the game exactly how you want to at your own pace. Where and how you fly to the top of skyscrapers, dodging elevated trains is completely up to you, since gameplay is designed as a true open world experience.</li>
<li>With notorious villains like Metallo and Parasite, and colossal challenges only Superman can overcome, you must navigate the Man of Steel to monitor and protect Metropolis from destruction.</li>
<li>Three distinct types of gameplay Flying, Rescue, and Combat will keep the action constant and the challenges relentless. Play both film-inspired missions as well as original content created exclusively for the videogame.</li>
<li>Graphics, sound, and gameplay have been taken to the next level to create a Metropolis like you've never seen it, with three dimensional sound, a complete orchestra soundtrack, and Oscar-wining sound designer.</li>
</ul>

Reviews on Superman Returns [Xbox 360]

AJMouse on Superman Returns [Xbox 360], 17-03-2007

"Woh, this game has been sitting between my other games for like… what now? Since it was released. Not that I enjoyed the movie to an extent that I simply needed to play the game or anything like that, but having played the demo that I got from Xbox Live Marketplace I just wanted to fly around the city of Metropolis and have some fun.

The game got very bad reviews on just about every site I visited before I bought the game. I should’ve known. Although I don’t completely agree with giving it a 3 or a 4 out of 10, it definitely isn’t a great game. It doesn’t deliver to what people want. Look I like Superman, the movies, the TV-series, but never one has a game stood out for him. Why is it so hard? What do people want?

In the game you start out with some instructions from Jor-El (your father from Krypton) that appear on-screen while doing small missions in Metropolis. The missions involve killing some robots and putting out a fire here or there. Also you need to stop a meteor shower by fire-eye-shooting the icy ones, and by ice-breathing the ones consisting of fire. Fine. After a missions you clean up after yourself by bringing some wounded people to nearby ambulances. Fine again.

You learn how to fight a bit, you learn how to fly (works great if you ask me) and you learn how to superspeed when flying or running. When superspeed-flying, you do get the feeling of speed because of the blurring-effects and the great sound-effects (breaking the sound barrier I think). But, when flying near the buildings at superspeed, you’re maybe going twice as fast as the cars on the ground. Say that they’re going 60 miles an hour (which I consider pretty fast within a city) that only leaves you with 120 miles an hour. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that is NOT Superman’s superspeed. I know, if superspeed would really be superman’s superspeed (flying to China, buy some food and fly back within 10 seconds) you wouldn’t be able to fly correctly through the city without blowing through buildings. I have the most simple solution to this problem: slow-motion. DUH! When superspeeding right now, you still go way to fast to navigate precisely between buildings when in the midst of a fierce battle. You are bound to crash into buildings once or twice, which then destroys the city’s health again. Bad for you cause you need to keep up the city’s health by destroying evil robots and putting out fires! You also restore city health by helping 1 of the 100 or 200 cats that are stranded on top of the buildings, or by bringing wounded citizens to ambulances.

Back on topic, it feels like you’re playing a Superman who is constantly being affected by Kryptonite. When superspeeding into a building, you crash into it, instead of bursting through. As Superman, you need to be able to do anything. When you fire-eye a robot, it should burn and die. It shouldn’t be unaffected by putting it’s arms in front of itself (wtf???). When you punch a robot, it should be launched into the sun! And not just lose a little bit of health from its health-bar (wtf???). You ARE Superman, you can do this. You are not limited on Earth (Jor El says so himself).

Sigh. I can go on and on about all that and you will still say you don’t agree because well.. implementing all that makes the game too easy. I will answer to that. You are right! It does. But listen up: the game shouldn’t be about fighting stupid robots or evil masterminds. It should be about policing the streets of Metropolis. It should be about superspeed flying to tall buildings within seconds (seconds in game time, maybe a minute in play time) in order to save the falling Lois Lane! It should be about superspeed flying to the railroad track and stopping a train just before it hits the ramp where the track ends. It should be about sneaking around looking into Lex Luthor’s office through the wall listening about his next evil plan. That is what it should be about and that would give you a great game. With all these things happening almost at once, the slowmotion would work just great. It would be awesome.

Ah well. Don’t buy this game. When I started to write this review I thought about giving it a 5, but I’m giving it a 4 anyway instead. Get your facts straight developers, we’re talking Superman here. Very poor game (but the flying controls are great, lol).
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