Review: Superman Returns (NDS)

There are some things that Gamestyle is convinced of with regards to the world of video games. Nintendo will continue to delay releases in Europe because they get some sort of sick pleasure from it, Halo 2 online will never be clear of screaming 13-year olds who have dirtier mouths than most rappers, and there will never be a decent Superman game. EA's recent home console effort, the tie-in to the rather excellent Superman Returns movie, allowed players to fly around the 80 mile area of Metropolis with gay abandon. Unfortunately pretty much everything else in the game turned sour with repetitive missions that became very dull very quickly. So, has anything changed with EA's portable superhero adventure? Actually it has - for the worse.

You know the story; the game chronicles the events of the film where Superman returns after a five year sabbatical to prove to himself that the planet Krypton has indeed been blown to kingdom come. Returning home just in time to stop the nefarious Lex Luthor's plans, he must battle DC super-villains that have no relevance to the movie. In fact, aside from three missions in the game, there's little to connect it to the movie's plot. Though this can be forgiven, since it would be a very short game otherwise. Oh wait, Gamestyle completed this in a grand total of three hours - most of which was spent being very bored.

Unlike the home versions, Superman Returns on the DS doesn't feature a huge city for the Man of Steel to fly around in. Instead, the game is a series of repetitive and dull action stages interspersed with a rather odd map screen/chess game. Basically, in between missions, Metropolis is displayed via this map screen, with tiles showing areas where disasters are happening. In order to get to these disaster areas, you must move your tiny little Superman emblem to each tile one at a time. Once you've landed on a tile displaying a disaster icon, the level itself begins proper. However, you can only move a limited amount of times on the map screen before Metropolis takes damage from the disasters you've yet to avert. Yes, like the bigger version of the game, Superman himself has no health bar, so it's Metropolis that takes the brunt of the villains' attacks. To be honest, this is one of the few aspects of the game that makes any kind of sense, since Superman himself is pretty much invulnerable. However, trying to navigate the map when villains are traipsing around it causing mayhem, destruction and your health bar to deplete, can get annoying, although a little prioritising will usually see you through. Gamestyle recommends tackling the villains themselves which are continually moving and cause more damage than the stationary disasters.

However, no matter what missions you tackle and in what order, they're all dull as day-old dishwater, and rarely deviate from a list of three themes. You're either wandering around the level using your 'super hearing' (actually a blip on the screen that appears when you stay motionless for a couple of seconds) to search for hidden enemies or machinery, or flying around the level flying up to enemies/civilians/vehicles, activating one of your context sensitive superpowers (in order to either destroy, freeze, or look inside an object/enemy), and then flying off to do the same thing to the next enemy. The only variation is your targets - either trucks, robots, purple alien things, or a purple Leprechaun thing - but aside from that, it's exactly the same! The only change to the formula is when facing the villain Bizarro; the level is flipped upside down, which makes things even worse.

The other type of mission is in the way of boss battles, which again suffer from being exactly the same as each other, right down to the animations. See, instead of a regular "go up and hit the bad guy 'til he falls over" boss fight, Superman Returns features a Dance Dance Revolution/Guitar Hero style button pressing session. Pressing the buttons on screen when they appear causes Superman to hit his foe; a missed button causes the enemy to hit Superman; that's it. Meanwhile, the battle animations and intros, no matter which villain you're battling, remain the same, always ending with Superman chucking the vanquished villain against the Daily Planet building. Hopefully the owner of the fictional newspaper has some good building insurance.

But Superman Returns' crimes don't stop at horrible mission design and repetitive, dull gameplay, oh no; they extend to the game's audio, graphics, and loading screens. Yes, loading screens. When was the last time you saw a DS game that needed a loading screen outside of its Wi-Fi functionality? Plus, they're long and they flicker, causing you to panic and think your DS is broken. This is a level of coding you'd expect from a chimp, never mind the largest games publishers in the world. As for the graphics... it barely looks better than Superman 64, which is one of the worst-looking games of all time and is seven years old. As for sound? Tetris on the original Game Boy had clearer audio abilities.

Quite frankly, Superman Returns on the DS is abysmal. If you consider paying for it, or even asking for it for Christmas, you deserve to have a huge slab of radioactive green Kryptonite enter the Earth's atmosphere and smack you right on the head. If you must own a Superman game this year, get the home console version, as it at least lets you write naughty words on the side of buildings with your heat vision.

Rating: 2 / 10

Words by Garry Webber