by Chris Fletcher

Created on: July 03, 2008   Last Updated: May 26, 2012

Licensing video games from movie franchises can be a dangerous business indeed, and it is a practice that only very rarely produces quality games. Unfortunately, Superman Returns is no exception to this rule, and is a short, unimpressive and rather broken outing for everyone's favorite child of Krypton.

Superman Returns follows the same formula of most licensed games, in that it adheres loosely to the plot of the movie, while attempting to expand the game with subplots using villains and characters from the canon of comic history behind the character. As such, oft-forgotten personalities like Bizarro and Mr. Mxyzptlk make appearances as purveyors of mini games and races, while Metallo and others show up for some evil mayhem. This is a fine idea in principle, and has worked for other titles in the past, such as the Spider-Man games. Here, however, the characters fall somewhat flat in that they are not in any way given sufficient reason to be in the game. There are no accompanying storylines to compliment their presence, other than that they represent something to do between the spare missions that echo the film.

Speaking of the film, the game only features Lex Luthor in cutscenes. He never appears as a villain to be challenged, but comes across more as a nuisance who causes big things to happen with tornadoes, and leaves you to clean up the mess. Further, Lois Lane similarly is restricted to cutscenes. Ditto Clark Kent. While it is obvious that the player should assume the role of Superman, is it strictly necessary that this is the only role? Much more dimension could be added to the superhero genre of games if players could also utilize their alter-egos once in a while. This was toyed with in Ultimate Spider-Man and worked quite well, so why the concept is consistently neglected is somewhat frustrating.

Since none of the film's narrative characters are involved in the gameplay at all, it is literally impossible to care about them and the narrative of the story. Superman Returns ends up as a series of missions that are highly limited in terms of variety, through which the player plods from one to the next with no real passion to see the resolution. This is a truly wasted opportunity regarding the storyline with half a century of comic books, movies and television shows, there are countless storylines that could have been used. Instead, there is none, save a vague reference to the movie here and there.

Superman himself is something of a paradox in the game. He

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