Superman 64: A Misleading Review
By Cyberxion

Superman 64 was the pinnacle of awesomeness upon it's release on the Nintendo 64. The game used unique, never-before-seen graphical tricks to immerse the player in a true-to-comic-book version of the city of Metropolis, and the game-play was such that anyone who played it couldn't be arsed to play another game for sometime afterwards, as everything else seemed flat by comparison. In fact, it's well-documented that gamers everywhere killed themselves due to the deep depression that they fell into after realizing that nothing would ever be able to stand next to this amazing example of game-play perfection. The following review will reveal to the two or three of you out there who've yet to play it, just why Superman 64 is not only the best game on the Nintendo 64, but quite possibly one of the best games bestowed upon mankind. Better than the Halos even. Fer realz.

Superman 64, based on the animated Superman cartoon of the late 90's, charged Superman with...well, the plot isn't that important, the fact that it's barely there aside. What is, is that true to the cartoon, Superman finds himself in a Metropolis mired in a miasma of Kryptonite fog! That's something that lends this game an air of authenticity to it's source material, one that no other licensed game had ever even come close to capturing before it's release, or since.

That right there is enough to make any Superman fan have a messy geekgasm in his high-water pants, but it didn't stop there! No, the developers worked Superman's natural weakness to Kryptonite into the game-play, making the controls a dazzling recreation of what it would be to fly a Kryptonite-weakened Superman around Metropolis like a drunkard trying to make his way to his car after a night of depression-induced binge drinking at the local Pub! Try as you might, you won't be able to make Superman do anything close to what you intend, but with the pea-green Kryptonite fog covering the landscape, why would you want to do anything but recreate the best moments from the comics, in which Superman is as weak as a pansy, trying futilely to do so much as fly in a straight line without banging into a wall? Answer: If you're any fan of Superman's, you wouldn't!

Superman is at his best when he's weak, as playing as a nigh-unstoppable alien juggernaut just aint all that fun. This is at it's most evident during combat, in which Superman will take damage like a newborn kitten, and in which his punches are as effective as if you were to try breaking into a steel vault using nothing but a feather-duster. It's truly an empowering feeling to control Superman at his level-worst, pushing both yourself and him onward to his inevitable defeat.

Normally Superman ought to be able to pummel his way through anything, but would that really make a great game? I submit that it would indeed suck more balls than Richard Simmons, and liken this experience to seeing Superman die in the tragic "Death of Superman" run in the comics years back. And as that was a pretty goddamned gripping experience, so too is this. It's like playing an approximation of that storyline, but nothing at all like it, except that Superman dies. And in this game, he dies a lot. So it's like living that story over and over. Man I love this game!

Truly this game is amazing. I loved playing as a Superman that wasn't a unbeatable brick-wall of alien beefcake, as it made the character far more identifiable to me, a mere candy-ass human. The graphics are an amazing recreation of the cartoon Metropolis as seen through the cataract-infested eyes of your grandfather, and the Kryptonite fog only served to enhance the realism. The ultra short draw-distance helped illustrate without a doubt just how limited Superman would be by an unexplained blanket of Krytonite fog. I can't imagine that his sight would be greater than a range of about two or three feet within that essence-draining miasma, and the game captured that perfectly. I can totally see Superman's physical prowess being weakened by it as well, as I've seen it on the show and in the comic books too many times over to put an exact number on. In one form or another, Kryptonite has been a plot-device in every single Superman story ever. Hell, Lex Luthor, a mere human, has been able to lay Superman out using Kryptonite in the source-material. Given that, It only makes sense that a slight wind can do Superman in during the course of your adventure through this lavish, fully-realized cartoon world, full of that oh-so-awesome Kryptonite fog!

In closing, it was truly an honor to have played this wonderful game, and to experience first-hand just how it can be when the most powerful super-hero in history is made into a weak-sauce pussy by an inane allergy to a piece of the planet that he was born on. I give this game my highest recommendation, and my only hope is that the awesomeness that is Superman 64 doesn't lead to your deaths, though the risk is absolutely worth it. I know I had a hard time playing anything else for awhile after finishing this game, and even now have to fight from slitting my wrists and bleeding out because no other game can even come close to it's glory. I'm still physically unable to approach my Nintendo 64, as if I had shared in Superman's trials in a Metropolis covered in Kryptonite, and that is the true sign of a really great game!

Play it!