WEBVTT 00:01.680 --> 00:19.600 I'm Lauren From Legends of S.H.I.E.L.D. a Marvel Universe fan show, part of the Gunny Geek Network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually owned and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other incredible geeky shows at GunnaGeekNetwork. Do. 00:32.060 --> 00:40.540 Sam. 00:58.910 --> 01:24.520 And welcome to Play Comics, where once again, we are looking at a video game based on a comic property and how well it represents that source material. As always, I'm Chris, and today I have Adam Williamson here back again to try to figure out why we hate ourselves so much. That's a horrible introduction, but a wonderful introduction if you read the title, because we are looking at the tie in game for Superman Returns. Adam, how. How are you today? 01:25.000 --> 01:28.520 I'm doing great, maybe. How about you? 01:28.600 --> 01:46.200 That seems like a great way to put it, because I don't know. Like, I don't know. It's Superman Returns. It's weird. Let's put this all into some context. What was it that made you see this game on the list and think that this is what you wanted to put yourself through? 01:47.320 --> 02:10.040 Well, two things. One, I remember seeing Superman Returns in the theater, and it was the weirdest of all the Superman movies because it's the only one where Superman is a deadbeat dad. And I remember vaguely that there were like, three different versions of this video game that had nothing to do with one another, and I'd never actually played them, so I figured, you know, might as well give them a shot. 02:10.040 --> 02:32.210 Yeah, let's jump on that movie part first, because this is. You're right. This is a weird game in so many ways. I mean, first off, just going as being a spiritual sequel to the first two Superman movies with Christopher Reeve, who already had their own sequels. So that's just a weird concept in itself. 02:33.890 --> 02:48.020 And these games are like, there's money put into them. They use actor likenesses. This was a whole. This whole thing was supposed to be a huge push for everybody that was involved in it, and it never was to happen. 02:48.090 --> 02:51.850 Did you rewatch any of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies getting ready for this one? 02:53.210 --> 02:55.290 No, but I did watch the Brandon Routh one. 02:55.530 --> 03:08.410 Oh, yeah, I definitely watched that one, too. But I also watched the second Christopher Reeve one just because I hadn't seen it in forever. And the first one is pretty paint by numbers Superman, so I was okay not squeezing that one in. 03:08.570 --> 03:37.270 Yeah, so I've watched them fairly recently, and I tend to remember them as being neat, I guess. Like, so in the era when I grew up and you grew up, I think of it as kind of prime Superman. So we went from having the Donner and et cetera movies to a weird Superboy TV show, to Lois and Clark, to Smallville to this movie. So we constantly had Superman on television and in the movies. 03:37.510 --> 04:49.210 Yeah, Superman was somebody that you just could not escape. Like, if you were alive and conscious, you knew who Superman was. You didn't have to know who anybody else was for anything. It was just, here's this big old guy. Everybody had their opinion on whether he was super overpowered and boring or super overpowered and awesome. But as you go through everything, there was always a Superman available. And, you know, there was always something going on. You also had a Supergirl movie mixed in there somewhere. You had the Superman animated series. You had him showing up in the Justice League series. Just, you can't escape the guy. He's on every single team. Unless the whole point of the team is that he doesn't have Superman on it. Just Superman is literally everywhere. And there were tons of games before this one. You can check out previous episodes of the show to hear about most of those. They all kind of miss the bark to varying levels. But this one, like you said, was supposed to be, like, cool. Here's a new era of Superman. We're going to get everything going. Here's our big push to have everything in. 04:49.690 --> 04:58.570 I am going to make the very controversial statement that the Xbox PlayStation version of this is the best Superman game ever made. 04:58.730 --> 05:02.170 I'm trying to come up with an argument against that, and I really can't think of it right now. 05:02.170 --> 05:03.370 It's still not very good. 05:03.930 --> 05:13.140 Maybe I'll come up with something by the end of the episode. And I refuse to have my answer be my usual. Superman 64 is just a simulation run by Luthor. 05:13.700 --> 05:20.900 Yes, this is. Boy, did people try on this game so hard on one version of this game. 05:20.900 --> 05:54.240 You could say the same thing about the Brandon Ralph movie, too, because there's not really a lot of Superman going on, but there's a lot of Superman there. You have your action sequence at the beginning where he saves the plane. You have him coming back, realizing there's a kid, realizing Lois is in danger. Oh, I have to save everybody somehow. Sonic's dad is involved. Just everything in here screams. You should have more action. And it is a lot of Superman interpersonal conflicts, which is cool, but not what I'm expecting. 05:54.240 --> 06:09.290 Oh, yeah, yeah. And Routh was an amazing Superman. Like, I still. I still think he ranks up there as one of the best, which is why it's really cool that decades later we got to see him play Kingdom come Superman on television. 06:09.370 --> 06:14.970 I would argue that there has not necessarily been a bad movie. Superman. 06:15.610 --> 06:21.690 I would argue that there was one. That's why you can't find me on the Snyder Cut website. 06:21.850 --> 06:22.490 Yay. 06:22.890 --> 06:24.530 Wait, wasn't that still Henry Cavill? 06:24.530 --> 06:33.280 That was Cavill. I actually think Cavill himself was fine. I think he was the worst of the movie Supermen. But that's still really high praise. 06:33.280 --> 06:40.000 I mean, that's like saying that the worst quarterback between Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and Drew Brees is any of them, right? 06:40.320 --> 06:40.720 Yeah. 06:40.720 --> 06:48.960 Yeah. As much as I hate man of Steel, I think Cavill really tried really, really hard. And he was the best part of his movies by far. Just like Routh was the best part 06:48.960 --> 07:02.390 of Superman Returns the whole movie. I was just kind of waiting for things to happen and they never did. The deadbeat dad. I want to hit on that because I picked up on that too. And that is just weird. Do you know where that all came from? 07:02.470 --> 07:04.070 I have no idea. 07:04.070 --> 07:37.440 Okay, so I'm really glad I watched the second one this morning. In the second Christopher Reeve Superman movie, he goes. Lois figures out that he's Superman because she finally puts it together that Clark is always there and then not there. And Superman shows up, right? And then Clark is back. So that finally gets through her head. And she does some stupid stunt jumps in the river. And Clark goes and saves her, but he's using his superpower. Sneaky. And she thinks he passed it off, it's fine. And they go back up to their hotel room that they're in for plot reasons that don't matter for right now. 07:37.680 --> 07:38.640 She shoots him. 07:39.520 --> 07:45.120 No, even better than that. He trips and his glasses fall off and his hand falls into a fire. 07:45.280 --> 07:48.640 Fire. Because they're in Niagara Falls and his 07:48.640 --> 08:18.230 hand is not burnt. And she says, holy crap, you are Superman. And then he takes her over to the Fortress of Solitude and he puts himself through a chamber that takes away all of his powers so that he can be immortal. Because for some reason his mommy told him from way back in the past that if he ever falls in love with a mortal woman, he can't be Superman anymore. He has to take away all his powers. So he does, because he listens to his mommy. In this case, I think that's a bad idea. And he and Lois sleep together and 08:18.230 --> 08:22.740 they make a kid and he does not care and goes into space for a decade. 08:22.740 --> 08:50.100 Oh, even better than that. He uses this super powered kiss that he has Which I read is actually in the comics. I haven't seen it in the comics myself. But he makes her forget that he is the one that impregnated her with this kid. And everything about him being Superman, everything like that. So she has a kid that she legitimately has no idea who the father is. And Lois being Lois, presumably you would think that she would remember people that 08:50.100 --> 08:51.900 she slept with, but apparently not. 08:51.900 --> 08:53.900 How does she think this kid came about? 08:55.500 --> 09:19.540 I. Yeah, that's one of those big plot holes. And to be fair, one of the first things the game does is it gets rid of the kid entirely because it makes Superman seem so entirely insane. And it does raise the problem that you said with Lois having a magic baby, who I assume maybe she kind of thinks Cyclops is the dad of. 09:19.620 --> 09:35.300 But then later the kid has superpowers. And where did that come from? Like, who else could have given her that kid? I mean, I guess it could have been General Zod or something from back in the other movies, but that would have also been really weird and really bad. 09:36.260 --> 09:36.900 Or she. 09:36.900 --> 09:45.680 I mean, maybe she just thought she just kind of got the baby, like weirdly through Superman Jesusness. Like she had an immaculate Superman baby. 09:49.440 --> 09:52.640 I mean, that's gotta be it. I can't think of anything else. 09:53.120 --> 09:57.520 Yeah, it's like it is not a movie that is really worth thinking hard about. 09:57.760 --> 10:30.110 I mean, you get some wonderful character moments in there. She goes and yay. She's connecting with the kid and everybody is good. And Sonic's dad in there goes. And he is not super jealous of her continued love for Superman. It's almost like somebody who continued to love their wife who had died kind of situation. Like, the guy's gone, it doesn't matter. And then even when Superman comes back, it's like, yeah, even if she leaves me for him, he's Superman. 10:30.110 --> 10:33.310 I can't blame her, which would be like anybody's reaction. 10:33.390 --> 10:39.910 Like she gets him to fly a plane through a storm in two different directions. Sonic's dad is the real hero here. 10:40.390 --> 10:44.230 And I want to point out that man gave up the X Men movies for this role. 10:45.910 --> 10:48.950 I don't think there was a bad choice in there, honestly. 10:49.190 --> 10:52.470 Or possibly there was not a good choice in there either way. 10:52.470 --> 11:09.510 But you get in there and it's just a giant. This movie is the issue or two of a comic between two big action packed events where they're just giving somebody a chance to breathe and figure out all of their plot points. 11:09.830 --> 11:15.190 It's the comic that everybody lies and says they Want where they're just like, I just really want to see some character development. 11:15.430 --> 11:19.910 Ha ha. X Men fans really do want character development sometimes. 11:20.230 --> 11:24.630 Sometimes. But this movie also has so much Kevin Spacey in it. 11:24.630 --> 11:35.990 On one hand, yes, you have Kevin Spacey, which is bad. On the other hand, Kevin Spacey is no question the bad guy. So you don't have to change how you think about him at all, which is good. 11:36.310 --> 12:12.780 Yeah. It's just every once in a while you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I forgot about him. Speaking of, there's also all kinds of these little cameos from old Superman stuff like just sprinkled throughout there that you're only going to guess if you are really deeply familiar with old Superman. Like the old lady at the beginning that he gets his money from. You know, he gets, I guess he gets her dogs to eat her after he dies or she dies or whatever is like from the original Adventures of Superman TV show. 12:12.780 --> 12:14.060 I didn't even catch that. 12:14.140 --> 12:16.220 Yeah, that is the original Lois. 12:16.460 --> 12:33.560 The main thing that really jumped out at me was the continuation of the land gaining plot that they had in the first Christopher Reeve movie. So I'm glad that it wasn't just a feeling that they were going for. They were actually pulling things from those movies into here. 12:33.720 --> 12:38.040 Right. Yeah. Lex Luthor continues to be a real estate tycoon. 12:38.040 --> 12:41.960 He is the worst kind of capitalist. 12:42.200 --> 12:48.040 Yeah, it's. He gets Kalpin for a second though, who apparently was supposed to originally have a much bigger role in the movie. 12:48.040 --> 12:56.930 I was really wondering why he was even credited being in this since he had so little to do. That wasn't just the guy pressing the button. 12:56.930 --> 13:01.170 There's got to be another cut of this film out there somewhere that I don't want to see. 13:01.170 --> 13:03.810 Kind of do want to see it just because I'm curious. 13:04.610 --> 13:06.850 Imagine the four hour cut of Superman 13:06.850 --> 13:14.930 Returns that would be so. See, now you're giving me dreams and I really do want to see that spread out over a couple nights. 13:14.930 --> 13:15.290 Yep. 13:15.290 --> 13:21.960 Maybe we're going to try to think about what all the crazy fanboys would say if that ever popped up live. Drop some promos for a few other things. 13:30.680 --> 14:27.930 Deep in the Congolese jungle lies the experience of a lifetime. If you can afford it. Thanks to recent advances in time travel technology, you too can test your wit and skill as a modern day sportsman against some of history's deadliest warriors. The gallant knight. The Viking berserker. The noble samurai. Are you ready to make your mark on the world? If so, the most, most Dangerous Game awaits. Big Game Saga returns to Kickstarter Saturday, July 4th, with the newest installment, Abducted through Time, Hunted for sport. Will Saga's ninja instincts be enough to survive in this alien world of the future? Find out in issue two of Big Game Saga, written by Bill Poor with critically acclaimed artist David Lujan live on Kickstarter July 4th through July 18th. 14:37.060 --> 14:37.380 Foreign. 14:41.940 --> 15:13.940 Science fiction, romance, swashbuckling adventure. All that and more is coming to DC Special Cast in 2026. I'm your host, Paul Ken. DC Special Cast is a podcast where each month a guest and I explore DC's special comics of the 1970s, like DC Special Series, DC Superstars, Super DC Giant, and others. This year we'll have plenty of superhero action, including a special movie tie in, but we also plan to cover Sergio Aragones, The Star Hunters, Three Musketeers, and Love 1971. 15:14.020 --> 15:42.290 But wait, there's more. Extra, extra. Read all about it. I'm Sean M. Myers, and because Paul will not let me do a podcast about newsies, we're going to do a special segment we are calling the Monthly Planet. I will join my bat brother, Paul, as we cover the 50th anniversary of the greatest series of D.C. house ads ever, the Daily Planet. Get ready to hear us talk about direct currents, Fred Hebeck, the Answerman, and so much more. 15:42.290 --> 15:48.410 So join us each month on DC Special Cast from the Fire and Water Podcast Network. Now that's special. 15:56.970 --> 16:23.620 Those are some great things to check out before. First, let's finish up here. So, Adam, we've kind of touched on it a little bit, but what is bringing us here today is this November 2006 game, Superman Returns. It was made by EA Tiberian, published by Electronic Arts and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, came out on the PS2, the Xbox, the 360, and if you really, really want to count it, the ds. Because that game is very, very different. 16:24.230 --> 16:32.150 The game. Yes, yes. The two Game Boy versions are very different from one another and both not good in different ways. 16:32.390 --> 16:35.430 How dumb am I being? Because I thought there was only one. 16:36.070 --> 16:41.350 Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, there is a Game Boy Advanced version and a DS version. 16:41.670 --> 16:43.430 Whoa. No. 16:43.510 --> 16:45.270 I do not accept this reality. 16:45.750 --> 16:46.430 I promise. 16:46.430 --> 16:55.430 Damn it, Adam, you're right. And I didn't even look at the Game Boy advance one because I am either a horrible person or the luckiest person in the entire world. 16:56.370 --> 16:59.570 Well, I could tell you all about the Game Boy advance version. 16:59.570 --> 17:00.290 Please do. 17:00.370 --> 17:09.650 Yeah. Because the Game Boy advance version is. I think you remember the most important thing about Superman's Fortress of Solitude, right? Sudoku. 17:10.050 --> 17:10.450 Yeah. 17:10.450 --> 17:10.690 Yeah. 17:10.690 --> 17:23.650 Because that's what this game is. It is a pattern matching game interrupted by occasional levels of Atari level Superman flying up and down and shooting things with either heat breath or freeze vision. 17:23.970 --> 17:24.290 Wow. 17:24.610 --> 17:29.930 And I say it that way because it's impossible to tell what he's supposed to be doing. He shoots a red or a blue. 17:29.930 --> 17:31.730 Okay, well, at least those are different colors. 17:33.730 --> 17:46.770 It is notably, like one of the worst Game Boy advance games I have ever played. Not because it's unplayable, but because it's so repetitive. 17:47.090 --> 17:51.240 I guess if you just want to waste time solving puzzles, it's fine. 17:51.400 --> 17:54.760 Except it's the same puzzles over and over again. 17:55.400 --> 17:57.160 Wow, that sounds so boring. 17:57.560 --> 18:18.520 It is not good. It is an interestingly cheap kind of game. It's like you can tell that this is coming out towards the end of the lifespan of the Game Boy Advance. No one was trying too hard. Like the DS version's closer to a legitimate video game, but this is the kind of thing that your grandparent would buy you. 18:18.520 --> 18:33.800 I think we've already talked about this one too much going up the scale of goodness. You have the DS version. Yes, you do. Which, granted, when I was looking at it, I knew that you said the Game Boy handheld one was horrible, and I thought you meant this one. And I also thought you were a little bit crazy. 18:34.120 --> 18:38.120 Yeah, this one is. It sure is a DS game, isn't it? 18:38.760 --> 18:42.200 I wouldn't go straight to calling it horrible, but I would be calling it bad. 18:42.200 --> 18:57.490 Yeah. Yeah. It feels like kind of one of those early sort of DS games where they're like, oh, man, we really got to use two screens for stuff. So you get. I don't know. It's not good. It's better than Superman 64. 18:57.570 --> 18:59.410 That's not a very nice thing to say about it. 18:59.410 --> 18:59.970 I know. 19:00.210 --> 19:00.930 It's true. 19:01.250 --> 19:01.730 Yeah. 19:01.810 --> 19:12.090 You do Superman stuff. Like, you fly around like Superman normally does. He fixes things with his heat vision and he collects gems. And I think that's the Superman thing. Right. 19:12.090 --> 19:13.410 He has to change his clothes. 19:13.820 --> 19:20.860 Right. Yeah. It kind of graphically reminds me of the PlayStation 1. Spider man game. 19:21.100 --> 19:22.220 Yeah, I can see that. 19:22.220 --> 19:26.540 Which is kind of high. Kind of high praise for an early DS game. 19:26.540 --> 19:30.700 Yeah. Especially considering the screen size you're on. It's not like you have a ton of room for detail anyway. 19:30.780 --> 19:39.660 Yeah, I mean, it's. It is. I mean, it is what it is. It's a licensed Nintendo DS game and it does about all it can do with that Hardware. 19:39.740 --> 19:49.400 It's the kind of game that if your grandparents bought you that one, you would be happy because they picked something that's actually a functional game. And you might buy it on purpose if you found it in the bargain bin. 19:49.720 --> 19:57.160 Yeah, like, that's when you told your grandparents you wanted a handheld Superman game. That's the one of the two you wanted. 19:57.160 --> 20:04.280 But the real thing that's tying everything in here is the big boy console one that came out on PS2, Xbox and Xbox360. 20:04.440 --> 20:09.000 Oh, my gosh. This game should have been made like 15 years later. 20:09.160 --> 20:19.130 I was wondering what you were going to say. And putting it that way makes perfect sense because this is like the bedrock of Arkham Asylum, I think. 20:19.610 --> 20:37.050 Yes. I mean, this game gets it, like, understands what a Superman game I think is supposed to be. Like, I love the idea. Like, oh, actually, Superman's biggest thing is saving people because he's invulnerable. So you're gonna run around and save things and not use your superpowers to be a jerk. 20:37.290 --> 20:49.970 The fact that he doesn't have a health meter, I think was a beautiful touch in here. And, you know, gameplay wise, you've got to have a health meter. But all right, cool. Save the city. And if the city gets messed up, then your health goes down. 20:50.130 --> 21:02.690 And Superman is like. He has a very small slate of powers, but they all make sense for what he's doing. It's just woefully held back by the fact that this is on, like, a PlayStation 2. 21:03.010 --> 21:29.050 Yeah, that is the big problem because you have to have a game that makes Sense on the PS2 and the Xbox, but then also on the 360. So you can't, like, super fine tune it into what a PS2 and Xbox can do, because you have to take it up to that next generation. But you can't put any of the really cool stuff that the next generation can do into it, especially considering that it's not coming out on PS3. 21:29.210 --> 21:29.610 Right. 21:29.690 --> 21:48.150 And you're going to end up spending a lot of time, like, the city levels are the big, like, showpiece. Because there are those weird, like, other levels, like when you're on War World. Those suck. Like, those are just terrible. But you can tell they could only do so much with the city and the, like, the blue sky ideas of it. 21:48.470 --> 22:45.850 Well, I was looking into some of the background of this game and it had some really weird development quirks. One of the things being that Warner Brothers was really keeping the script a secret when they were making this. So you had very limited people who could look at the script. And then they had to go play a game of telephone to tell people what was going on. And the script wasn't staying in their office overnight, so you had to hope that it would come back. And they weren't even told everything real. And then who knows how a script is going to change afterwards anyway. And they were trying to have it timed out for the movie being released. And then they were told, yeah, we're not going to do that. We're just going to have it time out with the DVD release instead. It gets really fun when you have something in there where they're really trying to keep the leaks under wraps. For a movie that doesn't really have any twists or anything. Like, it seems silly now knowing how the movie turned out. 22:46.650 --> 23:06.150 Yeah. And when you're playing the game, you notice, like, most of the big plot beats are kind of there, but there's a lot of stuff that is notably missing, like the kid, the boy. Most of the secondary characters who are not Lois or Lex are there. And a lot of this stuff is filling in the blanks from the comic books. 23:06.150 --> 23:06.510 Yeah. 23:06.510 --> 23:08.550 Remember the part of the movie when Bizarro showed up? 23:08.870 --> 23:09.230 Sure. 23:09.230 --> 23:11.830 And you know that classic Superman villain riot? 23:12.070 --> 23:35.770 Yeah. Everything that they used to fill in. If this was a game that was saying, hi, here's the continuation of the movie, then cool. Makes perfect sense. But the fact that they're saying, hi, you're going to be here playing the plot of the movie, and they throw all those things in and there's not even just like a meanwhile in this part of the movie you didn't see, here's a thing that happened. It just makes it kind of weird. 23:36.010 --> 23:46.970 It is really, really weird. But I don't think it's to the detriment because, like, imagine the version of this game where they do work the stuff in from the movies, like press R2 to ignore your son. 23:46.970 --> 23:48.810 But maybe you could have played as the kid. 23:49.370 --> 23:55.330 Oh, yeah. Wiggle your joystick to try to take your inhaler full of what I assume is kryptonite. 23:55.480 --> 23:59.480 Oh, that's a good point. I didn't even think about that. Can Superman even have asthma? 23:59.560 --> 24:01.600 No. Maybe space asthma? 24:01.600 --> 24:06.240 I don't even know human biology. I mean, alien biology is just alien to me. Yeah. 24:06.240 --> 24:28.420 This is not what I would be able to figure out. But with that said, like, leaving every. Leaving so much from the movie is fine. The stuff they put in the game is fine. Like, it's good. It's actually really cool. It's just the game's not. The game's either too good for the technology or the game's too poorly made for the concept. 24:28.660 --> 24:49.860 Do you remember a few years ago when everybody was going crazy about that PS1 Piglet game? This is that game. This is a game that is in a really weird packaging. And if people would just look at the game for what it is and ignore where it came from and everything, then they would see it and it's a pretty good game. 24:49.940 --> 25:04.270 You know how they're, like, constantly making the remakes and the reskins of, like, actually really good games? Like, you can buy 30 different versions of Elder Skyrim. They should do that with games like this. 25:04.510 --> 25:18.510 I would love that. Take those ones that either were legitimately good games back in the day and just missed for some reason, or ones like this where you can do it so much better now. 25:18.670 --> 25:27.960 Yeah, I mean, I think, like, one, like, not flying around a gray skybox most of the time, because it took me, like, a good 5, 10 minutes to figure out that I was just stuck at the top of the screen at one point. 25:27.960 --> 25:29.840 Having a functional map, that would be nice. 25:30.560 --> 25:36.320 A functional map would be cool. You could shoot down meteors that didn't magically pop in. 25:36.880 --> 25:38.080 That would be real nice. 25:38.320 --> 25:50.080 But I don't know, there's something about this. Like, most of the time when I play a crappy game, it's like, oh, this is just a crappy game. I can't wait to stop playing this. And this one made me really mad that the game was not 15% better. 25:50.330 --> 26:04.410 Well, I don't know if this is going to make you feel better or worse, but we're totally on the same page there. Like, this one bothers me because it should be better, because it could have been better, but I also know that it kind of couldn't have been that much better just because of when it came out. 26:04.650 --> 26:05.010 It. 26:05.010 --> 26:06.970 It's in a really weird spot. 26:07.530 --> 26:08.010 Yeah. 26:08.010 --> 26:34.230 Technological constraints. It's towards the end of the, you know, era where you dump money on licensed games. I remember playing a lot of weird licensed crap on my Xbox 360, and this is very indicative of that. And I also think you're still dealing with almost not fully understanding how to navigate that 3D space quite as well as future games would be able to do. 26:34.230 --> 26:51.190 Yeah, 3D space on the ground, I think everybody pretty much had that down. And this one also has down when you're on the ground. But being up in the sky makes it weird. I mean, that's One reason why I think a functional map would be good. I don't need it to show me where all the levels are. Just show me where I am. 26:51.930 --> 26:52.130 Right. 26:52.130 --> 27:06.410 I mean, sometimes I think about playing especially the latest iteration of the game called Spider Man 2, and how well it does with Spider man, you know, fighting midair and how clunky Superman is compared to that. 27:06.410 --> 27:53.410 And Spider man has his own problems. You have to just imagine that there's girders everywhere. Unless it's one of the few games that actually doesn't let him swing through the middle of a field. Superman, at least he does everything on his own. So you don't have to worry about that part. It's just you fly, you use whatever powers you have, you pick up whatever powers you pick up throughout the game because nobody's going to give you all of them at the beginning, which is fine. It's a game, right. You've got to allow for that kind of thing. But this one picks up the fact that you can't make a Superman game and have the stakes be about Superman. The stakes have to be about everybody around him. So the fact that you're having to save the city, the fact that you essentially have a time limit to get everything done in that is, I think its big selling point here. 27:53.570 --> 28:09.570 Yeah, it absolutely. This game gets the core idea of what a Superman game should be. Right. Like, I hope someday the people who came up with the basic ideas for this get a chance to make a better Superman game. Because I really want to see what they could do with a budget and time and modern hardware. 28:09.570 --> 28:14.850 Yeah. Because I don't think we've had anything since then that isn't a movie tie in. 28:14.850 --> 28:25.490 No, no. I mean, Superman is pretty video game free for a long, long time. Matter of fact, the last thing I could see is basically him showing up in a bunch of Lego games. 28:25.650 --> 28:26.130 Wow. 28:26.130 --> 28:26.450 Yeah. 28:26.450 --> 28:31.090 Because you'd have that, you'd have the Injustice stuff, the DC Mortal Kombat crossover, 28:31.410 --> 28:39.610 but that's about it. I mean, there actually has not been a Superman like a mobile game for almost. Well, no, actually 15 years now as 28:39.610 --> 28:48.350 we start to wrap this one up. What do you think this game really gets right? Looking at Superman, not necessarily the movie it's based on, but Superman in general. 28:48.510 --> 29:06.710 I think it does a fantastic job of making Superman somebody who primarily cares about other people over himself. And I think it does a fantastic job of making Superman not just a power fantasy like you can mess up Metropolis in this game. So you have to be careful. 29:06.710 --> 29:17.630 I also Think that this one does a great job acknowledging the fact that people are going to want to go into this and just totally mess up Metropolis. And you do kind of get to do that when you play as Bizarro. 29:17.790 --> 29:18.350 You can. 29:18.350 --> 29:22.430 Yeah, you get that itch scratched and then you can go back to being Superman. 29:22.430 --> 29:30.590 Yeah, it's. You know, as much as I make fun of this for being a really bad game, and it is kind of a bad game, like it does so much. Right. 29:30.670 --> 29:51.880 Everybody that it has in here is a great character to have in here. Like you have an accurate to the movie Lex. Think of that as you will, because that also means it's accurate to Kevin Spacey. You have these villains that are showing up out of nowhere, but they're pretty comics accurate. Like everything in here, you can tell that the people making it liked Superman. 29:51.880 --> 29:52.280 Yeah. 29:52.280 --> 29:54.120 Or at least knew how to do their job really well. 29:54.280 --> 29:54.600 Right. 29:54.600 --> 30:07.160 And this is all, I guess, for people who are too young to understand this. This is all in the pre MCU era where comic book movies were very embarrassed to be comic book movies. So the fact that this is full of comic book stuff is actually really cool. 30:07.160 --> 30:09.720 What do you think this one really gets wrong looking at? 30:11.140 --> 30:25.620 Oh, God. Superman can turn in the air very easily. I think would be a big one. Superman probably does not have a number of brawler game combos that you need to memorize. Would be a big one. And I think Superman can touch a tornado. 30:25.620 --> 30:42.350 The biggest thing for me is just all of the other side characters that were not there. You know, I was giving praise for the ones that were. But Jimmy Olsen is a big character. Could have been in the game more somehow. Supergirl was going to be in this game, and then they decided not to put her in. 30:42.910 --> 31:11.380 And I think on that, even if you had just thrown in some. Some little cameos, some winks and nudges, you know, this is an era where I think 2006, we still had a Superboy running around. We still had things like Project Cadmus or we had all of Superman's various super friends in the Justice Leagues. Some little winks and nudges could have gone a long way there. But it does make Superman feel like a very isolated figure in this game. 31:11.380 --> 31:28.620 Yeah, it would have been really easy just, you know, just mention another hero, even if you're only doing it by name. That's fine. They're still in here. Because outside of Superman's power of being good, his secondary superhero power is being able to team up with people. 31:29.100 --> 31:35.420 Sure. And I guess I You know, putting a Wayne Industries billboard in the background would have gone a long way in this game. 31:35.420 --> 31:43.060 Definitely a long way. If you knew somebody who wanted to get into Superman, would you give them this game as part of a primer course? 31:43.460 --> 31:55.060 Absolutely not. But if I knew somebody who wanted to see how you could possibly do Superman in a video game, this is the one game I would give them. 31:55.060 --> 32:20.320 Yeah, this is the real big struggle for me because I don't know if there's another Superman game I would give them. And I'm getting late enough in the show where that's kind of becoming a little bit my thought process here. Because I'm not going to give them any of the earlier games. They're just. They're not good for whatever reason as an introduction. I'm certainly not going to give them death and return to Superman because that's just too much to dump on somebody. 32:20.400 --> 32:20.800 Right. 32:20.800 --> 32:32.800 Just thinking ahead, I might maybe. Actually, I think I made myself throw up a little bit. Starting to think that I might maybe give them the Injustice Games. Because again, I think that's too much to dump on somebody. 32:32.960 --> 32:44.700 I mean, maybe there's no way. There's nothing else where you can play as Superman. Like, I guess Superman's pretty good in DC Universe Online, but he an NPC there. This is really as close as you're going to get to the Superman experience. 32:45.100 --> 32:58.380 Honestly, the big thing for me keeping me from wanting to give somebody this game is the fact that it's a movie tie in to a movie that I don't think is a good introduction to Superman either. So you can't even weasel around and get it in that way. 32:58.460 --> 32:58.860 Fair. 32:59.260 --> 33:06.900 This is perfectly fine to good for people who are already into Superman. This is not a good introduction. 33:07.210 --> 33:18.490 Yeah. And I think this is a game where if you really, really, really want to play it, you should go into this as seeing the gradual evolution of what a superhero video game could be. 33:18.490 --> 33:35.880 And finally, you know, let's look at this and let's get the Daily Planet involved somehow. Because it's the Daily Planet. It needs to be involved. But they need some new reporters. So what couple Muppets are you gonna bring in to be reporters covering all of this Superman craziness? 33:35.960 --> 33:39.320 I mean, canonically, you have to go with Kermit, Right? 33:39.480 --> 33:41.960 Naturally. That's why I said multiple reporters. 33:42.200 --> 33:42.600 Yeah. 33:42.600 --> 33:58.380 I would actually put in Sam the Eagle. I think Sam the Eagle would do a fine job and not put up with any kind of shenanigans. You'd be a great anti Superman reporter. Slash Superman fanboy later on. And just to make it incredibly weird, I'm throwing in the Swedish Chef. 33:58.610 --> 34:01.810 Swedish Chef doesn't make it weird. The Swedish Chef makes it fun like that. 34:01.890 --> 34:07.330 Just be a fun Swedish Chef minigame where Superman has to fly around the kitchen and keep it from exploding or something. 34:07.330 --> 34:10.530 I mean, that is basically the entire DS game. 34:10.610 --> 34:12.330 That is the entire DS game. Yes. 34:12.330 --> 34:18.290 Well, Adam, it has been great talking to you here. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you around the Internet? 34:18.450 --> 34:25.650 You can find me on Bluesky as effect, not affect. And I'm not going to spell or say that. And that's about it. 34:25.970 --> 34:31.470 I don't want to spell it either. And that's why I put links in the show notes, because clicking links is so much easier to remember how to spell things. 34:31.790 --> 34:32.590 Yes, it is. 34:32.670 --> 34:46.750 Also, be sure to listen to the previous episode. Well, previous as in in the past, not the one right before this where Adam and I talked about Dante's Inferno because it's April Fool's month, or at least it was back then, and I decided to have some fun with it. 34:46.830 --> 34:51.230 And you all deserve a moment with that beautiful work of literature and game. 34:51.470 --> 37:11.680 As always, the best place to find me is over on playcomics.com where you can find links to all the social media things, which is pretty much threads in blue sky, because that's where I have found people to not be giant. Mon, if you want to be on the show, then you can check out the list of things that I have linked down in the show notes. Those are all the games I'm looking to find a guest for right now. Or if you have some thoughts on the next episode that's coming out, which is going to be Garfield's nightmare and scary scavenger hunt, because somebody twisted my arm very, very lightly. And we're looking at the scary Scavenger Hunt one. Let me know if you have any thoughts about either of those games and we can put them in here. If you want to help support the show, then you can be like, oh no, Lick class or Dan McMahon and give the show money because unfortunately it does cost money to run a podcast. Or you can just tell your friends and family and random people about it. You know, maybe the guy who takes care of the cactuses around the corner because, you know, obviously he likes prickly things and I don't know how that connects to anything, but we're going to leave it in here anyway. Maybe he'd like to listen to this while he takes care of those cactuses. Don't forget the Play Comics is part of the Gunageek.com network, home to such other wonderful shows as Capes on the Couch, where you can hear Doc and Anthony talk about things that make them sound smart and me sound dumb. And also a lot of the time make Anthony sound dumb too. I say it because I love you, man. It's okay. If you want to hear Carrington, Martin and I looking at the things from children's media that we were taught, hey, learn that lesson. Act like this. It's how you should behave out in the world. And then now we're out in the world and people are saying, hey, why are you being mean? That's socialism and communism, and that's bad. Then actually, that would be sharing. That wouldn't be mean. That would be nice. I don't know. The world is weird. It's a weird place. So let's go back to those childhood lessons and you can do that by listening to Sugar Spite and everything is fine. Link is down in the show notes. It is a sporadic release schedule. We haven't released one for probably a few months now, but I'm gonna get back on that. Our schedules are being crazy, and if I have to do it by myself, I'm gonna do it by myself. If you like the music that I'm rudely talking on top of, head on over to backing track gg Check out all the great music over there and maybe find something for your own project. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, and go find yourself a new favorite character. Hey, guess what? I actually press buttons. 37:11.680 --> 37:12.400 Good job.