Impressions: Superman Returns XBL demo

As we mentioned earlier, we did download the game, and man was the thing huge. Took us around five hours to finish getting the thing in our HD. Maybe it’s our connection… or something like that. Anyway, since this is only a demo we’ll refrain from commenting on the graphics and the sound (the thing looks amazing though). Instead we’ll focus on how the gameplay feels and how the demo ran.

Let’s start with the title screens and how the game starts up. The black and red EA logo animates and scares the bejeesus out of us, good thing the DC logo was there to rescue us from the horrific demonic terror that is the EA logo. The Warner Bros. logo shows up, zooms-in, and then eventually turns into the familiar “movie” Superman title screen. Yay.

We start the game and we get informed that only the industrial islands of Metropolis is accessible. Boo. Then we find out that we have to stop Matallo and his metallic henchmen from ruining the place. Yay. Two “yays” one “boo”. Looks good so far.

Then the control screen pops up. They’re easy enough, for one thing they sort of remind me of GTA. Left trigger allows to target and right trigger allows you to use the superpower that’s currently selected. The d-pad lets you select between breath powers (either a freezing attack or a wind attack), and heat-vision. B lets you block, A let’s you pick up and throw stuff, X makes you do actions (like punches and stuff), and then Y let’s you switch between walking on the ground or flying. Left bumper lets you Hover and right bumper let’s you speed up.

Read the rest of this article after the Jump!

As we mentioned earlier, we did download the game, and man was the thing huge. Took us around five hours to finish getting the thing in our HD. Maybe it’s our connection… or something like that. Anyway, since this is only a demo we’ll refrain from commenting on the graphics and the sound (the thing looks amazing though). Instead we’ll focus on how the gameplay feels and how the demo ran.

Let’s start with the title screens and how the game starts up. The black and red EA logo animates and scares the bejeesus out of us, good thing the DC logo was there to rescue us from the horrific demonic terror that is the EA logo. The Warner Bros. logo shows up, zooms-in, and then eventually turns into the familiar “movie” Superman title screen. Yay.

We start the game and we get informed that only the industrial islands of Metropolis is accessible. Boo. Then we find out that we have to stop Matallo and his metallic henchmen from ruining the place. Yay. Two “yays” one “boo”. Looks good so far.

Then the control screen pops up. They’re easy enough, for one thing they sort of remind me of GTA. Left trigger allows to target and right trigger allows you to use the superpower that’s currently selected. The d-pad lets you select between breath powers (either a freezing attack or a wind attack), and heat-vision. B lets you block, A let’s you pick up and throw stuff, X makes you do actions (like punches and stuff), and then Y let’s you switch between walking on the ground or flying. Left bumper lets you Hover and right bumper let’s you speed up.

Now that we’re done with the controls let’s start with the game-play. A few minutes into the game and it will be apparent that the control scheme, although similar to GTA, takes a little more time to get used to. It’s a little clumsy at the start, some of us here found flying to be confusing, some of us here found the ground controls to be a problem, but after some time, you’ll eventually be able to move fluidly across metropolis at supersonic speeds. This is where the fun starts.

If you want it to be, this game is like GTA with superpowers. You can freeze cars, throw stuff, freeze people, cause minor earthquakes, freeze people, fly into the stratosphere, cause sonic booms, freeze enemy robots, blow up cars with your heat vision, and yeah, freeze people. A whole lot of “yays” here.

You can’t just run around and do random stuff though. You ARE Superman, so when missions start, you sort of have to go do them. The world needs a savior and you’re it. Metallo’s minions will threaten the city every few minutes, and you have to go to where they are and turn the annoying pieces of metal into scrap. After you beat up enough baddies, the kryptonite powered man-machine shows up, too bad the demo ends just when things start to get exciting.

Well, the demo was good fun and all, and the annoying cut sort of does make you want to get the retail version. Unlike the THP8 demo though, this one sort of left us wishing that the retail version will include few more features. While the game certainly has a GTA-esque freedom to it, we sort of wished that the game has a system that will reward you for doing random good deeds and saving civilians. Of course this may only be because we’ve been playing Saint’s Row a bit too much, and we got used to the free roaming task/mission set-up.

We never needed to use the “restart objective” option in the pause menu, but it does promise that the retail version will have challenging missions. Those Bizarro trailers and those Mongul screens come to mind. Curious.

Good fun demo. Does its job well and makes you curious about the retail version and how the boss fights in it will play. More “yays” than boos.