Games where you get to play as Superman should be awesome, but they’re not. Frankly, I’m amazed that you can have a guy that is real strong, real fast, nearly invulnerable, can fly, can see through things, and has other powers that manifest when needed, that you can base a video game on, and then somehow make it an absolute chore to play.
Superman 64 takes place in the Superman universe that was portrayed in the cartoon show of the 90’s. The story is something about Lex Luthor having trapped Jimmy, Lois, and… someone else in a virtual reality environment, and Supes has to find them. How does he find them?
By flying through rings, or carrying something while flying through rings, or some other menial task. And to add to the… special flavor of this game, whenever you fail at something and start it again you get treated to the same voice-clip, “Then there’s no time to waste!”
The flying is just about the most uncontrollable thing that I’ve ever tried to do in a video game. I got immediately frustrated at it, and I couldn’t stomach playing the game for longer than five minutes. And, thankfully, I didn’t feel obligated to play this game any longer than that. I only played this game one time in a demo station at my local electronics store. And, I’ve got to say, it’s a good thing that the controller was bolted to the display, otherwise it might have sailed across the store and become lodged in the screen of the display laptops.
It’s the kind of game that I wake up some mornings and breathe a sigh of relief that I didn’t actually pay any money at all to play this game.