Arkham Asylum...what's next?

Kind of inspired by an IGN article I read a while ago: Alright, so Batman: Arkham Asylum was a million times better than anyone ever could have predicted, and it's now the gold standard to which all superhero games are compared. But the guys at IGN complained that, even when Ark Asy showed us how amazing a Batman game could be when done right, all the recent Spider-Man games have been consistently mediocre. So they asked: "What can Spider-Man" learn from Arkham Asylum?"

With Arkham City coming out soon, I've been thinking about that a lot. But it also made me wonder how amazing any superhero game could turn out if people followed Arkham Asylum's example and actually put some effort into making a game.

So what do you think? If you could make the perfect video game starring your favorite superhero, how would you do it? Green Lantern, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, etc...what would their perfect video game look like?

edited 2nd Sep '11 12:35:50 PM by TheMightyHeptagon

Making adequate video games for superheroes who can fly is notoriously difficult.

There's a reason the best superhero video games recently have been for characters like Batman and Spiderman who have an element of parkour in the way they move - they are agile and acrobatic but it is still a challenge moving around enemies and exploring the area. As a result, swinging and gliding tends to be more fun for urban areas than flying around - you are constrained more but still have a sense of freedom, as well as a need to control what you're doing.

I'd love to see a good open world Superman video game, but it'd take designers who really know what they're doing.

I'd love to see a superhero game with a fly system built a bit like this - taking tight control in tenser areas and not entirely overpowering.

edited 2nd Sep '11 12:45:07 PM by KnownUnknown

The Superman Returns video actually had fairly solid gameplay (hitting the "go 800 mph" button was pretty fun), it's just the level design and game structure was horrendously lacking. The flight controls and access to his powers were pretty fluid. The Spider-Man 2 video game was also quite good but was overloaded with a lot of superfluous challenges.

What made Arkham Asylum so good was the integration of all the different gameplay mechanics with a story that both justified all the different enemies as well as kept the focus onto a confined, well designed area. A Wide-Open Sandbox isn't always needed, and the developers basically talked about the problems with such areas when developing Arkham City.

I don't think Arkham Asylum did anything too revolutionary, they just developed all their features properly. The main problem with most of the superhero games is that they try to add in a lot of cool elements without ironing it all out.

The best Spider Man game is the PSX Neversoft games.

Arkham Asylum might not have been revolutionary, but it was a really varied experience with tons of elements that all meshed together perfectly. Epic beat-em-up combat, stealth action, puzzle solving, big boss battles...it had it all, and none of it felt like an afterthought. That's what I'd like to see more of in a superhero game.

Like...what if they made an X-Men game where every level was tailored to a certain character? That might sound limiting, but think about it: Maybe in one level, the team has to storm Mr. Sinister's fortress. So you start out playing as Wolverine or Colossus, and just slash and smash your way through waves of mooks. Further on, you start playing as Bishop or Cyclops, and it becomes a tactical third person shooter. Then maybe you have to steal the MacGuffin from a locked room, so you play as Gambit or Nightcrawler, crawling through the shadows and taking out your enemies with stealth. Then the bad guys take off in an airship, so you switch to Archangel or Storm and have some aerial battles and chases through the sky.

That was my big gripe with X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance: it was fun experimenting with different characters, but the gameplay never really changed because the levels had to fit all of them. No matter what you did, it was always just a mindless dungeon crawler with endless waves of mooks just waiting to get slugged.

It was great. For Batman.

For Spiderman you need to follow Spiderman 2's example.

Hmm . . . Does Infamous count as a good superhero game? (Does it even count as good?)

Don't hate on infamous. It's an awesome game.

inFamous is amazing, but I think this discussion is referring to games for comicbook superheroes.

Follow the Neversoft Spiderman example

Profit

Simple It will be Hell itself.

Do Whatever the Hell You Want, starring Dr. Manhattan

Amazing QTE action! 'Press X to instantly kill you enemies with your mind. Or any other button. They pretty much all do the same thing.'

Naw, that'd be total Railroading.

^ Indeed. A Dr. Manhattan game would be: "Press X To Kill Everything. Except You Can't, Because You Already Saw You Didn't. Press Triangle To Follow Destiny's Script."

edited 3rd Sep '11 1:45:23 PM by KnownUnknown

As done by Platinum Games!

Nah, see, if you want to do a "Doc Manhattan" game ( in spirit rather than detail, most likely )? The trick is to basically combine a super hero game with a "god game" strategy title. You control the character with godlike power, and you can do whatever you want. What you do or don't do effects the large scale world like in a strategy game. So, imagine Black & White only with a tangible character.