The Death and Return of Superman — Issue 51

Mid­dling return spells dooms­day for Man of Steel

Death and Return of Super­man arc dropped in 1994

Super­man has nev­er been among my favorite super­heroes. First, I’m a Mar­vel girl at heart and I gen­er­al­ly don’t care for most DC char­ac­ters. Sec­ond, if there was a DC super­hero that I love, it’s going to be Bat­man. No prep time and by him­self. So, it stands to rea­son that I don’t care for most DC games out­side of Bat­man prop­er­ties. And so, it con­tin­ues with The Death and Return of Superman.


Death and Return of Super­man fol­lows the plot of the comics well. Super­man fights his ulti­mate neme­sis in Dooms­day, and he dies in the bat­tle. Short­ly after, four oth­er Super­men (Super­boy, Cyborg Super­man, Erad­i­ca­tor and Steel) show up to claim their right­ful place as the Man of Steel. The prob­lem is, how­ev­er, these guys are not Super­man, and it shows. Coast City is anni­hi­lat­ed, and it turns out that Cyborg Super­man is respon­si­ble for the car­nage. The oth­er Super­men, includ­ing the real Super­man him­self, return to stop the cyborg men­ace. If you’re famil­iar with the comics arc, this is basi­cal­ly what hap­pened there. It’s noth­ing super com­pli­cat­ed and there are no addi­tions or changes for the game. I appre­ci­at­ed it as some­one who does­n’t fol­low Super­man that close­ly because it allowed me to learn some­thing new about a well-known super­hero and encour­aged me to learn about the comics’ ver­sion of the sto­ry simultaneously.

Ram­pag­ing through the streets of Metrop­o­lis to stop crime and Cyborg Super­man is a no-frills affair as well. There is absolute­ly noth­ing note­wor­thy or spe­cial about the envi­ron­ments and the pre­sen­ta­tion. Noth­ing stands out, though the char­ac­ter mod­els and designs look nice. The sprites are nice­ly drawn and rather large, so they will catch your eye. How­ev­er, noth­ing else will. The back­grounds are just there, sta­t­ic and unchang­ing, and noth­ing looks par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. The music is the same. The intro theme is kind of a toe-tap­per but noth­ing about this is going to make you search it out online to add to the collection.

The con­trols aren’t any­thing spe­cial, either. They’re just stan­dard beat-’em-up con­trols. There are your stan­dard attacks, a throw, a fire­ball some­times, and an ulti­mate screen-clear­ing attack that requires ener­gy. While the pay­off is the same for all the Super­men, the attack ani­ma­tion is dif­fer­ent. It’s kind of cool to see what each char­ac­ter is capa­ble of but it’s by no means any­thing excit­ing. And, as is the prob­lem with most beat-’em-ups like this one, you’re going to run into quar­ter-munch­er syn­drome. The hits are always unfair, espe­cial­ly with mul­ti­ple ene­mies on the screen, and health isn’t exact­ly plen­ti­ful. The boss­es par­tic­u­lar­ly are bad about this, and it’s infu­ri­at­ing to no end that you can’t get clean hits against them with­out tak­ing a bru­tal beating.

At the end of the day, Death and Return of Super­man goes about as well as you’d expect: You fight Dooms­day, you play as pre­tenders to the throne, and you res­ur­rect to stop a greater threat. It’s not ter­ri­ble but it isn’t great, either. Giv­en that we know how this end­ed in the comics, is there real­ly a need to play through a mid­dling game that does­n’t do any­thing spe­cial with the Super­man name? No. Let this death cycle play out and remain in its grave, respectfully.

Injustice 2: Legendary Edition — Issue 38

Injus­tice 2 hits right notes in super rematch

The intri­ca­cies of deter­min­ing the win­ner of the sto­ried fight between Bat­man and the Jok­er all depend on prep time for Bat­man and the Joker’s mani­a­cal state at the time of the bat­tle. We’ve thought this through and deter­mined that even with min­i­mal prep time, Bat­man could win this fight con­sid­er­ing his pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with the Jok­er. To sim­u­late it, we would need only one thing: the Injus­tice series of games. And con­sid­er­ing Injus­tice 2 has more chances for this to hap­pen with prop­er sim­u­la­tion, you can best believe we’re div­ing deep into the sol­id sequel DC com­ic book fight­ing game.

Injus­tice 2 is a com­pe­tent sto­ry­teller in its quest to be a DC com­ic book sim­u­la­tor. Set after the fall of Superman’s tyran­ni­cal regime, Injus­tice 2 places Bat­man at the fore­front again to take on the task of rebuild­ing soci­ety and com­bat­ing a new threat in the form of The Soci­ety. Mix­ing in long­time Super­man foe Bra­ni­ac only adds to the chaos. What it boils down to is that these are char­ac­ters you know from the DC uni­verse — even if you’re pass­ing­ly famil­iar with them — fight­ing it out to stop Super­man from con­tin­u­ing his reign of tyran­ny estab­lished in the pre­vi­ous game.

Where Injus­tice 2 shines is its pre­sen­ta­tion and its char­ac­ters. Every­thing that looked good in the first Injus­tice is much-bet­ter look­ing the sec­ond time around. The user inter­face got a new­er, sleek­er coat of paint, and all the char­ac­ter mod­els and back­grounds look bet­ter and clean­er, too. The char­ac­ter select screen even looks bet­ter and more flu­id. NetherRealm’s fight­ing game visu­als get bet­ter with each game, so this is just a tes­ta­ment to their grow­ing prowess. The music isn’t stand­out, but it’s serviceable.

Despite its shiny upgrad­ed pre­sen­ta­tion, I’m still not a fan of how it plays. The com­bat doesn’t feel nat­ur­al, like say, how Mor­tal Kom­bat feels. It still feels like it’s a step or two behind MK and like it’s try­ing too hard to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from that series by throw­ing a wrench into the basic com­bo setups. I’m also not a fan of the unlock sys­tem. It’s a lot of gear to unlock for a lot of char­ac­ters, but I don’t real­ly have the time or the incli­na­tion to sit and work on it. I’m not say­ing have it unlocked imme­di­ate­ly when I first start the game, but I am say­ing it needs to be eas­i­er. The expe­ri­ence is not the most enjoyable.

Injus­tice 2 is a nice upgrade from the first game. It’s got the name fac­tor, char­ac­ters you prob­a­bly know and slick pre­sen­ta­tion that will catch most anyone’s eye who is into fight­ing games. Whether you’re a com­ic book fan or a casu­al fight­ing game con­nois­seur, Injus­tice 2 is worth a look to see if it’s worth its weight in kryptonite.