The Perfect Superhero Game

[kibblesticks]

Whether you're swinging from skyscrapers, lurking on gargoyles or soaring above the clouds, playing a superhero always feels awesome. Why then are great free-roaming superhero games so few and far between? I wanted to compile a list of features that the perfect superhero game would have so that I can begin to design my own without re-creating the flaws of the many lame hero games out there.

 

I'm interested to know what you think about superhero games, and what gives you the greatest enjoyment whilst playing. What are the best world-types for heroes to do their daring-dos in? What makes you keep coming back to a game to reprise the role of a masked crusader?

 

My favourite superhero games are free-roaming open-worlders. For me, a good SH game is all about the feeling of god-like freedom to do whatever you like, whenever you like. One of my favourite activities in the recent Superman Returns was leaving citizens trapped on rooftops, or using my heat vision to burn rude pictures into the sides of buildings. I always felt a bit dissapointed that I couldn't actually kill anyone in that game though. On the other hand, I loved Prototype, but disliked the way the combat bprevented you from playing the hero. If you started fighting then citizens were going to get killed whether you liked it or not.

 

I think the perfect SH game should have the ability to play a hero or villian, but with no forced morality attached. Different factions (police, citizens, criminals and other heroes) should react to you according to the way they view your behaviour. If you want to go on a destructive rampage that's fine, but don't expect the thanks of the city.

 

Another part of the god-like freedom is the ability to survive where most could not. The majority of games have this mechanic, from Call Of Duty to World Of Warcraft. You're the hero, and woe betide any adversary who thinks they can stand before your might. We love antagonizing the police in GTA, knowing that they can spray you with bullets and you'll still have enough health to kill a few cops and commandeer an escape vehicle.

 

Superman Returns dealt with Superman's invunerability in quite an original way. Superman couldn't be hurt, he didn't even have a health meter, but the city did, and if enough damage occured then Superman would fall to his knees in despair and you will have lost the game. In Batman:Arkham on the other hand, you can die quite easily, but the amount of escape possibilities makes damage very easy to avoid.

 

I think the perfect superhero game should have optional powers for either avoiding or absorbing damage. It should be impossible to be taken down by a lowly thug or cop.

 

Finally, I think powers and aesthetic should be completely customisable. The F2P-MMO Champions Online is fantastic for this, allowing you to customize your appearance using thousands of costume pieces. You can change the colour of both your costume and your powers, meaning you can shoot red heat beams or green radiation beams depending on the look you want to go for. This RPG aspect is brilliant and you can spend many happy hours in the character creation screen.

 

I want to be able to fly as Alex Mercer, to rip people's heads off as Superman and to walk into a hail of gunfire unscathed as Batman. The perfect superhero game should allow you to be a god, looking how you want to look and allowing you to earn any powers you choose.

 

Thoughts very welcome =]

[Ironman5000]

I would like a superhero game where your character can be COMPLETELY custom with no restrictions at the beginning of the game. It should be quite similar to the way bethesda by starting you off with races and basic abilities, maybe the facegen and body system could be a be more outlandish to get more extreme appearances OR the physical features could alter throughout the game depending on the path you take like in Fable (but with more options so you don't always look like a fat blue glowing wizard). You would also have your own name, or pick from a looong list which would be better so that NPCs can say your name in dialogue. A totally custom name would be great but don't know if the tech exists to generate voices for them without sounding like stephen hawking.

 

There should be different schools of discipline like the usual - Strength, Agility, Super-power (or mana), Speed/Stamina, which can be built up with XP and levelling. There could also be hidden relics that would grant the player a permanent or temporary boost, the former would be rare (like 10-20) and the latter would be more common.

 

There should be other power-up item pick-ups that could work in many ways - unlock skills, boost skills, grant temporary powers that would not normally be accessible to the player, things like that.

 

There should be reputation system that would change NPC disposition and would be a bit more varied that just good and evil, because in reality it's not always that simple. The player could be presented with choices in a quest that would contribute to this - hand over the bad guy, let him go, or kill him as revenge. The choice could determine later encounters and dialogue.

 

If the player committed a crime accidentally then they would be allowed to make up for it somehow, but it would be pain to have to run an errand EVERY time you kill a civilian...maybe some options/powers of healing and resurrection would make it easier.

 

Destructible environment like Mercenaries would be the biggest feature for me, having the ability to hurl your enemy through a skyscraper would just be the best experience ever! Without breaking the engine there should be some semblance of Havok to make it realistic too but I suppose some clever animated destruction might work if that's asking for too much.

 

I've got loads more ideas but I don't think there is enough room to add them all, this is a game idea i've been thinking of for years! :tongue:

[kibblesticks]

Wow, I can tell you've thought about this a lot! I only recently started thinking about it but my thoughts were pretty much on par with what you've been thinking. I'm starting a three year 3D Game Art course in September and I'm hoping I'll be able to make something of it as it's an idea with sooo much potential fun factor.

 

You could name your char and then the npcs could refer to you by a different name like The Courier or The Wanderer, or maybe you could purchase different names like in Fable.. I quite like Champions online because the npcs use your actual name, but they don't actually speak so I guess that's a bit last-century.

 

Oo and designing your own nemesis is another nice feature from CO that would be cool to implement. Same skeleton, just skinned differently.

 

What kind of powers were you thinking the relics could unlock? I didn't consider it before, but I really like your idea of having different schools of discipline, kinda like the way your speed and jump height increased with your acrobatic skill in Oblivion.

 

The throwing a guy through a building thing could be difficult. I think one way of doing it might be to have a system like the dragons in Skyrim or the orbital strike in FO, where an anim object is placed at the point of impact which makes the wall appear to have been torn. The bad guy's velocity would be measured by the engine, and thrown out the exact opposite side of the building at the same speed, with another rubble explosion anim. Not sure how good that would look but it's something to think about.

 

Thanks for replying Ironman5000, great ideas :biggrin:

[Ironman5000]

Ye the destructible environment could be a little far fetched, Mercenaries is one of the few game i've seen pull this off well by having like 3-5 stages of damage before collapsing which would probably be the best way to go if it was to happen at all. Saying this hardly any RPGs (at least what i've played) use this because it might be too much or break quests or whatever, and if Havok gets involved there would be ctds left, right and centre!

 

What I was thinking of with the relics and upgrades could be like say you create a rogue character who focuses on agility, stealth, precision like Hawkeye who could find a strength relic and be granted a temp strength boost. Now he can bash like Hulk for about a minute or so or get past in-game obstacles designed for the strength characters like the usual 'cracked wall'. An example of an permanent upgrade would be like, say it's a Hawkeye type again, could now fire 10% more rapidly or unlock a 'double-arrow" skill that could be hotkeyed with a cooldown of 30 secs.

[Vagrant0]

The largest glaring problem of any superhero game is that everyone is super, and usually somehow crucial to the safety of the world. It's great when you have only a handful of characters around, but becomes ridiculously stupid in a MMO setting, Meaning that the best environment would be something like breaking the game into episodes which people play through in groups of 1-8 heroes since it still maintains that feeling of being special, while still allowing online play.

 

Beyond that, a great majority of the game is simply how powers relate to eachother and how characters can customize themselves. Personally I would abandon the whole "archetype" style entirely since it usually corners players into a single style of play with that character instead of encouraging experimentation and trying to skills that work together. Combined with an episode based game world, it can make certain episodes harder or easier based on those skills and can require teamwork.

 

I would also suggest avoiding the idea of gear and try to link it to either certain power sets (such as those based on gadgets/science) as a means of researching new powers (handled differently from standard leveling (Even Superman had a spaceship, raygun, and other stuffs)), or just fodder to sell in order to afford new costume pieces, consumables, better hideouts, retconning, ect. Not only would this add more flexibility to characters, but also make loot more interesting in the long term since even common stuff can have an occasional use.

 

Since you're giving players all this freedom however, you'll need to implement some sort of system to restrict how much power a single character can have at once.

 

 

 

Oh, and most of all... Needs to have some evil and anti-hero options. It's boring when everyone is equally good/evil... There needs to be shades of gray and openings for different views of morality.

[kibblesticks]

Ironman5000, I think you're right about the "breaking walls breaks quests" thing, it's really PC intensive to have that kind of enviromental interaction going on. I like the idea of the power ups, would help mix up the gameplay, plus I bet it feels really satisfying to throw a car into someone after playing a sneaky sniper for hours on end.

 

Thanks Vagrant0! While I love CO for its customability, I think the game definately suffers from the "too many heroes" thing. I generally just play on my own, which negates the need for me to be online in the first place, and I never play archetypes and always freeform my character because archetypes are just no fun.

 

Another problem is with the massive customability; the focus on having tons of moves makes combat feels a bit like Oblivion's combat, only more so. Your attacks never seem to have any visual effect besides knockbacks; your punches don't feel like they're connecting and your laser eye-beams don't appear to be actually burning your enemy.

 

That's why I think a better way to go would be a single player game, with less customability and more focus on how your actions affect the game world. If the devs focused on the movement, combat and interaction then they could release more aesthetic combat as DLC, or release the tools to allow modders to make content. That way (assuming your game was popular enough to attract modders) you could have a steady stream of new aesthetic content without skimping on the polish for the bare essentials of the game. Don't know if that made sense?

 

Thanks for your guys' imput! I'm going to boot up UDK and see if I can't force myself to learn it :turned: maybe in a few years time I'll be able to actually make something worth playing :laugh: