As someone who enjoys superhero comics and video games, I’m continually amazed that so few developers are able to successfully marry those two things. For every Arkham Asylum, there are countless half-baked movie tie-ins and quick-and-dirty mobile games gumming up the works. And it’s not like this is a new phenomenon either. Some of the most terrible games of the Atari and NES area involved Marvel and DC properties. Superman 64 is still legendary in its awfulness.
And for the life of me, I can’t understand why there are so many bad superhero games. There are plenty of quality games with superhero-esque protagonists – Devil May Cry, God of War, Infamous, etc. Kratos is basically just Wolverine with less hair and a longer reach. It’s a phenomenon that seems to specifically plague Marvel and DC’s properties. Looking at the success of the Darkness games and Telltale’s Fables and Walking Dead adventure games, it’s clear that creator-owned comic properties are doing just fine in the gaming realm. Why is it that as soon as a character starts wearing spandex and attaches a “-man” to the end of their name that it suddenly becomes so much more difficult to produce a worthwhile game?
