Superman Returns - PS2 - Chapter 1 - Meteor Mayhem (Semi-Blind)
3In the opening chapter, Superman defends Metropolis from a meteor shower.
I’ll be playing through this 2006 title for the first time and getting 100% completion, as well as earning every trophy (yes, this PS2 game has a few trophies, though they aren’t official PSN ones obviously).
This doesn’t have much to do with the film, apart from the cutscenes. It’s actually more like a Superman simulator / sandbox game. Superman freely patrols the large open world Metropolis, dealing with various disaster events as he sees fit. The events are both random and scripted.
Completing events earns experience, and each game chapter has an experience target to reach before moving on to the next one. The events are mostly fighting marauding enemies and bosses, but include things like putting out fires and destroying meteors. There are also 100 kittens to rescue, and a handful of rampage side activities where you play as Bizarro.
Superman can’t die of course, so Metropolis has a health bar instead. If it takes too much damage, it’s game over. Fortunately, it’s possible to save during chapters and Metropolis’s health will be back to full when you reload.
This game gets some flack, but it plays OK in my opinion, with a good feeling of being Superman. If you ever enjoyed the Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on PS2, the combat is like that, but with the Man of Steel doing the rumbling instead. One gripe though, there seems to be a delay for Superman to use his ranged powers on a locked-on target, so sometimes it might look like I’m firing too late, or just not bothering (like with the meteors in this) but in actuality I’m pressing the button, the game just isn’t responding. Firing without lock on responds instantly, so not sure what’s going on there.
This was one of the only open world action games on PS2 I hadn’t played, and I’ve been wanting to tick it off the list for ages. Unfortunately, my disc crashes on my backwards compatible PS3, so it was left in limbo for a while. I decided to take a look at the PCSX2 emulator, as potentially a HD way to play my PS2 discs that don’t work on PS3 backwards compatibility. My PAL Superman disc did play in PCSX2 from an external optical drive, but for some reason my attempt to make an ISO kept failing. Anyway, I just grabbed the NTSC version instead, and am playing that here on PCSX2. It ran OK, though there are some minor graphic glitches and a little bit of stuttering now and then. Better than nothing though, just to finally get this game done. As I was testing out settings on this chapter, it's not 100% blind gameplay, but the rest of the game will be.
Full playthrough • Superman Returns - PS2 - Full Playthr...