Why There Aren't More Truly Great Superhero Games
Arkham Asylum should have changed the world. Why didn't it?
Superheroes and video games should go hand in hand. While movies may struggle to bring the endless imagination of the comics to life, games revel in the kind of explosive action, fantastical abilities and heartfelt plots found in all this source material. Why, then, have so few games actually been able to get it right?
Sure, there have been great superhero games - from Insomniac’s latest Spider-Man to Warner Bros’s Arkham games to even X-Men Origins: Wolverine - but they’ve been few and far between. And considering the movie industry is buzzing with multiple box-office breaking comic-book flicks every year, the lack of amazing superhero experiences on consoles has always been puzzling.
However, the explanation for why can be traced right the way back to the earliest days of the medium. Gaming back then didn’t have the same respect it does today, and that general view led to the big two, Marvel and DC, selling their licences off to publishers who didn’t care enough about quality.