Games Inbox: What's the best superhero game?
The Thursday letters page hopes Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet has a sense of humour, as another reader calls for Star Wars: Battlefront 3.
To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk
Binary choice
An interesting article about Superman in video games, but I have a hard time imagining that anyone will bother trying to crack the concept when there are easier heroes to put into games. It is still amazing though, how there still aren't that many superhero games in general, even though the peak of the MCU has been and gone.
So the question I'm going to ask, of which is the best superhero game, has far fewer options than there really should be. Personally, I think it's probably Midnight Suns, but if we limit ourselves to action games it's really only down to Batman vs. Spider-Man.
I would say that Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are much better games than any of Insomniac's Spider-Man games, even though Insomniac rip-off so much from the Batman titles. However, I'd also say that Spider-Man 2 is a better superhero game, in that it gets the character exactly right in terms of character and what he does.
The problem with the Batman games is that they're all set in enclosed spaces and even by the time you get to Arkham Knight, everyone's been evacuated from Gotham, so there's no civilians and you don't get to prevent any random crimes, which you absolutely should be doing in a Batman game.
I always figured that was a technical limitation but since we've never had a proper sequel the problem has never been solved.
Archie
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Unknown success
Interesting article about game sales and how it's difficult to tell whether a game is a hit nowadays, or at least not until many months since it was out. I say this because I'm curious right now as to how Death Stranding 2 is doing. I loved it but it is clearly not a cheap game to make, and I don't know anyone else that's played it and I don't remember anyone writing into the Inbox about it.
I see some talk of 1.4 million sales in June, but that doesn't seem very much. Not for a game like that. I know that GC said 1 million is considered the bear minimum for a hit but it's dependent on budget. So what does Death Stranding 2 have to do to break even? We usually know that for a movie but never for a game.
It's frustrating. I hope the game has done well enough that Kojima won't be impacted but we probably won't know unless something really bad happens.
Damdon
Quick turnaround
A surprisingly interesting set of results for US game sales in May. I certainly didn't get the impression Elden Ring Nightreign did all that well and it's almost funny how Switch 1 sold 44% less than last year and it still outsold the Xbox Series X/S. How they think they're going to come back from that sort of performance in the next generation I don't know. But I do know telling us that the killer app is AI isn't going to work.
Love to see the revival of Star Wars Battlefront 2 too. I'm not sure if it's quite extreme enough for EA to make a sequel though. Even if they started right now it'd take them something like five years to make a new one and whole knows what stay the games industry or Star Wars will be in by that point. Mind you, it was only two years between Battlefront 1 and 2, which is very short nowadays, so maybe they can make it quicker if they use the same tech.
Maister
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Remaster masters
I try to support games and studios I really appreciate with day one buys and think I'll be doing that with Nightdive Studios' System Shock 2 25th Anniversary Remaster, with its slightly delayed release on console on the 10th of this month.
I'm on board with and think they do an excellent and thoughtful job of their manifesto of 'bringing lost and forgotten gaming treasures back from the depths.'
I have played System Shock 2 before but will relish a fresh playthrough but have really enjoyed for the first time Powerslave Exhumed and Killing Time: Resurrected from Nightdive Studios.
There's so many games I'd love them to take on, like Deus Ex, that maybe might happen if this release does well.
Simundo
GC: They're definitely the gold standard when it comes to 90s era Western games.
Lite preference
Spoken to a couple of gamers in real life and one doesn't think there will be Nintendo Switch 2 Lite. I am banking on it. No way am I fetching this version of Nintendo Switch 2. Battery issues, weight, and a myriad of little things not quite right… see YouTube.
Games full price around £70 for download keys, maybe if physical. I only want one game, Fast Fusion? I missed out on Fast RMX – a super rare game for Switch 1.
I hope Nintendo see the complaints and do what they did with original Switch and make a Switch 2 Lite version, please.
Thank you Metro for airing, this so to speak.
Simon
GC: What battery and weight issues? And no game-key game is £70.
Lighten up
Won't playing The Last Of Us Part 2 in chronological order mean the flashback at the museum is the first scene? Isn't that going to be really weird? Not that I'm likely to play the new mode. I really liked both games at one point but they feel so overexposed nowadays that I'm just tired of hearing about it, to the point where I don't even know if I'll watch season three of the show.
Season two changed a lot of stuff that didn't seem to make any sense, but its biggest problem is that it was so boring. I think it's going to be a mistake dragging the second game out for three seasons, even if it is a longer story overall.
I really feel Naughty Dog needs to move on from The Last Of Us and just make something with a little optimism for once. Even the last Uncharted was kind of grimdark, with no supernatural stuff. They need to cheer up a bit, or more importantly try to cheer us up.
I don't need to know that the world and everyone in it is awful, I need hope that maybe they're not. And no, the ending of Part 2 does not count towards that.
I'm not sure what Intergalactic is about but I hope it's more about fighting robots with not-lightsabers than banging on about religion and faith. I'm not asking them to go back to Crash Bandicoot, but there has to be a middle ground between than and the ultra seriousness of The Last Of Us.
Kubert
Proper strange
Every time it gets pointed out that Valve hasn't made a 'proper' game since Portal 2 it seems so weird to me. I remember 20 years ago when they were being described as the best game developer in the world and the 'Pixar of gaming.'
Now I doubt anyone under 30 even realises they used to make games. What saddens me most is it shows Valve were just making games to pay the bills. If they were doing it for the love of the art, they would've carried on even after they made their billions with Steam. I guess sitting around counting your money is more fun?
Rascar
The lost generation
I'm going to be honest here and say that I think the general dislike of the Wii is perfectly justified. I don't think anyone hates it but for me it was the least generation by far for Nintendo. If it wasn't for Super Mario Galaxy there'd barely be anything worthwhile on the whole console and ironically that one sold quite poorly compared to rubbish like New Super Mario Bros. Wii.
I guess Mario Kart Wii was okay, since motion controls couldn't ruin that, but Zelda: Skyward Sword was awful and all the new Nintendo franchises were junk like Wii Sports.
That game is definitely an important milestone for gaming but it's horribly shallow and barely even pretends to be anything other than a tech demo. I don't hate the Wii, but I do consider it a non-entity that I have no interest in.
It was important in terms of getting Nintendo back on top of the game, and no longer bleeding money, but as a console with a lot of enjoyable games… I'd much rather have a N64 or GameCube (I would say or a Wii U but I'm not going to lose credibility by stretching my point too far).
We can see today how little Nintendo has kept from that era. A few motion controls in the odd party game and gyro aim. That's it. PlayStation and Xbox don't even have that, so you can easily say that the Wii had no lasting impact on gaming, and it's hard to prove you wrong.
Strange that it was the number one selling console of its generation and the Xbox 360, which was the most innovative, did the worst. You could maybe argue that Wii opened up the idea of making games for non-gamers but I'm not sure even that had any lasting impact, beyond mobile games – and they were more influenced by the DS.
Tony T.
Inbox also-rans
Anyone upset about Codemasters not making rally games any more should take a look at this purposefully old school game. Looks great.
Edrona
I notice there's only a small number of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 review out so far and they all seem to be America. Did you not get sent a copy, GC?
Ansel
GC: We have one now, but it arrived late. Given how there are no UK reviews yet, everyone else seems to be in the same boat.
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Times
an hour ago
- Times
Superman — it's my five-star movie of the summer
He stumbles, he falls, he bleeds — occasionally he even sneaks a look at his social media mentions. How telling that, after 20 years of mis-starts and misfires, vulnerability would be the key to making Superman work on screen again. James Gunn's new Superman is not perfect but it has wit, smarts, pace and the same sardonic, goofy humour that Gunn brought to Guardians of the Galaxy. How strange that a film about misfit mutants would prepare him for the straight-arrow Superman — but Gunn seems to understand what we want: hope, heart, a dash of silliness and the same sense of up-and-at-'em adventure that made the original comic strips buzz. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the summer movie we've all been waiting for. Superman has always represented a distinct type of corn-fed American optimism — McCartney to Batman's Lennon. The creation of scrawny, short-sighted, Jewish ghetto kids from Manhattan's Lower East Side who dreamt of being Douglas Fairbanks, Superman recalls a balmier, more innocent time in American history when the mission to 'smack down the bullies of the world', as one of Superman's creators, Joel Siegel, put it, didn't send everyone diving for their Chomsky. The problem that has bedevilled adaptations since the 1978 original is: how do you make that optimism work for more cynical times, now that 'the bullies' and 'America' are no longer mutually exclusive categories? Here's how: no origin story. We don't need to hear again how the planet Krypton blew up and Kal-El crash-landed in Mom and Pop's backyard before heading to the big city to work for The Daily Planet. Instead Gunn sets us right down in the thick of it: Superman (David Corenswet) has just taken a beating from an armoured monster let loose by the rogue republic of Boravia. 'Did you consult with the president?' Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) demands to know during a date that quickly turns into a combative interview. 'You seemingly acted as a representative for the United States of America.' • The actors who played Superman, ranked from worst to best 'I wasn't representing anyone but me,' he protests. 'And … doing good.' So much for truth, justice and the American way. Go tell it to a congressional committee. Such hand-wringing over the burden of power is par for the course in superhero movies these days, but critiques of American unilateralism only go so far when your hero wears red underpants. Superman's saving grace has always been his slight silliness because it has kept him from the solemnity that clogs up the works with Batman and all the other edgier heroes, so intent on giving us a guided tour of their dark sides. The most radical thing about Gunn's film is not that it nods to the Washington bearpit, but Superman's insistence that kindness is 'the real punk rock'. Whether shielding a girl from exploding debris or a dog from a falling building, he would Make America Kind Again. Arrayed against him is Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) trying to turn the US Department of Defense against its most famous illegal alien so he can make a mint from arms deals involving his latest batch of superheroes, or 'metahumans' as they are known. He's like a cross between Tony Stark and Elon Musk. Metahumans are everywhere these days, including a gang of do-gooding showboats who call themselves the 'Justice Gang' — Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi) — and whose exploits explain at a stroke why people might flock to a boy scout like Superman. He spends half his time preventing the collateral damage from his fellow superheroes' interventions. More than just reinventing his star, then, Gunn has invented a universe in which Superman makes sense, which is almost as important: the DC Universe is go. • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews Corenswet is pretty much perfect in the role. After the stony severity of Henry Cavill labouring under his saviour complex in Zack Snyder's humourless Man of Steel — a film so embarrassed by the Superman mythos it couldn't even bring itself to say his name — Corenswet has the casual, locker-room vocab ('Hey, buddy') and underdog gallantry of a gentle-giant athlete. Dimpled and decent, he plays Superman with a slight bee in his bonnet about being thought too much of a Pollyanna and even has a dog named Krypto who tears up the Fortress of Solitude when Superman is not around, hurtling into action like a speeding bullet when needed. He's one of the best things in the film: Gunn knows how seriously to take his story and when to cut loose and have fun. Yes, the plot is a little busy with portals and black holes and all the usual interdimensional malarkey, but there's none of the lumbering heaviness that usually accompanies such plot devices. At just over two hours Superman has all the zippy action you want — the flying sequences come with Top Gun-style G-force buffeting and sonic booms — as well as the humour and heart that will get people coming back for more. In some ways the stop-start development process that has plagued Superman has paid off: Gunn took his time, got it right and has been rewarded with a bullseye. ★★★★★12A, 129min Tom Cruise's espionage swansong was the usual mix of daft plot and spectacular stunts, taking $575 million at the box office — but it needs about $800 million to break even. Cruise got out in the nick of time. Brad Pitt's charisma provided the horsepower for Jerry Bruckheimer's pedal-to-the-metal racing drama — Apple's first big hit at the box office, and Pitt's strongest ever opening weekend. Who said the stars were in eclipse? • The best films of 2025 so far The latest Jurassic Park movie, starring Scarlett Johansson, has had a soft opening compared with the previous three films in the series, but the director Gareth Edwards delivered the film at a relative snip — $180 million — as well as great monsters. Extinction will have to wait. Can Matt Shakman's retro-futuristic direction, together with stars Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, undo the 'meh' factor and reverse Marvel's downward spiral at the box office? Superhero fatigue is real. Times+ members can enjoy two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman each Wednesday. Visit to find out moreWhich films have you enjoyed at the cinema recently? Let us know in the comments below and follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Superman cast salaries unveiled and highest earner not who fans think
Some of the stars' earning may be lower than fans expect The salaries for the cast of the new Superman film have apparently been revealed and the highest earner may not be the one who fans think. Its release becomes the first in the newly rebooted cinematic universe from DC Studios. Now under the stewardship of James Gunn, who serves as writer and director for the latest release. Gunn is known and celebrated on his work on the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Marvel and it is hoped he can work similar magic for DC's library of characters. According to the film's synopsis, when Superman gets drawn into conflicts at home and abroad, his actions are questioned, giving tech billionaire Lex Luthor the opportunity to get the Man of Steel out of the way for good. Will intrepid reporter Lois Lane and Superman's four-legged companion, Krypto, be able to help him before it's too late? The cast sees a brand new actor take on the pressure of becoming not only Clark Kent but also the Man of Steel. Joining him are a whole host of new faces as the hero's allies and adversaries. That includes Marvelous Mrs Maisel star Rachel Brosnahan as Clark's colleague and love interest Lois Lane. There's also Nathan Fillion from Castle and star of The Rookie as well as The Last of Us breakout star Isabella Merced. as well as The Righteous Gemstones actor Skyler Gisondo. However, despite taking on the mantle as the titular hero now in cinemas, David Corenswet did not make the most out of his cast members. Instead, it is claimed that British actor Nicholas Hoult, who plays the villainous Lex Luthor took home the most for his part in the film. According to reports, this is because Hoult is already an experienced film star with some star power to his name. Hoult has starred in Mad Max: Fury Road, a number of X-Men movies for Fox, along with The Menu, Clint Eastwood's Juror No. 2, and the recent Nosferatu. Corenswet and Brosnahan are both currently more well known for their television work. While Corenswet had small roles in Twisters and Pearl, he has starred in The Politician and miniseries We Own This City. Brosnahan featured in the film The Amateur but was the lead role in the award winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor - $2 million David Corenswet as Superman/Clark Kent - $750,000 Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane - $750,000 Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern/Guy Gardener - $400,000 Edi Gathegi as Mr Terrific - $400,000 Antony Carrigan as Metamorpho - $250,000 Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen - $200,000 Isabala Merced as Hawgirl - $200,000 It is also reported that the top bill cast members or due for extra pay days depending on the film's performance at the box office. However, what the numbers are in relation to that kind of deal is not known. However, Deadline has claimed that the film has already earned more than $40 million. That figure was impressively from previews taking place ahead of the weekend around the world. That means it only accounts for screenings for the Wednesday and Thursday before the title's official release day. Projections have estimated this could mean a taking of around $115 million for the opening weekend.
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
Superman is super woke? How politics play into the new man of steel
Superman Woke! Variations on that headline splashed across all manner of non-Daily Planet websites this week in advance of a new Superman movie reboot, specifically the comments of writer-director James Gunn, who casually characterized the character as an immigrant and, as such, telling the 'story of America' in an interview. This rankled rightwingers including the former TV Superman Dean Cain, who acknowledged Superman as an immigrant but blanched at the idea of actively associating that as an American value, noting that 'there have to be limits'. Meanwhile, the former Trump lackey Kellyanne Conway, now a Fox News host, characterized the movie she hasn't seen as an ideological lecture, and added her supposed anger that the movie's star, David Corenswet, elided the old 'truth, justice and the American way' Superman slogan in another interview (referring to 'truth, justice, all that good stuff'). For those attempting to keep track: people involved with a Superman movie shouldn't attempt to evoke America, except when they should. Actually, for those keeping even closer track, the 'American way' bit was a phrase added to the radio version of Superman during the second world war, and further popularized by the 1950s TV show. It lived on primarily in reruns of that show, didn't appear in the comics until 1991, and has never been particularly central to the character in his original medium (or any of the movies, even). This is all to say that the reading of Superman as an immigrant is so commonplace, so arguably a part of the plain old surface text of the character, that it's even harder to buy any ginned-up outrage than usual. At best, it's a byproduct of suppressed guilt over the cruel and unusual immigration policies favored by anyone dumb enough to complain that this a 'woke' version of a 90-year-old superhero. In fact, the phoney outrage and predictions of boycott from people who don't go to the movies anyway could be a gag straight from the movie itself. It's one of plenty of real-world parallels in Gunn's movie. Most of them fall into the blockbuster realm of vagueness that makes it hard to tell if it was inspired by real events or just unsuccessfully sidestepping from evoking one international crisis straight into evoking another. (More on that in a moment.) But the most obviously first-hand quasi-political experiences Gunn draws upon all have to do with social media: this is a Superman whose weaknesses include Kryptonite, Lex Luthor-engineered software that anticipates his every punch, and … reading the comments. During one argument, Lois Lane needles her superpowered boyfriend by telling him she's seen him looking through certain hashtags guaranteed to frustrate and enrage even the virtuous child of Kansas farms who still says 'golly!' on the regular. This makes sense: James Gunn does not have experience in geopolitics, but he sure has experience online. The film-maker was semi-canceled over edgelord-y tweets (unearthed, in perfect discourse fashion, by rightwingers infuriated by his left-leaning politics); fired from the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie; and eventually rehired when Disney realized that maybe cast and fan loyalty was worth more than manufactured outrage. But in his between-Guardians downtime, Gunn made a Suicide Squad sequel for the previous DC regime, essentially auditioning for his current job. In some ways, he owes his stewardship of Superman and DC in general to the vexations of life online. So if it's a little cringe-y to hear about Superman glancing through social media, or for Gunn to go out of his way to show Lex Luthor training an army of monkeys to flood the zone with mean tweets, it's also a funny, oddly whimsical way of acknowledging our contemporary world. (Plus, remember that Clark Kent works in media, even if his newspaper still publishes a print edition.) It's certainly more surefooted than the movie's actual politics, which go further than the likes of Captain America: Brave New World but still fall short of anything more complicated than the actual thrust of Gunn's interview. (Which was that kindness is, in fact, good.) The immigrant stuff, first of all, is in the movie but not especially prominent. A plot turn involving Superman's parents could even be read as accidentally xenophobic; after all, if you're trading on the message that it doesn't matter where an immigrant comes from once assimilated into our culture, doesn't that by definition cast aspersions on other countries (or in this case, planets) and elevate whatever 'our' culture is? That's obviously not Gunn's intent in positioning Superman as an immigrant figure; he wants to elicit the empathy for outsiders that we've all felt at one time or another. The logical stumble is more a sign of a metaphor that isn't fit for front-to-back, one-to-one interpretation; that's not a problem on its own. More interesting is the story's offscreen inciting incident, where Superman intervenes in the affairs of two fictional countries. When the movie begins, Superman has recently stopped Boravia, which is led by a blustery despot who comes across like an eastern European Trump, from invading neighboring Jarhanpur. The latter has struck some viewers as coded Middle Eastern, implying parallels between Israel and Palestine, though in the comic books (and based on the leader's accent, here too) the countries are actually somewhere in Europe. That is to say, it looks more akin to Russia invading Ukraine, though Gunn has said he didn't have any specific real-life turmoil in mind when he concocted the scenario. The issue is really more interventionism: should Superman have acted unilaterally in stopping Boravia (and, indeed, threatening its leader with reprisal if he tries it again)? Lois Lane isn't so sure, bringing up the repressive nature of past Jarhanpur governments (and in turn bringing to mind Israel's attacks on Iran, though that particular conflict was in the news well after this movie was written, shot and probably almost or entirely finished). One of the most heartening things about Superman is that Lois's objections inspire a full conversation between her and Superman, in the guise of an 'interview' to make up for the fact that most of Superman's press is self-directed through Clark Kent. For a little while, the movie seems ready to dig into the genuine strife faced by a mega-powerful being who therefore has the ability to shape the world. Stopping people in another country from dying seems ethical. But what about issuing de facto press releases disguised as a real journalism? Of course, all of these questions are in the realm of hypothetical, so the movie mostly just invents hypothetical solutions that turn on the fact that Superman is, in fact, inherently trustworthy and moral. Lucky for everyone, huh? Then again, getting too far into the issue of whether Superman 'should' help people starts to look a bit too much like the Zack Snyder version that audiences and critics had such mixed-at-best feelings toward. Gunn wants Superman to be a bigger-tent affair than that, and it's an understandable impulse. He's not the first superhero character, but he's arguably the first one to achieve something resembling global ubiquity. That's going to lead to some varying interpretations. Limiting him to specific politics makes no more sense than keeping a world-saving god within Metropolis city limits. Yet in a weird way, the buffoonish outrage over Superman's immigration status has only served to highlight a void in the movie's broader emotional resonance. It's a sweet-natured movie that ends on a genuinely emotional note – it might particularly resonate for those with adoptive parents, another Superman mainstay – but misses the opportunity to make a more explicit parallel in the way Superman has emigrated both to the United States in particular, but to Earth in general. His global citizenship is more of a feelgood given than a powerful duality, and a Superman that truly grappled with our ability to see beyond national boundaries might have felt like a true update of the character for a new century, rather than another tacit plea for kindness. We have Paddington for that. Shouldn't Superman be able to lift something a little heavier?
