Kryptonite

It is time for me to talk to you about a bad game, maybe one of the worst, Superman 64. I'll admit right now that I never actually completed the game fully, but I believe I've made it further than most people would be willing to go in this terrible, terrible game. Superman 64 is plagued by terrible controls, a terrible story, terrible graphics, and terrible sound ( I still don't believe I've used the word 'Terrible' enough yet).

The entire premise of the game is that Lex Luthor has imprisoned your friends in a virtual metropolis and you, being Superman, must go and rescue them. There you have it, that's the entire story, told in one short cut-scene at the opening.

The beginning of a truly epic tale

While in this world Lex tries to hinder you more by setting up random obstacles for Superman to tackle in order to advance. These tasks are pretty basic, examples include flying through hoops or rescuing a pedestrian from a car crash, but are made nearly impossible by the poor controls and lack of information. The controls act as if there is a two second lag between whenever you press something and seeing your character act on it. This makes the flying through hoops in the beginning near impossible. If you manage to complete this task though, waiting for you is a person about to be hit by a car, you're given six seconds to save them. This wouldn't be too hard if it told you how you were supposed to do this, or showed you the controls to do this, but it doesn't and you're left to figure this out on your own, and if you fail, you must fly through the hoops again. Even if you do accomplish there's another section of hoop flying anyway, and then more car throwing. Most of this game thrives on it's repetition.

Now on to the graphics, the worst graphics I have seen in an n64 game, possibly even in any system ever. Everywhere in the game is completely barren and void of anything even remotely interesting. Most of the game is spent on a flat surface around cube buildings, with an occasional person or vehicle around. The game also featured a terrible draw distance (I don't know why it had a problem displaying such little it had) which was actually explained as being a game mechanic called "Kryptonite Fog", to mask it.

Kryptinite Fog - man that Lex Luthor sure is a smart guy

This game was obviously meant to be created for people to enjoy, but I believe the only kind of person to enjoy this would be a sadist. Unresponsive controls are enough to make any game unplayable, but matched with the graphics and what can hardly be called a story, I can easily call this the worst most "un-fun" game I have ever played.

- N. Gale