We need more Original Character Superhero Games

I am desperately wanting less DC and Marvel and more random shit.

I recently saw Superman in theaters and it made me start to think about how we don't really have enough superhero games out there currently. Sure there was the surprisingly really good Gotham Knights that I reviewed last year, and Suicide Squad could arguably count, but besides that? Well WB killed their Wonder Woman game and even though Rocksteady is seemingly working on a new Batman game, that doesn't change that right now, in the year of 2025, we really don't have a lot of them.

Even worse, we only have actual comic book superhero games. Now don't get me wrong, I love a good Spider-Man or Batman game. But is that really the only possible avenue for superhero games? There's more than just comic book heroes out there!

In 2009 we got the kind of games I'm wanting right now. We got two of the most unique superhero games out there that still stand the test of time (even if there is some jank). Two games that both lead to sequels, one even had two. Two games that have had the book closed on them by the developers, although one only because they closed. Two games that should have started a trend of superhero games that aren't at all attached to any preconceived universe or comic books.

These two games are inFAMOUS and Prototype and I desperately want more games like them. So today I'm going to talk about how Original Character (henceforth to be called OC) superhero games are a better direction for that genre of games than just making comic book hero games.

The Power of New Characters

So far all videogames that are about superheros from comics have never introduced new characters to the world, or at least not new, significant characters. This is boring. We just get introductions of characters that already exist in the comics, giving interesting portrayals of them. Like how on 2018 Marvel's Spider-Man introduced Doc Ock in a new way. But that new way is still predictable. That's the core of this, having comic characters in your games allows players to predict what the story is going to do and where the twists will be. It can be satisfying to do a good prediction, mind, but it's still just kinda boring. Like we've all seen what is being portrayed before.

In Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (review here), we saw some interesting new portrayals of core characters Harry Osborne and Venom. We got some twists on the old story....but we also still kinda knew what was going to happen. We knew that the weaknesses for Venom was still sound and we just had to get to the point in the story where Peter and Miles figured it out. Knowing more than our main characters can only be interesting if we learn the information during the game as opposed to just knowing it because we read the comics.

From the sequel but it’s just two buds, enjoying beers and chilling with each other. Zeke really becomes a more interesting character in 2.

Now, in a unique game like inFAMOUS we can fix all of these problems. You play the character Cole McGrath, a courier who, when one of his packages decides to explode after he pokes at it, is given electricity super powers. He then has to, with the help of his buddy Zeke, help Empire City recover from the explosion that he kinda caused. We find new characters in the game, we get a twist at the end, we get to choose what type of hero Cole will be, we get new powers that we can't necessarily predict, and we get to be deathly afraid of water like most games of the time.

Having a completely unique world and characters provides absolute freedom to the developers to create whatever kind of game they want. It allows them to make decisions that they wouldn't necessarily be able to make in a game about Spider-Man or Batman, like whether you're gonna be an asshole or not. It allows them to introduce powers that are unique and a world that has completely different themes than any other comic book game before it.

Unique heroes in games are just better. I love the Arkham games, I love the most recent Spider-Man games, but I'd still prefer a new inFAMOUS or Prototype like game than I would another game with those characters that I feel like I've seen soooo many times already. Let me see Rocksteady make their own character, like they insisted the Arkham Knight was despite him just being Red Hood. Freedom is interesting, being constrained is boring.

Expense

Okay this is a small thing but it is expensive to make games that are a part of Marvel or DC universes. That's because there are certain expectations that come along with them. Like how new Spider-Man games have this expectation of having all of NYC explorable, including large sections of the mainland now. Or how they're all expected to have multiple villains now because just one isn't as interesting since we already know so much about the world they take place in so one villain would just be boring. Or how these high profile Superhero games have to be just as ultra realistic as the last one, they have to represent Marvel or DC in the best possible light. They are just so expensive to make.

Meanwhile, an OC superhero game has no expectations. It is completely unique and can have not super realistic graphics if it wants, it can have just one villain if it wants, it can have choice and decisions that can't happen in a game where the characters have been defined for decades, it can have a very small area to explore if it wants (similar in size to Arkham Asylum for instance), it can have more deep themes inside it (like the anarchist themes that exist in inFAMOUS), it can even forgo an origin story if it really wants to as long as it's done well.

In an industry that has rapidly inflating budgets and development timelines, it's the perfect time to make something smaller and easier. I would love to see what a smaller OC superhero game from Insomniac would be like. Or to have sucker punch come back to the inFAMOUS franchise and make something smaller than Second Son with just as much love put into it. There are so many developers who want to make superhero games and they should just make them, but make them their own thing.

Prototype, or the goal?

I've mostly been talking about inFAMOUS this entire time because, well, that's the game I enjoyed more. Prototype, however, is still just as unique a world as inFAMOUS even if it's characters have less depth. There's the anti-hero bent to Prototype that provides another really interesting take on an OC superhero game. It's unique because of how fucking brutal and violent it is. It has you inhabit the claws of Alex Mercer, a generic guy who was genetically mutated into this weird being who can turn his limbs into blades and can absorb people to disguise himself as them. It's brutal, it's gross, it has a largely nonsensical story, and it's amazingly fun.

Ahhh janky 2009 graphics. Such a nostalic wonkiness to it. Prototype violence was on a level all its own.

This is the freedom that OC superheros provide, the ability to make something like inFAMOUS which is a much more traditional superhero game, and something like prototype, a much more brutal antihero game. Not attaching your game to a comic universe allows you to have this variety in games, allows you to go from shooting gangs with lightning bolts and throwing lightning grenade at them, to running up a skyscraper only to jump off of it and crash down pushing spikes through the concrete of a city and stabbing everyone around you only to get up and absorb an enemy you just saw so you can easily infiltrate the enemies base.

Prototype is the quintessential example of freedom in what it means to be unattached, it's the goal of any developer who wants to make a superhero game that isn't attached to any comic universe. They should have the freedom to make whatever the fuck they want. Even if that's brutally violent and disgusting body horror.

Plea

I'm not a developer at some big videogame company. I'm not someone who has much influence in this space. I just want people to let go of being attached to Marvel or DC games, to be open to something more unique that doesn't keep the developers and you, the player, from feeling like you're experiencing something you haven't before. One of the biggest things that will cause any creative medium problems is being pigeonholed into one specific type of thing.

That's where we are right now with superhero games. They're stuck in the idea of only making games with characters that already existed. They're stuck with the walls of corporations that refuse to allow their good guys to be portrayed in any negative light. But there is an out. All that needs to happen is for someone to bring back a game like inFAMOUS or Prototype, to make a superhero game that doesn't have anything to do with any universe out there because they've been over done. They need to finally break the chains they've been in for a decade and finally experience the freedom they once had.

In the meantime, I'm gonna play some emulated inFAMOUS games and hope that one day the industry will come back around to that type of game.

Meow,

Cat