Why Super-Hero Games Can Exist

On a recent episode of the Listen Up podcast, Garnett Lee and John Davidson claimed that videogames “let down the super-hero genre”. Stephen Totilo posted a good summary on Kotaku with nice block quotes. I’ve mentioned Listen Up a few times here because I’m a fan of the podcast. It’s arguably my favourite gaming podcast, and even when I disagree with Garnett or John I have to respect their opinions and knowledge. When it came to this issue, however, I felt that as a super-hero geek and gamer I could perhaps lend a different perspective to their argument.

Mr. Lee and Mr. Davidson have essentially two parts to their argument. One is that by using established characters, such as Wolverine and Spider-Man, you want to play the character from the mythology and not something you customize or create. The other is that death is a false bottom in a super-hero game since super-heroes are often invulnerable. Let’s look at these arguments one-by-one shall we?

One of the great advantages that super-hero videogames have is that their characters have rich back stories filled with conflict, most of which is physical. It should, therefore, be a simple matter to translate this to a game environment. Videogame conventions, however, are not as simple as narrative and conflict. No, they require a certain amount of user input, and one common convention is that of character building through a reward system. In the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine you are stripped of your powers at one point and need to regain them all, similar to Metroid or any number of other games. During the game you also have to collect upgrade tokens (in this case “mutagens”) to customize your character’s statistics, such as more physical damage or increased health. What the gentlemen at Listen Up are saying is that they don’t want to assemble a version of Wolverine, they want to pop in the game and play as Wolverine, start to finish. At first glance that would appear to be a rational expectation.

The problem is that comics, and the super-hero genre by extension, are not rational. Characters are in multiple comics simultaneously, often taking place in alternate dimensions, or sometimes not (Wolverine is on pretty much every X-Men team at the same time, even when they’re on opposite sides of the world). We’re constantly finding new aspects in a hero’s powers (Archangel/Angle from X-men didn’t always have a healing factor, and he eventually found out that he could heal others with his blood). These “reasonable” exceptions are not without limit though. I remember playing the original X-Men Legends and being frustrated at the need to have my mutant-power gage drain while Rogue flew. She should just fly, and clearly I wasn’t alone in this demand since the sequel rectified this issue. I am willing, however, to accept some things I will have to earn. Do I relish the thought of loosing all Wolverine’s powers half-way through a game? Absolutely not. Am I willing to accept that throughout the course of the game I can change the arbitrary statistics built into it’s world so as to allow Wolverine’s claws to cause more damage at the end then they did at the beginning? Hell yes. The problem here isn’t the videogame convention of building a character, it’s the dissonance in translating a character from lines on a page to a world with actual physics and quantity. This dissonance is something individuals such as myself are willing to overlook in order to watch Logan’s flesh knit back together or to swing through New York as Spider-Man.

The second issue is super-hero death. That one is almost a non-issue to any comic geek. The reason I say comics and not super-heroes is that film and television seldom are willing to actually kill off a super-hero. Comics, however, have been killing, and resurrecting, characters for years. Remember a few years ago when Magneto levelled New York, killing thousands, and was killed in turn for his crimes? Less than six months later he was back. Apparently that first guy was a clone. What about Colossus, who sacrificed himself to destroy the legacy virus? He’s back too. Apparently he was in some lab or vault or some such thing. These aren’t alternate dimensions or anything. We’re talking one universe, one character. Sure, some times they snag an alternate dimension character who takes up permanent residence somewhere else, but my point is that super-hero death is damn common. The other thing which you may want to note is that super-heroes seldom actually die in videogames. They often just collapse. That’s another thing that’s not too uncommon. A hero will collapse in one situation and revive later, only to endure a trial twice as difficult as the one that rendered them unconscious. Such is the world of the super hero.

You may notice that these arguments are from the perspective of the hard-core fan. I don’t hold it against the casual fan to ask questions, such as “Can Wolverine really loose his powers?” or “Wait, wasn’t that guy dead?”. My point is that the fans who ought to have the most trouble with these issues can often explain the answers easily. As for the use of video-game conventions, if the game is well put together we fans are often willing to overlook any liberties the developers take in order to experience slicing limbs as Logan or swinging as Spider-Man. I didn’t mind the large holes in Web of Shadows because it was just plain awesome to kick ass as the black-suited Spidey. However, when the experience broke down in Spider-Man 3 I was severely disappointed. While there are a number of awful super-hero games out there, I think we can say there are some pretty damn great ones too. Super-heroes my not be the perfect fit for videogames, but I think that we’re starting to get some pretty good cooperation between the two genres.