At the risk of invalidating every opinion I've ever had or ever will have...I got every achievement for this game on retroachievements. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a weirdly good time with it. Superman's flight controls are surprisingly good, it's fast with decent turning and speed control. The levels outside of the ring stages don't give you a lot to go off of so it feels like you don't know what to do. However, the levels are so small and simple it's usually not too hard to figure out how to progress and that's oddly satisfying to me. Lost in the world's worst game yet making progress anyway. It can be annoying that there's no checkpoints but once you know what to do, even the longest of levels can be beaten within a couple minutes. And the lack of checkpoints gives this game a sense of tension a lot of better games fail to have.
The true downside of this game is just how unapologetically padded it is at points. Every other level being a "ride" stage is bad enough as it is without the occasional 4 minute long fly in a straight line moments. Only to reach the mission, fail despite doing what it asked because the game is held together with recently microwaved Elmer's Glue, and be forced to go through the rings before it again. (Funny enough, having mercy on you and actually giving you a checkpoint ahead of the rings if you failed the mission 3 times) And 4 ring segments in each ride is way too much. Thankfully most of the missions are pretty easy so you're not often failing them once you get used to the game. A lot of just killing enemies, which actually feels pretty good as you can get a much quicker kill by simply flying into them with enough speed instead of awkwardly landing and flailing in their direction. Or getting the timing right to grab the bombers between bomb drops so they don't blow you up. (Frankly had more fun with this game's combat than I did with Sonic Frontier's combat, but I digress)
Thankfully the worst aspect of the game can be entirely skipped. If you play on Easy there's no rings at all, you just fly to the mission. Though unfortunately the game cuts you off a few levels early if you're on easy, or even normal. You have to play on hard to truly beat the game. This would bum me out but there's also a really easy to input level skip code in the pause menu. Meaning I can quickly play the levels I actually enjoy, instead of never returning to the game due to it being 2/3rds padded ring stages. This saves its rating from being hurt too badly by them.
There's a weird sense of satisfaction and excitement playing a game this poorly made and yet coming to an understanding with how it works. And furthermore I've been thinking a lot lately about what aspects I'm looking for in a video game. I often bore of how often it feels like a modern game is going through the motions creatively and mechanically. How standardized so many gamey systems are. Be it control schemes, skill trees, quest structure, safe level design, combat systems. No this game isn't good. But it just happens to line up with the kind of experience I'm looking for these days. Completely free of any tiring tropes found in "Objectively good game design" these days. Obviously there's SIGNIFICANTLY better games in this more experimental era back before they had game design down to a science on how to most optimally trap people in oog oog dopamine rush loops. No other game I rate this low would I have such a positive outlook on. This is a topic I'll likely explore more in future reviews. But for now, I enjoyed my time with this game. I'm dangerously close to giving this a 3 star but I think that's going a bit too far and I'd feel bad for any other game I rank at a 3. Very comfortable with a 2 1/2 though, which is absolutely a glowing review as far as this game goes. Put this on the box of the ps5 rerelease; "I almost gave it 3/5 stars!" -Some random guy on Backloggd.
(Side note on ride 6 there's some special event where you race someone to a portal. There's nothing even telling you this is happening and if you fail absolutely nothing happens. And if you win you get a text box saying good job superman, now they'll be lost in the virtual realm! and then nothing happens. This takes place during your typical ring stage, and only during the first like ten seconds of it at that before it's over. It's just fascinating how clearly this is an unfinished concept they were throwing around that just got left in the game.)
The true downside of this game is just how unapologetically padded it is at points. Every other level being a "ride" stage is bad enough as it is without the occasional 4 minute long fly in a straight line moments. Only to reach the mission, fail despite doing what it asked because the game is held together with recently microwaved Elmer's Glue, and be forced to go through the rings before it again. (Funny enough, having mercy on you and actually giving you a checkpoint ahead of the rings if you failed the mission 3 times) And 4 ring segments in each ride is way too much. Thankfully most of the missions are pretty easy so you're not often failing them once you get used to the game. A lot of just killing enemies, which actually feels pretty good as you can get a much quicker kill by simply flying into them with enough speed instead of awkwardly landing and flailing in their direction. Or getting the timing right to grab the bombers between bomb drops so they don't blow you up. (Frankly had more fun with this game's combat than I did with Sonic Frontier's combat, but I digress)
Thankfully the worst aspect of the game can be entirely skipped. If you play on Easy there's no rings at all, you just fly to the mission. Though unfortunately the game cuts you off a few levels early if you're on easy, or even normal. You have to play on hard to truly beat the game. This would bum me out but there's also a really easy to input level skip code in the pause menu. Meaning I can quickly play the levels I actually enjoy, instead of never returning to the game due to it being 2/3rds padded ring stages. This saves its rating from being hurt too badly by them.
There's a weird sense of satisfaction and excitement playing a game this poorly made and yet coming to an understanding with how it works. And furthermore I've been thinking a lot lately about what aspects I'm looking for in a video game. I often bore of how often it feels like a modern game is going through the motions creatively and mechanically. How standardized so many gamey systems are. Be it control schemes, skill trees, quest structure, safe level design, combat systems. No this game isn't good. But it just happens to line up with the kind of experience I'm looking for these days. Completely free of any tiring tropes found in "Objectively good game design" these days. Obviously there's SIGNIFICANTLY better games in this more experimental era back before they had game design down to a science on how to most optimally trap people in oog oog dopamine rush loops. No other game I rate this low would I have such a positive outlook on. This is a topic I'll likely explore more in future reviews. But for now, I enjoyed my time with this game. I'm dangerously close to giving this a 3 star but I think that's going a bit too far and I'd feel bad for any other game I rank at a 3. Very comfortable with a 2 1/2 though, which is absolutely a glowing review as far as this game goes. Put this on the box of the ps5 rerelease; "I almost gave it 3/5 stars!" -Some random guy on Backloggd.
(Side note on ride 6 there's some special event where you race someone to a portal. There's nothing even telling you this is happening and if you fail absolutely nothing happens. And if you win you get a text box saying good job superman, now they'll be lost in the virtual realm! and then nothing happens. This takes place during your typical ring stage, and only during the first like ten seconds of it at that before it's over. It's just fascinating how clearly this is an unfinished concept they were throwing around that just got left in the game.)