It's not hard to make a decent superhero game. Most of the heavy lifting is already done --- you've got a cool protagonist with cool powers, so there's no need to figure out what your main character should look like or how they can interact with the game world. You've got an array of memorable villains, generally with their own flashy costumes and boisterous personalities to make boss fights easy to orchestrate. And writing a story is as easy as thinking back through the decades-long history of most of these characters and mining it for their greatest hits.

For a superhero game to turn out spectacularly bad takes a perfect storm of incompetence, apathy, and behind-the-scenes ego. "Superpowers?" says the bad developer, "Bah, who needs 'em. If you want to be a superhero you'll get a taste of superpowers and be thankful for that."

"Supervillains?" they chortle, "Too much trouble. Let's get some generic mooks in there and call it a day."

"Story?" they scoff, "Who needs a story, this is a video game!"

Bad superhero games rise above the rabble of other bad games because they take such potential, such easily-obtained greatness and squander it so, so very badly, creating a product which infuriates comic book fans and video game fans. With that in mind, now that we've celebrated the best the world of superhero games has to offer, let's check out the dirty underside of this world and plunge ourselves into the muck and filth of the 10 Worst Superhero Games.

 

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