Top 5 Superhero Videogames

Just a quick post for the moment...got a couple of longer ones coming very soon (wish comics.org were working so I could get some pictures).

So, without further ado, The Top 5 Superhero Games of All Time (that I've played, anyway).

5. Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu
Sin Tzu has the top-notch voice actors from the WB season of Batman:TAS, a decent plot, and some of the less-used rogues like Clayface and the Scarecrow. The animation is done with some clean-looking cel shading, and you can choose to play as Batman, Nightwing, Robin, or Batgirl, which rocks. Unfortunately, it's a bit repetitive, following the same basic model as the awesome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. It's fun, it's challenging, but it's a little on the sparse side when it comes to depth.

4. Spider-Man (Movie)
I've been told that the second game is better, since there's more places to go, more enemies to fight, and since it imports the "random crimes" that Activision had in "True Crime: Streets of LA." Unfortunately, I've not played that game, but the first movie game was pretty dang good. The interface was intuitive and fluid, really immersing you in the Spider-Man lifestyle. It was a bit short, and the Goblin was kind of a big leap in difficulty from any of the rest of the bosses, but otherwise it was good.

3. Batman: Vengeance
A fantastic game all around, with puzzle solving, combat, and the animated series voice actors. "Sin Tzu" was technically the sequel to this game, but lacked many of the elements that made "Vengeance" so unique, like having to cuff thugs to keep them down, the puzzles, and the more interesting plot. The next Batman animated game would do well to blend the two, incorporating the depth of this game with the progressive combat system and character selection of "Sin Tzu."

2. Superman: Shadow of Apokolips
I've often called this the best superhero game ever, but it's recently been unseated. There are problems (Superman should be quicker, for instance, and some of the battles are repetitive and drag a bit), but it combines cel-shaded animation in the Animated DCU style with a variety of game objectives, incorporating all of Superman's powers in a fairly seamless fashion. Hopefully they'll make another game in this style, one that has more to interact with, side missions, and better use of the vision powers (particularly X-Ray vision, which was mostly useless).

1. Ultimate Spider-Man
I only started playing this today, and it's already fantastic. Fast-paced, fairly intuitive, and it brings back an element to Spider-Man gaming that I haven't seen done well since "Maximum Carnage"--you can play as Venom. Add to that cameos galore, and a script and animation style that evokes the feel of the comic series, and you've got the makings of a fine game. There are a few problems; the cutscenes look like they'd fit in better on the PSOne and I don't like having a separate button for sticking to walls, but otherwise this improves on every previous Spider-Man game so far, and given the overall quality of the Spidey games, that's saying something.

Any thoughts?