What I'm looking for in a comic book video game.

So right now I'm on the cusp of three big comic book video games that I've been looking forward to.

Theres Arkham City, X-Men Destiny, and Marvel vs Capcom 3.

Now Arkham City look amazing.  The original Arkham Asylum was an amazing game, hampered only by its some somewhat repetetive gameplay, and some pretty uninspired boss fights.  The new Arkham City on the other hand looks to be doing a lot to remedy that.  Adding a freedom, and a variety of meatier side missions to spice up a game that was already strikingly close to the source material.

X-Men Destiny is more problematic.  It's a kind of action RPG taking place in a slightly different version of the modern X universe.  Its interesting, as it seems to take some ideas from directly after the Messiah Complex arc of Xmen, some from the about to end Utopia era, and some stuff from Age of X.  Now this is hardly surprising given that its written by the great Mike Carey.

Destiny has decide to go with a very in vogue game mechanic, and let you play as a brand new character and make decisions that will affect the story.  While this certainly offers some interesting possibilities, it also causes more than its fair share of problems.  The characters in Destiny are 3 pre-made mutants with their own original stories and personalities, the only thing u get to customize on them is their initial power set.  That's not necessarily the most appealing option for players who are big "choose your destiny" types.  Also, this is an Xmen game, and while you play in the world of the Xmen, beside the Xmen, not being able to play AS the Xmen certainly rubs some people the wrong way, me included.  Plus, while the graphics are in no way bad, the character models are not exactly what you'd normally expect from a game like this.

On the other hand, unlike almost every other recent comic game, Destiny really embraces a modern setting and cast of characters, and tries to introduce players to elements of the comic they might not necessarily know much about.  The more story centric game should fit the Xmen well, and the actual backgrounds for the new characters are all pretty interesting, its a shame they are unlikely to show up in the comics given the current situation.  Destiny has a lot of probs, but I'm still optimistic about it, and eager to pick it up.

Then there's the comic game I'm most looking forward to, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3.  It's almost unfair to include this game, because for all that it has 25 Marvel characters to play as, its not so much a comic game, just a game borrowing comic characters, but they've spent a lot of time bringing those characters to life

UMVC3 is going to be a marvelous game for fighting game fans, or for anyone who likes to see lovingly rendered representations of super hero characters.  Most of them are very modern versions of the characters (with one exception of a character being woefully out of date, and badly pigeon holed), and they all have some great interactions with each other, not to mention the cast of Capcom characters.  The games real problem is its lack of characters created after the year 1990.  We have Deadpool and X-23, heck, most of the roster was created pre-1980.  This isn't a huge problem depending on your perspective, but I think it needs to be a priority to show off new toys, to get people to know new characters.


So what do I want out of games, if I criticize great looking games like these?

Well, I want the whole experience.

Arkham City looks like a huge step in the right direction, but not all heroes lives are as simple as Batman's.  The next time we get a Spiderman game, I want a time table, I want romance options, I want to have to sell pictures, or put time in the lab in order to buy upgrades to my webshooters and costume.  I want to have to be on time for a date, or it will play havok on Pete's love life.  I want sidequests, or even totally parallel stories going on.  I want a big sprawling New York with a lot of things going on it that you have to figure out how they all tie together.

I want a rollicking Nextwave beat 'em up with all the raucous fun of Castle Crashers, and a perfect translation of Immonen art.

I want a game written by Grant Morrison to be his love letter to comics in game form.

I want a game that remembers that comics are comics, and makes use of the fact that they have art styles.

Thats a huge problem right their.  So many of these comics based games have such a neutral aesthetic.

Gimme an Xmen game that looks like Chris Bachalo drew all the art work, and that moves from location to location with the same break neck speed of the finest Claremont, and with the same sense of weirdness too.

Gimme a Silver Age Superman game that isnt in anyway about hitting bad guys, but is in every way about tricking Lois Lane into marrying a gorilla.

Once upon a time it was good enough that we had a Spiderman who really swang over a big city, that was an amazing thing once, but things are different now, and its time we started getting more authentic experiences.  Less simple action games, and more actual super hero life sims.  Interpretations of these characters and concepts that aren't based off one simple facet but the entire wide range of their history.  Most of all I want games that aren't being slaves to iconography.  Part of the point of these games is to spread the comic book universes out to other people, you need to keep showing them new things, things that will draw them in because they want to see them in the comics as they happen, not things they might want to dig up in some old graphic novel  which they can then put on their shelf and safely ignore.

These games need to make players need comics, need monthly comics, and to do that, these games need to show them what they are missing.  Not what they know, but what they are MISSING!