Superman Returns: Fortress of Solitude (Game Boy Advance) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

It seems like summer and its movie blockbusters is a lifetime away now with everyone gearing up for the festive season. One resurrected franchise that did deliver was Superman and, with a new lead and director, the series looks like it may go from strength to strength. Why then, you may ask, have we had to wait for such a long time for the accompanying games to be released? Well, if various members of the press (who had previews of the game at this year's E3) are to be believed the game simply wasn't ready for public consumption or, maybe, it wasn't very good. It is of course, here now on the back of the DVD release but with months of re-work and the loss of the PSP version was it worth the wait?

Gameplay

You've probably already worked out from the screenshots that this is not the type of movie tie-in you'd normally expect. Rather than an action based adventure drawing on Superman's powers and featuring the likes of Lex Luthor and Lois Lane, Fortress of Solitude is a puzzler. In all there are about 90 brainteasers spread over 20 sections with Superman's home planet the game's hub. From there you must solve a series of puzzles in order to progress. However your greatest challenge is unlikely to be the puzzles but rather the unbelievably tight time limits you are up against. The puzzles themselves are based on the globally popular Sudoku but instead of numbers you have different coloured shapes. Without going into too much detail, this is a matching game with the objective being to complete lines (or sections) on an ever expanding grid by placing similar shapes or colours together. Each section also contains a kind of side scrolling shooter featuring Superman himself but this is about as close as you'll get to anyting that approaches an actual Superman game. It's mainly a case of collecting a given amount of crystals (using your laser eyes or ice breath) to defeat an end of level boss. Don't get too excited though as the end of the level is played out automatically through a series of comic style cut screens.

Controls

Given that this is primarily a puzzler you're not going to be hugely concerned about the pixel perfect collision detection. On the other hand you still want the controls to be responsive and thankfully they are and with a suitably detailed tutorial section you're unlikely to require the manual either.

Graphics

Strangely it's the main title screen that features the most impressive of the game's visuals with a well designed multi-parallax scrolling landscape of Superman's home planet. After this it's all pretty simple stuff with most of the puzzles reminiscent of high end GameBoy Color as opposed to late generation GBA. The side scrolling shooter sections are similar with the developers merely throwing in the odd cloud to give some sense of movement. Disappointingly, one of the few references to the film has also been compromised as not only are the grainy screen grabs hard to decipher but they are also considerably smaller than the GBA's screen.

Sound

Outside of the rather impressive orchestral score (which is a little too short) Fortress of Solitude features a sparse array of sound effects. Although this would be unforgivable had it been an action-based game, it's perfectly acceptable in a puzzler.

Final comments

The biggest drawback of Fortress of Solitude is that it's probably not what Superman fans are looking for. Given the fact that EA had already paid for the license it's a little bit of a mystery as to why they didn't fully exploit it. On the plus side it is a well-designed collection of puzzlers and there is at least a passing reference to the movie. We'd usually celebrate movie licenses which attempt to do something different and while EA have certainly moved away from the generic platformer you can't help but feel that this is a puzzler with the Superman name attached as opposed to the other way around.

Pro: Solid, Challenging Puzzles.
Con: Poor visuals, Not Much Superman Type Stuff.
Final score: 6.7

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