Why does Marvel have better games than DC?

[The Overlord]

Why overall, does Marvel have better games than DC?

[BCVM22]

Is there really any one answer to this question? DC and Marvel license out different properties to different development studios. The reasons could entail any combination of those, and more.

[Vyse]

Here's what I think why Marvel has better games than DC:
-choice in publishers/developers. BCVM22 is correct on this. Most of the good Marvel games came from 2 good publishers: Capcom (who cannot forget Marvel VS Capcom) and Activision. While both companies have clinkers (remember Marvel and Acclaim/LJN?), DC's choices (esp. in the past few years) have been eyesores upon the legacy of DC gaming.
-DC has Superman. How can you create a good game where the hero is literally a god? You can't. Stripping him of his powers is lame, and giving the player full access to the last son of Krypton's arsenal can lead to boredom. Proof? Super. Man. Sixty. Four.

[Beat]

Developers and reaction. Although I'm quick to point out the movie adaptations tend to universally stink, stuff that's indepdently made (Ultimate Alliance, Hulk Ultimate Destruction) is fun because there are few limits.

[Rook]

Because some game devs:
-think that everything should have a set limit that stays within a human frame up.
-didnt do their homework and what these heroes can do and understand that they dont get tired easy.
-apparently dont have enough time in the budget.
-are too lazy to put effort into a comic book hero game.
-are entry level staff.
-too busy looking for toothbrushes.

[Dudley]

Why are DC animated cartoons better than Marvel?
A balance must be uphold.

jk, people.

[Frank Castle]

Batman Begins and Justice League Heroes were steps in the right direction but they're not even close to Marvel yet. With Lego Batman coming next year and The Dark Knight being developed by Pandemic (Star Wars Battlefront, Mercenaries) I think DC is getting their act together. Hopefully the days of crappy games such as Batman Dark Tomorrow and Superman 64 are long gone.

[Cade Skywalker]

I dont think Marvel has "better" games, but they have MUCH more games.

[Aizen]

Yeah I think Marvel has better games for right now but it had its ups and downs too. Marvel Nemesis? Right well, Justice League heroes probably was good (It was never for Gamecube so I couldn't get it...) DC just needs to do a bit better with their games that's all. (DC Ultimate Alliance:p)

[GWOtaku]

A Justice League RPG would be awesome.

I think they could make a good Superman game if they wanted to. Two words: Darkseid, Doomsday.

[Conan-san]

Marvel does not have better games than DC. This has been true ever since the Vs Sereis has been put to pasture.

And it will never rectify itself untill I get my opotunity to Smack Tony up side the head with Viewtiful Joe.

[Simpler Simon]

I think they could make a good Superman game if they wanted to. Two words: Darkseid, Doomsday.

Good characters don't guarantee good games. Darkseid was actually in Justice League Heroes as the final boss. Doomsday was in there too I think.

Really, what Marvel did was stumble upon a style of gameplay that worked, then recycle it for numerous games. The first few spider-man games play exactly the same with cosmetic changes, then the GTA-style open city was developed for Spider-Man 2, and recycled for Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3 (and really, that last game got mediocre reviews, but the franchise as a whole has been generally solid so people forgive it). Marvel did the same thing with the X-Men Legends dungeon-crawler gameplay, which got one sequel and a spiritual successor in Ultimate Alliance.

Beyond that, the only other Marvel game that good good reviews was Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Otherwise there's been some mediocre stuff as well:

-Hulk: Movie Game
-X2: Wolverine's Revenge
-Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects
-X Men 3: Official Movie Game

So all it takes is for one company to figure out Batman, and we'll be seeing a ton of good Batman games down the line. EA actually came close with Batman Begins, it just needed less hand-holding.

[Silverstar]

-choice in publishers/developers. BCVM22 is correct on this. Most of the good Marvel games came from 2 good publishers: Capcom (who cannot forget Marvel VS Capcom) and Activision.

Hopefully, this rumored DC VS Street Fighter (http://racketboy.com/retro/2006/09/rumor-alert-dc-vs-street-fighter-and.html) game will turn out to be a reality, and won't suck.

[Undrave]

Why overall, does Marvel have better games than DC?

To balance out the fact that DC seems to get all the good cartoons? XD

[Dudley]

To balance out the fact that DC seems to get all the good cartoons? XD

Hmmm, that's strange....
I made the same joke earlier.

[Undrave]

Hmmm, that's strange....
I made the same joke earlier.

I made it before actually reading the rest of the thread ^^;;

Great minds think alike heh?

[Antiyonder]

Why are DC animated cartoons better than Marvel?
A balance must be uphold.

jk, people.

Then Marvel has 2 on DC: Good games and better luck on the movies. With DC, imo, their characters have more of an iconic feel. While Flash and Green Lantern aren't up their with Spider-Man, Wolverine or the Hulk, they have more recognizibility than say Ant-Man and Wasp.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Because Marvel licenses their stuff more agressively and to better developers and publishers and because the lion's share of DC games are rushed multi-console ports of movie games with a "slap the name on it and they'll buy it" mentality. That's my theory, anyway. Play Batman Forever or Batman and Robin and you'll agree.

[Aizen]

Then Marvel has 2 on DC: Good games and better luck on the movies. With DC, imo, their characters have more of an iconic feel. While Flash and Green Lantern aren't up their with Spider-Man, Wolverine or the Hulk, they have more recognizibility than say Ant-Man and Wasp.
yeah well DC cartoons own Marvel's. In my opinion that is.

[Robin2099]

Then Marvel has 2 on DC: Good games and better luck on the movies. With DC, imo, their characters have more of an iconic feel. While Flash and Green Lantern aren't up their with Spider-Man, Wolverine or the Hulk, they have more recognizibility than say Ant-Man and Wasp. Marvel has just as many crap games as DC has. Granted nothing like Catwoman, or Superman 64, but they do have crap games too.

[Antiyonder]

Marvel has just as many crap games as DC has. Granted nothing like Catwoman, or Superman 64, but they do have crap games too.

No arguement there, but we're talking about how they do better in comparison to the competition. The animated programs are the most that DC got right.

[Crow]

Marvel's had better games than DC because those are good games that just happen to have Marvel characters in it. I recently saw Casino Royale (2006) and Daniel Craig says on the extras that they got to work making a really good movie, not a good Bond movie.

My idea for a good DC game would be a Justice League based game where the starting plot is Superman's gone bad so he's the enemy for the first few stages and you as the remaining characters have to find out why. It might be seen as a cheat that you can't play as Superman straight away in a JL game but you'll eventually be able to. He's back to normal and by that stage you have to take on the heaviest of the villians.

I think it'd be great having a multiplayer Justice League game open-world style where you have to contend with a rogue Superman coming after you/attacking the city.

[Aizen]

Do people don't like playing with Superman or what? :confused:

[Silverstar]

Do people don't like playing with Superman or what? :confused:

Superman's a great character (IMO), but he poses a problem when it comes to designing a video game around him. If you give Supey his full arsenal of powers, then a person could waltz through the entire game with ease and conceivably beat it in about 30 minutes, which wouldn't wouldn't make for a very challenging game. But conversely, if you were to greatly de-power Supes or strip Supes of his super abilities altogether, then the game would be lame because you'd be taking out all of the things that make him Superman.

The trick with putting Superman in a game is to not make him so powerful that he's like a god, but at the same time not go to the other extreme and render him a helpless moron.

One possible solution could be to have Superman start out with only 1 or 2 abilities that he has at all times (like, say, flight and super punch) and then have him gain a new ability each time he completes a level or defeats a boss, a la Mega Man. (This idea was sort-of tried with Superman 64, but the piss-poor graphics and gameplay did the title in.)

[Robin2099]

Superman Returns was easily the best Superman based game and they had a good idea: Since Superman's so powerful have the city be the thing he has to protect and prevent from taking damage. The bad part was the game was killed by crappy game design(seriously, the final boss is a tornado.). He also worked well in Justice League Heroes too.

[Aizen]

Superman's a great character (IMO), but he poses a problem when it comes to designing a video game around him. If you give Supey his full arsenal of powers, then a person could waltz through the entire game with ease and conceivably beat it in about 30 minutes, which wouldn't wouldn't make for a very challenging game. But conversely, if you were to greatly de-power Supes or strip Supes of his super abilities altogether, then the game would be lame because you'd be taking out all of the things that make him Superman.

The trick with putting Superman in a game is to not make him so powerful that he's like a god, but at the same time not go to the other extreme and render him a helpless moron.

One possible solution could be to have Superman start out with only 1 or 2 abilities that he has at all times (like, say, flight and super punch) and then have him gain a new ability each time he completes a level or defeats a boss, a la Mega Man. (This idea was sort-of tried with Superman 64, but the piss-poor graphics and gameplay did the title in.)
Yeah but even if Superman is so strong, they could make the villains really strong too. Examples being Darkseid, Doomsday, Metallo, etc. I mean if Superman's so strong, his villains aren't so weak.

[The Overlord]

Yeah but even if Superman is so strong, they could make the villains really strong too. Examples being Darkseid, Doomsday, Metallo, etc. I mean if Superman's so strong, his villains aren't so weak.

yeah, but a good game should have a decent challenge through out the whole game, not just with the boss battles. What Superman supposed to do when he is not fighting bosses, deal with thugs that can't hurt him or save kittens from a tree?

[Don_East]

Justice League Heroes was good. Not so much I've played.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Catwoman is a good game, though, I don't care how badly it was reviewed or how many jokes it's been the butt of. I recently sat down and tried to play every comic game for Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube. Catwoman was better than, say, Marvel Nemesis. It's a fun ripoff of Prince of Persia, Sands of Time, with an innovative approach to combat. It is held back a little by some too hard platforming in one or two spots, some hard to figure out puzzles and some meh boss fights. Especially the boss fights, I mean, you have to beat up Sharon Stone to complete the game. But I still had a lot of fun with it, and was pleasantly surprised.

As far as I can tell I haven't played Aquaman yet, or Superman Man of Steel or Batman Rise of Sin Tzu. But if you take those off the table worst comic game of the last generation was definitely Batman Dark Tomorrow. It was the only one I couldn't finish because it was too broken, and in that experiment I beat the ultra-hard, unfair and unbalanced Nemesis. Batman Vengeance was also pretty bad, worse than Catwoman. Superman Returns was annoyingly repetitive. The design philosophy seems to be that if something was mildly amusing once, forcing someone to do it 26 times will make it great fun.

Marvel has better games now, but they've had some stinkers in the past. There was a terrible NES X-Men game and an awful NES Avengers game starring Captain America and Hawkeye.

Another factor worth considering is that most of DC's stuff in the past has been movie or cartoon licensed, which puts even more pressure on developers to rush out product than a comic license. People buy these because they identify with the picture on the box, it doesn't matter how good they are and publishers and developers know that.

Except for the last two Spider-Man games, which are a refreshing exception, some of the best comic games of recent years, such as Punisher, the X-Men Legends, Ultimate Alliance and Hulk Ultimate Destruction have been tied to no particular movie license, which gives developers more freedom and doesn't force them to meet arbitrary deadlines like the ones that crippled Superman Returns. The best Superman game, historically, was Death and Return of Superman, a comic-licensed 2d brawler. The popular SNES Spider-Man game Maximum Carnage and the great PSX games were comic licensed. About that time DC was pumping out capital C crap like Batman and Robin and Batman Forever.

The best Batman game, if you want to seek it out, by the way, is Adventures of Batman and Robin for the SNES. Another good one is Return of the Joker for NES, although that's a shooter that just happens to feature a Batman sprite. I found Batman Begins to be quite tolerable, though nothing that would set ones world on fire and overly gimmicky.

[Aizen]

The best Batman game, if you want to seek it out, by the way, is Adventures of Batman and Robin for the SNES. Another good one is Return of the Joker for NES, although that's a shooter that just happens to feature a Batman sprite. I found Batman Begins to be quite tolerable, though nothing that would set ones world on fire and overly gimmicky.
The adventures for Batman and Robin for SNES is old :sweat:
I do agree with you on the Batman Begins game. It is really enjoyable, but after you beat it once, it is really easy.