3/5 ★ – Poefred's review of Superman.

I got every achievement for this game on retroachievements. Had a weirdly good time with it. Superman's flight controls are surprisingly good, it's fast with decent turning and speed control. The levels outside of the ring stages don't give you a lot to go off of so it feels like you don't know what to do but the levels are so small and simple it's usually not too hard to figure out how to progress and that's weirdly satisfying to me. Lost in the world's worst game yet making progress anyway. It can be annoying that there's no checkpoints but once you know what to do, even the longest of levels can be beaten within a couple minutes. The true downside of this game is just how unapologetically padded it is at points. Every other level being a "ride" stage is bad enough as it is without the occasional 4 minute long fly in a straight line moments. Only to reach the mission, fail despite doing what it asked because the game is held together with recently microwaved elmer's glue, and be forced to go through the rings before it again. (Funny enough, having mercy on you and actually giving you a checkpoint ahead of the rings if you failed the mission 3 times) And 4 ring segments in each ride is way too much. Thankfully most of the missions are pretty easy so you're not often failing them once you get used to the game. A lot of just killing enemies, which actually feels pretty good as you can get a much quicker kill by simply flying into them with enough speed instead of awkwardly landing and flailing in their direction. Or getting the timing right to grab the bombers between bomb drops so they don't blow you up. (Frankly had more fun with this game's combat than I did with Sonic Frontier's combat, but I digress) Thankfully the worst aspect of the game can be entirely skipped. If you play on Easy there's no rings at all, you just fly to the mission. Though unfortunately the game cuts you off a few levels early if you're on easy, or even normal. You have to play on hard to truly beat the game. This would bum me out but there's also a really easy to input level skip code in the pause menu. Meaning I can quickly play the levels I actually enjoy, instead of never returning to the game due to it being 2/3rds padded ring stages. This saves its rating from a 2 star to a 3 star for me. There's a weird sense of satisfaction and excitement playing a game this poorly made and yet coming to an understanding with how it works. (Side note on ride 6 there's some special event where you race someone to a portal. There's nothing even telling you this is happening and if you fail absolutely nothing happens. And if you win you get a text box saying *good job superman, now they'll be lost in the virtual realm!* and then nothing happens. This takes place during your typical ring stage, and only during the first like ten seconds of it at that before it's over. It's just fascinating how clearly this is an unfinished concept they were throwing around that just got left in the game.)