Superman: Shadow of Apokolips

Help Superman Save the Day!

NA release: 25th March 2003
EU release: 20th May 2003
JP release: N/A
Developer: Infogrames Sheffield House
Publisher: Infogrames
NGC Magazine Score: 60%
Mods Used: None

Like Superman 64, this is based on Superman: The Animated Series. It also features a large open city, even though the game’s missions don’t really utilise it in any way. That said, the city is much more packed, looks much nicer and there isn’t an extreme amount of fog covering everything up. Another similarity is it avoids Superman punching people – instead of taking place in a digital world, every enemy is a robot. That said, if I had to replay one of these Superman games, I would easily pick Superman 64 over this.

On a technical level, this isn’t worse than Superman 64, but it’s also just monotonous and immensely boring. Superman 64’s flying felt great after getting used to the controls, while here the controls always feel fiddly – Superman’s up and down movement swap sticks if you want to move with speed, for example – and there’s no fun flight challenges in the main game, which is probably a good thing as Superman turns so slow when he moves forward that it would be frustrating. The control setup also means no camera control, and with the awful nature of Superman’s turn, it makes looking around your surroundings a nightmare.

Combat is also just tedious. You can punch, but for most enemies, you can use your heat blast (done by tapping Y twice) to take care of them easily. And the combat doesn’t change. Really, by the end of the tutorial, you’ve seen everything the game has to offer as fighting bosses feels the same, they just have immensely large health bars.

There’s just nothing interesting about this game at all. The story is rather dull, with the last two bosses being Metallo, someone Superman beats up in the opening cut-scene, and the levels are just tedious. The radar is also immensely useless – I spent ages on one level just flying around trying to find civilians with no enemies around because the radar only showed some pointless objects instead. It’s just tediously boring.

Poor

Superman: Shadow of Apokolips gets a lot of things right, though, and initially it’s all great fun doing everything Superman can. But it run out of steam all too soon, and doesn’t seem to know what to do with the freedom and abilities that are on offer. Pleasant, but ultimately inconsequential.
Jes Bickham, NGC Magazine #81

Remake or remaster?

There’s just nothing interesting to improve upon here.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get Superman: Shadow of Apokolips.