He flies. He has heat vision. He catches crashing airplanes. And he usually stars in bad video games. Not today.


The Man of Steel's new game, which is simply called Superman, is very good, if you play it on the iPhone or iPod Touch. The game is about being the mightiest super-hero in the world, a man who can swat robots, puff out fires and toss cars into space. That's what you'll do in the game's version of the city of Metropolis, in short level after short level.

You can't die. Instead, your goal is to simply stop crimes in Metropolis as fast as you can by dealing with waves of problems that usually end in some large crisis like the firing of a missile at Superman's favorite city.


Superman isn't the most polished game ever. The virtual-analog-stick controls on the iPad are a little unwieldy and the iPad version of the game enlarges the graphics more than the simple character models of Superman's enemies can bear. On the iPhone and iPod Touch, however, the game is a lovely blur of quick-play fun. The secret is the flying, which looks and feels great.

See it for yourself, and watch long enough until I fly into outer space. (Pardon my meowing cat... I guess she wanted Superman to get her out of a proverbial tree.)

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This is a better game than Superman usually gets. I do wish its creators at Tiger Games hadn't tried to emulate the title-screen and soundtrack aesthetics of Richard Donner's old Superman movies, since the imitations don't cut it. And I could do without the hackneyed story that makes Clark Kent seem like the world's laziest reporter (Superman asks Lois Lane for reporting leads instead of doing his own work!).

But the flying... the flying is so good.

Superman on iPhone [$0.99, iTunes]

Superman on iPad [$2.99, iTunes]

You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at stephentotilo@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.