Why are there so few high rated superhero game?

I haven't played any of the Batman games but i know they are well rated games. The new Spiderman looks promising. With Marvel and DC spitting out big, high budget movies why are there so few quality games? I was looking at the ratings of some from last generation and they rated poorly. Are developers afraid to try and make top rated superhero games?

Probably also the fact that major development is so far outside the realm of "cheap" since gen 7 that studios won't fund these as product tie ins anymore. And the reputation they got back when they were pumped out as cheap movie tie ins must have scared some off.

I think Spider Man is the start of a trend, in a post Arkham world and if Spider Man is successful, maybe we see Marvel test the waters to see what leverage their MCU has bought them. Just for the love of god give the games the level of respect you give the movies.

Usually movie tie ins with a rushed development time. Or maybe half the budget gets spent on the liscensing...

Possibly a mixture of both

They tend to get smaller budgets and shorter development times because the publisher has already shelled out a bunch of money just to get the licence. They figure people will buy it anyway to play as their favorite super-hero.

Also, they often want the game to come out at the same time as the movie, so they will release it even if it's not quite finished.

Most tend to be movie tie-ins. They tend to suck.

The Arkham games got Batman right basically by doing just two things; they grasped the essence of what made Batman awesome and made it awesome to play as him, and they told a standalone story without trying to tie into any movie, comics or TV shows. That's what superhero game devs just need to do.

To be fair, most games give you super human/hero abilities whether your shooting 800 people single handedly in 30 mins, down to pulling off combos against Bison, and dissembling a whole army with Snake. The competition is tuff enough without mentioning the more abstract games.

It has to be a case of transition from the original platform (in this case comics.) It took a long time for the movies to get going, I dont see video games being any different. They have to make it work, enjoy the few jems, as you did with the likes of blade in the 90's. The tech is here now, be patient. We will all get our fill of super hero in vg's.

Please give the games more respect. Most super hero movies are kind of trash. Although, maybe I'm just too much of a critic. Lol

if you get a chance check out SFV's story-mode, it's like The Avengers if it drank bleach and ran into a wall several times.

Yeah there arent many, I think they try to focus too much on being like their movies. The Jedi Knight series were great though, Batman was good for its time on the Amstrad CPC and Freedom Force was a very fun game.

Freedom Force for £1, which I'm guessing about 2 people on this forum have played.

Activision snatched up too many licenses and made cheap generic games and ruined the potential for the franchises. Heck, some part of me wonders if they haven't done lasting harm to the upcoming Spider-Man game given their time abusing that franchise to death in years prior. I mean, I've every reason to be excited having seen what the upcoming game is capable of, and I'm glad Insomniac is on this project, but the lesser informed consumer might just look at a new Spider-Man game and go, "yeah, I've played a few of those in the past, they were all shit", and pass on this. I mean, I think I've seen this before, in movies. We had that oh-so awful Judge Dredd movie with Sylvester Stallone, but then just a few years ago we got Dredd, which was way better, but it under-performed. Now, maybe part of it had to do with contending toe-to-toe with End of Watch, maybe it never stood a chance on that alone, but I get the feeling that maybe people never forgot the awful reputation that the Stallone movie did to the Judge Dredd license. And it didn't seem to help the movie was heavily 3D marketed, which I think probably didn't clash well with those who might have been on the fence about seeing it, as 3D just seems gimmicky. Anyhow, seems most gaming heroes are super-heroes in their own way, just not the spandex wearing ones out of comic books.

Really can't think of a good comic hero game besides the Arkham series.

I think the problem is a bit that they are so strong and it can repetitive quick, and the action is usually not fun or looks bad. Hopefullt they are done with the movie tie-in games,

I would love to be a fly on the wall at Rocksteady about now. Would love to know what they are working on.

As people have said, they were mostly cheap crappy movie tie in games with no real time, money or effort put into them.

I'll also point out that it's really freaking hard to get the difficulty level correct. Nobody wants to take control of Superman and die every 5 minutes. But, if you just defeat enemies with no problem it's boring. Arkham was perfect because you were a beast, you could take down roomloads of enemies with your tools and skills, but could still be quickly beaten down if you messed up (at least on hard).

But Batman is a regular dude at the end of the day, so I'm not sure how you apply that to Superman, say.

New Spiderman does look great and I hope for a quality Iron Man game some day!

Batman has the Arkham series and the Telltale series. Spider-Man is coming to the PS4 next year. Guardians of the Galaxy also have a Telltale series. You also have Injustice 2 which I really adore.

Square Enix paired up with Marvel to work on an Avengers game. You also have Marvel Heroes (which is a mediocre free to play).

I believe that it is hard to do a videogame where your main character is so much stronger than anybody else. But I also believe that in the hands of the proper developers we can have really good games and I hope that the partnership between Marvel and Square Enix will result in future good games. We can only wait and hope.

The Marvel vs. Capcom games have always been great.

Before Arkham Asylum, there was Xmen Origins: Wolverine.

EDIT: But to answer your question, it's a mixture of Short Development time and Low Budget. You can usually tell what super hero games (Movie Tie-In or Not) got more Time in Development and what not.

They are shallow games. For one reason or another. A lot of them have been cheap tie-ins, so that nullifies a shit load of them. Another chunk were made by devs that just weren't all that good. Others are done by studios that have done some cool stuff like say Sucker Punch, but infamous, is needlessly drawn out as an action game, has a stupid upgrade system tied to a really silly n binary morally system, and hits every open world game trope you can get.

Crackdown is half baked, Saints Row 4 is way too fucking easy, shallow, and not all that satisfying mechanically in terms of game feel.

So that naturally leaves Rocksteady's Arkham games. Which are good, in spite of a shallow combat system, they offset it by giving the animations some serious punch. And pace the games appropriately by juggling both the action n stealth so neither is played long enough to get too boring during a play session. While mostly finding a happy balance of fan service, albeit some of it is straight filler (like Hush in Arkham City, or Azreal or whatever his fucking name is). Arkham Origins is a misfire, specifically because not enough stealth, too much of that combat, that frankly isn't good enough to carry an entire game.

That said Knight was Rocksteady making a lot of similar mistakes that other triple A devs made with their games, that Rocksteady was able to avoid at the least with theirs. There are a lot of neat aspects about the game, and in a vacuum the challenge stuff in Knight might be the best in the series, but it's at the expense of the main campaign being a dramatic step down from City, and lacking the ebb n flow of Asylum.

Beyond that there were some dope 2d beat-em ups. Marvel vs Capcom is naturally ace. Freedom Force is fun.

As for what's ahead, pretty dull, Spiderman looks fucking lame as far as the gameplay is concerned. Can't wait for all the reviews that say bullshit like how the combat makes you "feel like Spiderman" even though it's a combat system that will be shared by Batman, Captain America, Tailon of Middle Earth, Wei Fucking Shen of Sleeping Dogs, the Assassins of Assassin's Creed, n Mad Max.