The earliest review I remember reading of a Superman game called the very concept impossible.
“How do you make a game about a character who is invincible? You either make him vulnerable or it’s not going to be fun at all.” This general conceit has practically played out everywhere across multiple console generations.

There have been dozens of Superman games and they are all practically identical to any other superhero thing. There are goals, lifebars: the very trappings of action game.

Sometimes you beltscroll the city of metropolis, some times you can actually fly through it.

The question always lingers, though: how do you make it fun to be someone who’s actually invincible?
Something to be said about the best Superman comics is how they often contrast what he can do with him actually being able to do it. Putting him in positions where problems cannot be punched. More often then not (A Superman for All Seasons, Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?) he manages to overcome them through matters of the heart.

Heart is for kids though, and videogames are for Adults. We don’t have time to deal with things like narratives built around an alien immigrant reminding us the importance of empathy. Videogames should always be about action, just like movies should always be about cars exploding.

UNDEFEATED is a Steam Game worth your time. It manages to take the central conceit of being “Superman” and bury it far beneath the earth. Much like the protagonist of Prototype once opined that nothing could stop him – not bullets, not armor, nothing – the same is true for the player character.

As an anonymous super-being with a slicked back ‘pomp and sunglasses, you’ll run, fly and punch through a tiny little slice of metropolitan life.

UNDEFEATED immediately opens up by giving the player everything. You can fly, you can run, you can punch. For a small slice of a videogame, that’s all you really need. Saving pedestrians and accomplishing challenges get you “hero points” that make you faster and stronger.

You can do the Superhero Landing. The ground even ripples when you suddenly burst away from it and into the sky. The cruft of UNDEFEATED is small touches that immediately make every action rewarding.

There’s not a lot here – but what’s particularly interesting about UNDEFEATED is how it makes use of the city. The game contains four boss fights, and each one of them is based around a relatively simple mechanic.

Superman, himself, is rarely in danger. Good Superman stories play with this: The Man of Steel can’t always be hurt. People he loves can be put in danger, and Superman loves everyone. Metropolis and its institutions are frequently undermined, and these stories routinely place importance on the implicit value those social institutions can have. Lex Luthor is a billionaire industrialist for a reason.

Realized here, the city itself becomes the health bar for your success. You’re not just fighting a villain that you need to punch. As the challenges ramp up in difficulty, you have to split the difference between actively pursuing the bad guy and trying to keep the city safe.

In a way, it’s so stupid and obvious once it’s put into action that it makes me wonder just why people ever asked questions about how to make a game like this fun. Ideally this concept could open up with a narrative added that has something to say about the character, but fuck.

Superman is a character rooted in the fantasy of being able to just go. No grapple points to connect to, no worrying about buildings tall enough to hit with your webs. You rocket away from the planet earth and into the sky whenever you want. If something is big, you knock it down to size. The fantasy of Superman is the puffed-up chest while the bullets bounce off of it. How have we never been able to make it this fun before?

you can check out UNDEFEATED for free on Steam, here.