It is bird? Is it a plane? No, it's another mediocre movie-tie in! Yes, Superman has indeed returned, but as far as this game is concerned, I really couldn't care less. The game starts off promisingly enough, with you, as Superman defending the city of Metropolis from a meteor storm by frying them with your heat-vision or freezing them with your icy breath. And the games designers have actually remembered that Superman is largely invulnerable, and instead of the game ending when he loses energy, the game is only over when the city sustains severe damage. So you have to ensure that the city isn't reduced to rubble by the meteors by intercepting as many of them as you can. The trouble is that's about as exciting as the game gets.

After a brief excursion to War World where you get to grips with the game's so-so combat system, you're sent back to Metropolis to defend it from, er, fires and evil robots. The games designers seem to have borrowed heavily from Spiderman 2 in that they've given you a large cityscape to explore, both on foot and by air. What they seem to have forgotten is to make it in any way interesting at all.

The main bad guy for the first part of the game is Metallo, an evil robot guy who dislikes Superman for some reason. So much so in fact that he randomly has his robots harass the public. Not rob banks, mind, just fly around shooting things. And for the first ten levels, you deal with robots, robots and more robots. Maybe one in ten of the random missions you encounter involves putting out a fire with your superbreath, but the rest involve punching robots and it gets dull very quickly. Punch enough robots and you're onto the next chapter where you - wait for it - punch more robots. I got through to the tenth chapter or so and just gave up on the game at that point when it became clear yet more robot punching was in order.

It's not just the repetitiveness of the game that's likely to kill your interest, though it's likely to be the largest contributing factor. The controls themselves can be unwieldy and times and downright mystifying at others. Here's an example - if a citizen's been hurt you're meant to drop them near an ambulance. Except that the ambulances never stop and there's no mention of how to actually get them to stop. I ended up picking the ambulances up and hurling them around in frustration. And then there's Superman's inability to jump. No, I'm not making this up - he really can't jump. Say you want to get over a small barrier, you have to leap up into the air to enter flying mode, zoom back down to the ground, and then leave flying mode. Just to get over a small fence. It's the height of absurdity.

There are plenty of other niggling little oversights in this game which, combined with the sameness of the game's missions make it a disappointing effort. Even more so when you realize that, done properly, this could have been a good game - as it is, this is mediocre stuff at best. I guess the only really good thing I can say about this is is that it's the least worst Superman game to date - other games have been even worse than this - but it still doesn't have enough going for it to even merit a rental.