Beyond Iron Man VR: 10 Other Superheroes Who Need Their Own Virtual Reality Games
Iron Man VR on PlayStation VR has us thinking about what other superheroes from Marvel and DC Comics need their own VR games. These are our top picks.
Iron Man VR is a game for the PS4’s PlayStation VR headset that lets you climb into Tony Stark’s armor. While modern VR gaming is still in its infancy, there’s no denying that superhero games are an attractive use of the technology. Who hasn’t wanted to slip into the leotard of their favorite comic book heroes (metaphorically) and really feel what being superhuman is like? If the game is a hit, here’s our wishlist for other superheroes that would rock in VR.
Doctor Strange
Marvel’s master of the mystic arts seems perfectly suited for virtual reality. His power set doesn’t involve a whole lot of moving around, so teleporting from place to place will feel more natural. And because casting the Rings of Raggador and Strange’s other spells often involves hand gestures, VR will help the experience feel more immersive as he battles against his supernatural foes. We’d love to see the psychedelic landscapes of Steve Ditko rendered in 3D.
Green Lantern
John Stewart is an ex-Marine architect turned space cop, armed with a will-powered ring that lets him create anything he can imagine. As opposed to an action-packed twitch experience, we see a Green Lantern game being more cerebral, using a 3D virtual interface to connect with the Power Ring and actually sculpt energy constructs to solve puzzles and capture some of the galaxy’s nastiest criminals. Or imagine creating a weapon in one mode and then bringing it into combat in another. The possibilities are limitless.
Ant-Man
The promise of VR has always been to take players into worlds that they could never visit, and the size-changing abilities of Scott Lang would be an incredible way to illustrate that potential. Virtual reality could absolutely sell the sensation of shrinking into a world where a housecat is the size of a city bus and crossing the living room floor is a dangerous journey. Throw in a telepathic bond with ants that could be used — Lemmings-like — to solve problems for your hero and you have a very fun idea.
Gambit
Plenty of X-Men could make for cool superhero games, but Gambit has a powerset virtually made for VR. If you’re not familiar with the Cajun Mutant, he has the power to charge objects with kinetic energy and make them explode. His usual weapon is a pack of playing cards, but think about a VR title where he can grab just about anything in arm’s reach, power it up and fling it into foes to detonate them. Strap a robust physics engine on this thing and you’ve got a recipe for chaos.
The Question
While Victor Sage — the character originally conceived by Steve Ditko — is cool, our heart will always belong to the Renee Montoya incarnation of the blank-masked detective. The Question is a dogged investigator who has a remarkable ability to correlate seemingly unrelated pieces of evidence into a cohesive whole, and a game adapting the Crime Bible storyline where she faces off with a malevolent cult of religious crooks could be a showcase for environmental VR storytelling.
Silver Surfer
To save his home planet, Norrin Radd consented to become the herald of the mighty planet-eater Galactus, a ravenous cosmic entity who feeds on worlds. Imagine a Silver Surfer game set before his debut in the pages of Fantastic Four, as he scours the spaceways to find planets devoid of sentient life. Think of the massive procedurally generated universe of No Man’s Sky, but instead of scraping together a spaceship you’re testing planetary defenses and making complex moral decisions on whether to sacrifice a world to your master.
John Constantine
We’re not going to get into the weeds on whether John Constantine is a “superhero” per se, although he did lead his own Justice League team at one point. Instead, imagine a VR experience that lets you step into the trenchcoat of DC’s morally ambiguous mystic throughout his long and difficult life, from being a young mage in the punk ’70s to a grizzled veteran in the modern age. Unlike the Dr. Strange game above, we’re thinking more of a Telltale-style adventure in virtual reality, with you as Constantine using wit and pluck as much as spellcraft. Yes, we know there was a video game tie-in to the 2005 movie, but we don’t talk about that here.
Daredevil
VR is all about visual presentation, but it can also let us experience the world in completely new ways. Imagine what a gutsy developer could do with Marvel’s Daredevil, a blind vigilante who possesses heightened senses and innate radar that lets him perceive the world around him. Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s run on the hero used a really cool outlined visual style to represent his radar sense, and a melee combat game where you’re smacking down the Kingpin’s thugs without ever seeing them could be really slick.
Sleepwalker
This early 90s Marvel character doesn’t have the high profile of the other names on this list, but his power set is unique and cool enough to support a VR title. When New York college student Rick Sheridan falls asleep, it releases a green-skinned entity from another dimension with the power to travel through the Mindscape — the linked collective consciousness of all sentient beings. Battling villains in the material world and then diving into their internal landscape to deliver a psychological finishing blow would be too cool.
Ambush Bug
Most of the heroes on this list are pretty serious types, so let’s add a little levity to the mix. Originally introduced as a minor Superman villain, Ambush Bug quickly fell into the role of the DC Universe’s resident trickster, a fourth wall-breaking roustabout who inserted himself into stories he absolutely didn’t belong in. His green costume is wired with microcircuitry that lets him instantly teleport to anywhere in the universe, which would be a great hook for a VR game that could feature cameos by dozens of other DC characters.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
