“The Dark Knight,” with its hundreds of millions of dollars in box-office monies, is easily the hit of the summer. And don’t think the suits at Warner Bros. and DC haven’t taken notice!

Displeased with the lukewarm reception for Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” a couple summers ago, Warner Bros. has decided to kick that continuity to the curb and start anew.

Says Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov as per the article above: “Had ‘Superman’ worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009, but now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman. We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the character allows it.”

Hooold it right there, bucko. Dark? Superman? No. That’s not what the character is about. And though “Superman Returns” had its troubles and shortcomings — it was kind of boring and not much happened — they weren’t related to its moral shading.

Let’s get something clear here: “The Dark Knight” has not succeeded simply by virtue of its darkness. It has succeeded because it is the single best rendition of the core of the character, his environment, and his friends and foes that has ever been put to celluloid.

The bleak tone of the movie is a necessary means to that end — Gotham is the sort of place where a scar-faced lunatic can use a talk-show phone call to whip up such a state of public panic that its citizens become willing to murder each other in a frenzy of self-preservation, and where Batman himself must wrestle with whether or not to put the Joker out of everyone’s misery at the cost of his own soul.

Metropolis is not that sort of place, and Superman is not that sort of character. He has already conquered his demons — he is a virtual god walking upon (well, soaring above) the Earth — and he uses his power to protect all that he can, not destroy and despoil. That’s what the character is about.

Besides, “Superman III” already explored the unpleasant aspects of the Last Son of Krypton, with Clark Kent splitting into good and bad versions of himself thanks to synthetic Kryptonite. But hey, the good Clark managed to strangle his doppelganger to death, so everything was OK in the end! Yeah, it was really dumb.

But making the next “Superman” movie dark for darkness’ sake — well, that’s downright dim.

(Image from Movieweb.com)

It has been nearly eight years since the release of Blizzard Entertainment’s mega-popular computer game “Diablo II.” (Blizzard is the same company that created “World of Warcraft” and “Starcraft.”) Now, after an expansion, numerous revisions and a whole series of spinoff novels, the next chapter in the series has been revealed.

And true to Internet form, some people are already complaining. Addressing them: The game you’ve been wanting for nearly a decade is finally announced and all you can do is carp about how the art design isn’t as dark and dank as you’d like? Seriously? Geez, get a grip.

Anyway, the rest of us “Diablo” fans are looking forward to another habit-forming adventure in the demon-infested world of Sanctuary. Over the weekend I reinstalled my copy of the game at home and started playing, and was quickly reminded why it’s so compelling.

On its face the game doesn’t sound that special: You create a hero, selecting from several different character classes like Barbarian, Necromancer and Paladin, then journey out into the world to kill monsters, pick up the loot they drop, move on and repeat. It’s a simple formula.

What makes “Diablo II” work so well is its nearly infinite replayability. The base game has five character classes; two more were added by the expansion. Each of these classes has its own specialties, with a variety of abilities divided among three distinct skill paths — a Druid, for example, can learn skills in Elemental, Summoning and Shape Shifting disciplines.

As a player player monsters and finishes quests he or she earns points to spend on skills in these trees, but there are only so many to go around and they can’t be regained once spent. How a character’s skill set is customized is as important as the weapons they wield. Add to this a huge array of equipment and items, area layouts that are randomized each time you start a new game and an interesting story, and you have a recipe for a killer time sink.

The complete “Diablo” package is pretty cheap these days —it can be found for as low as $30 or so online — and with the sequel in development now would be a good time to check this classic out.

(Image courtesy of Blizzard.com)

I said I’d offer something lighter this week, and here it is: “The Ur-Quan Masters,” a free multi-platform port of the classic sci-fi game “Star Control II” (the name was changed for copyright reasons). This is a classic game of the 1990s.

Title: The Ur-Quan Masters
For: Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD
ESRB rating: Everyone

Of course, the bare-bones description of the game doesn’t make it sound anything but bleak: You’re the captain of a starship crewed by a science team that was marooned for years on an alien planet, only able to escape because your group found an ancient factory that automatically built the ship you’re in — actually, half-built, as the vessel is just the skeleton of a larger craft.

You’ve returned home to find Earth shielded under a glowing red barrier, and an automated drone informs you that humanity and its allies have been defeated by the Ur-Quan Heirarchy; Earth chose permanent isolation rather than become battle slaves for the Ur-Quan.

Who are these Ur-Quan? Well, they’re extremely mean and warlike three-eyed grub monsters that pilot huge ships on a galaxy-spanning mission to subdue or enslave all races they encounter. And they’re not even the worst of their kind — an offshoot of the species is traveling the galaxy in the other direction on a parallel mission of genocide; the game takes place as the two factions near a predetermined meeting to determine the superiority of one of these doctrines — through war, of course.

Still sounds prettty bleak, right? Well, the situation is dire, but the game has a cheeky sense of humor to the proceedings, mixing goofy races and running gags with space exploration and ship-to-ship battles. There are the hyper-cowardly Spathi, a race of mullosks who’d like nothing better than to be shield-protected slaves but are condemened to eternal battle servitude; the spaced-out hippie bird aliens called Pkunk; the disgusting Umgah, galactic pranksters who tricked the Spathi; and numerous other races.

The gameplay is relatively simplistic — in battle each ship can accelerate, turn, and employ a standard and a special weapon — but there’s a diverse arsenal spread among the many ships. When not fighting, you can explore planets for resources and other points of interest, and the story is engaging.

(Image courtesy of sc2.sourceforge.net)

Konami’s “Metal Gear Solid” series of stealth-action games have an incredibly devoted following, even if the jabbermouthy dialogue and esoteric turns the overarching plot has taken over the last decade have been off-putting for some. (Arm-transplant mind control! Secret world-influencing societies! A.I.-spearheaded information control!) The release of a new entry in the series is a big event.

And hey, would you look at that — a new one is coming out tomorrow! “Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots” is notable not only for being the presumably final and hopefully loose-end-tying chapter in gravel-voiced operative Solid Snake’s story. It’s also an exclusive for the PlayStation 3, which has been gaining steam since late last year but still needs a game that people will buy the system to play. The series has been a PlayStation staple since 1998’s “Metal Gear Solid,” so “MGS4″ will likely be that game.

It’s also a video game with an old hero. Solid Snake is chronologically in his mid-40s — already older than average for a game protagonist who’s not an immortal vampire demigod or something. He was cloned in the 1970s from the genes of Big Boss, an extremely proficient warrior whom Snake would eventually kill.

But imperfections in the cloning process mean Snake is aging rapidly — he was never a spring chicken in these games, but now he looks at least 20 years older than he is, and that mustache doesn’t take any years off. I’ve been tired of playing as teenagers in video games since I was a teenager — it’s good to see a capable, tough old dude in the lead role, especially when he’s taking over for that sissy boy Raiden from “MGS2″ (who looks like he redeems himself in this installment as a badass robo-ninja).

“Guns of the Patriots” has been a long time coming for gamers who want to know what happens next in this twisting tale — “MGS3″ took a trip back to the 1960s to explore the origins of Big Boss and his warmongering vision, so Solid Snake’s been hanging in Schrödingerian limbo for almost seven years. I hope it was worth the wait; guess we’ll find out tomorrow!

(McClatchy Tribune handout photo)

You might have heard of a game called “Beyond Good & Evil.” It was, like last week’s Free Game Friday selection, an imaginative and well-regarded game that didn’t make much of a splash at retail, quickly relegated the Ubisoft release to bargain bins and clearance racks (you can find used copies pretty cheap these days, or play it with a GameTap subscription).

Maybe the game was too unique to succeed. The photojournalist heroine was tough and competent, and not played up for sex appeal the way most female game protagonists are. The gameplay was a bit like a “Zelda” game, but with a sci-fi setting. It had its own look and feel, and the matter-of-fact cast of humans, aliens, robots and anthropomorphic animals was bizarre.

Arriving as it did in November 2003, during the crowded holiday release season — and facing competition from Ubisoft’s other releases, like the “Prince of Persia” remake, to say nothing of other companies’ games — it’s perhaps not much of a surprise the game didn’t take hold.

“BG&E” ended on a cliffhanger, but for years there was no solid word on a sequel. A few rumors surfaced here and there. Conventional wisdom was that the game hand’t sold well enough to warrant a follow-up. Some people gave up hope. But not I! And now, here I sit, vindicated — Ubisoft is developing a sequel.

I’m curious: What games do you want to see sequels to? Let me know in the comments!

(Image courtesy BeyondGoodEvil.com.)