You can still have heaps of exciting environments within a superhero theme. I liked the Freedom Force games, and the environments in those games weren't that dull. You can have heaps of different areas within a single city:

- downtown cityscape
- on top of skyscraper
- central city park
- the university
- tourist district
- industrial district
- the docks
- the suburbs
- sewer system
- caves beneath the sewer system

You can also adjust the "feel" of a map just by adding some large landmarks, such as a museum or a school. Plus you can alter the feel of a map by having it under the effects of particular bad guys. Using Freedom Force as an example; a map that's frozen under the icy thrall of Nuclear Winter is a lot different to the same area being converted back into nature by Pan.

And that's just assuming the game is set within one city. If your superheroes can also adventure to different towns, you can still have jungles, ice floes, lava, exotic towns etc.

Real life should never look boring. If you think it does, I recommend you travel to some of the older neighborhoods in your town.

There are degrading and rotting buildings sharing space with new gleaming office towers. Not everything has to be a uni-textured office tower; freshen things up with graffiti, random flavour (garbage cans, dirt) and the like.

I think there are probably more eras of building being mashed together in this age than any other in human history (literal or fictional). Plenty of variety, and things to look at.

Beware the 'I think my idea is starting to feel dull' the dark-side that leads to.

The pre-cursor to failure it is ;D

I would say stick with your idea and concentrait how you can make it fun and interesting.

Thanks for the good ideas and positive spin on things. I will use my time away from the PC over christmas to flesh out new areas for the game and ideas.