Justice League Heroes

by: The Ryan October 21 2006

Take a forgettable trip with your favorite League of Superheroes.

Justice League Heroes plays like every other beat ‘em up on the market with the exception of the superpowers. As your rushing through the levels, not worrying about any special areas or pickups you don’t really find yourself getting bored because of the characters your playing with. The saving grace in this game is that it’s about the Justice League. If you were to slap another coat of paint on this game and play as army soldiers for example, this game wouldn’t be worth a rental.

The animation of the superheroes have been done pretty well and faithful to the Justice League cartoon kind of attitude. I can’t speak for Zatanna, who’s she? Without taking into account that hardly anybody knows who she is, she’s quite useful when she’s in play. Her hits are powerful and her special powers are useful to surviving. So while probably an off the wall decision to include in the game, she is a useful one.

Although there are a total of 11 characters to play as (when you count the unlockables), the game pits you as the two characters that it wants you to play as in each level to move the story along.  That’s right, only two characters at a time. The differences that characters have are thankfully accurate as well. For example, Superman can walk up to a car and throw it around like a baseball bat to fight the enemies. Batman on the other hand being a mere mortal, can pick up something like a small pole at the most. So nothing is unrealistic to the abilities of each of the characters. The one thing I couldn’t get over no matter how many times I saw it happen, Superman should not be hurt by fire!

As you run through the game and level up your characters ability you can choose to make their attributes stronger. Anything from health and attack power to their special abilities, or weapons in Batman’s case. You also have the frequent opportunity to pickup power orbs that intensify your attributes. Some make the duration of a power last longer, some make it more powerful and some make it more accurate. There are quite a few additions you can tack on. But chose wisely, once you place a power orb on an attribute, it’s there for the duration of the game. It kind of makes the leveling up component of the game seem a little unbalanced in a way.

The controls are your average controls for this type of game. One button does a standard punch, one hard punches and one picks up objects. Nothing too unfamiliar to the seasoned video gamer. The super powers however are controlled by the L1 button acting as a shift key of sorts. To throw Batman’s batarang, or to use Superman’s heat vision you must hold down the L1 button and press the face button that corresponds to the appropriate superpower. That control scheme had me tripping up a little in the beginning but you get used to it really quickly after the first stage or two.

All in all the game plays pretty well. I only noticed a frame rate issue a couple times, nothing that would ruin the gameplay though. If you’re a die hard superhero or Justice League fan, you have to play this game. If you like mindless beat ‘em ups, you have to play this game. Otherwise, it’s probably worth a rental to you.