With the success of the X-Men Legends Series, you just know that somewhere out there someone or should I say some company would jump on the bandwagon to produce something similar. It's so fitting that eventually an action rpg game would be made featuring DC best super heroes in one game. Thus we have Justice League Heroes from game developer Snowblind. And a comparison between Justice League Heroes and its Marvel counterpart X-Men Legends is bound to happen. Lets see how Justice League Heroes stack up against Marvel's X-Men Legends series and the newly release game Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
STORY
We need your help Justice League.
Never trust Darkseid.
Out of nowhere robots and many robots have invaded the city of Metropolis. The Justice League has dispatch two of its strongest heroes, Superman and Batman, to the task of defending and rescuing the city. After the initial battle with the robots where the heroes came out victorious, they soon learn the mastermind behind this attack is none other than Superman nemesis, Brainiac. Its unclear what Brainiac goal is but he seem to be stirring up trouble by hiring other super villains to cause problems around the world to keep the Justice League busy. As the Justice League are spread out across the world fighting against their enemies, Brainiac searches for an artifact that is said to grant him ultimate power beyond imagination. The Justice League has never failed to protect Earth from danger before but they've never faced a threat as dire as this one. Who or what is the threat that will put the people of Earth in danger? You're about to find out in Justice League Heroes.
Now if you add and combine all the story CG scenes together you pretty much have a 30 minute Justice League CG Animated Show. The end result of course is a pretty decent entertaining show featuring your favorite super heroes and super villains. If you look at it from that point of view than yes the story is pretty good even though it's very short since most rpg story last for hours and not 30 minutes worth. But as nice as the CG show was, I think it's safe to say one sort of hope the story would be a bit more in-depth. The story plot itself wasn't as interested as it should have been or could have been. It's best to take the story as an animated tv show than an rpg story.
Score 7/10
CHARACTERS
The world's most powerful heroes.
For this game, the main Justice Leagues Heroes are Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Flash, and Zatanna. There are a few other unlockable Justice League members but those members have no effect on the actual story in the game. Since the story is played out like a 30 minute episode of a Saturday Morning cartoon show, the game doesn't spend any time developing the origin or background on any of these heroes. In a sense it's pretty much expected that those that are playing this game should already be familiar with some of the super heroes. This is pretty true in the case of Superman and Batman but for some of the lesser known super heroes such as Zatanna, you may have an actual problem understanding their powers and origins. Most of the character presentation in this game is done through the heroes' personalities by the voice actors or actresses that play them. From that stand point they did an okay job. It's not like this game needed exceptional voice acting in it. But from an overall stand point, I believe the casts of heroes could have been better. Even though it's portrayed as DC comics best heroes, the game could definitely use more heroes and more popular DC heroes. In the history of the Justice League there is a much wider range of heroes to choose from and the game should at least try to use more heroes for this game. If you want to do a comparison between the heroes in Justice League Heroes versus its counterpart Marvel Ultimate Alliance, you can clearly see how Marvel Ultimate Alliance eclipses Justice League Heroes in this department.
Score: 7/10
GRAPHICS
So like are those real or fake?
This is where I have to say is the biggest disappointment in the game. Nothing is more exciting for a comic book fan than to see their favorite super heroes in full CG scenes. While there are lots of CG scenes here since the entire story cut scenes are done in CG scenes, the quality and design of the CG scenes is something less to be desire. We are not talking about the smooth and rich quality of CG that you normally see from SquareEnix Final Fantasy games here. The quality of the CG is good but it's the design of the CG character models is what makes the overall look of the CG scene to be nothing more than average. All the super heroes, male and female, look like they eat steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yes, you want the heroes to have muscles but don't over do it where you can see muscles popping out of their faces. And speaking of faces this is where things get worst. The faces all look very unbalance. Zatanna and Martian Manhunter look good in terms of how their faces were done. Batman, Flash and Green Lantern look decent but could have been done better. Superman comes off looking like a dork in this game as oppose to a symbol of hope and justice. Wonder Woman looks the worst coming off very ugly and butch like in this game. She's supposed to be an attractive Amazon princess for heaven sake. If the character models were design much better, the CG quality and scenes in this game would be much better to look at overall. And for this game, the character models are the CG scenes in this game. So where's the good news for the graphics? Well they can be found in the gameplay environment. The gameplay graphics while a bit small in design overall due to everything being base in dungeons or areas that are design like a dungeon, they are filled with details that are very clean to look at. You can easily appreciate this 3-D environment whether it's an indoor environment like a base or an outdoor environment in a city. The character models used in the gameplay environment are much better too than their CG counterparts. While they are small in designs they do showcase the shape of the heroes in a better proportion and the colors of their costume are richly displayed including fully detail features of their faces. So what you have for graphics in this game is good gameplay graphics but average CG graphics.
Score: 7/10
MUSIC
Like hey man, you like Hippy music?
This was actually a pleasant surprise. Coming into the game one doesn't expect a whole lot out of the music department since this is after all an action rpg game base on completing missions as oppose to a traditional rpg game base on a heavy in-depth storyline of saving the world but I find the music to be very good. The music itself seems to be limited in a number of tracks available and base solely on mission stage themes or at the very least the areas that the stage mission takes place in. However despite the limited themes and tracks, the quality of the musical tracks is very good. The music starts off slow at first but once you reached the mid way point into the game this is where the tone of the musical tracks start to change to a much more heavier tone with an apocalyptic theme to them making the overall mission more important. This actually puts you into the groove of wanting to play this game more and making the game more fun than before.
Nothing is more fun than bashing at bad guys with an apocalyptic musical track playing in the background as you're rushing ahead to try and save the world. It gives off a feel that completing the mission is an important thing to do. This is a clear example of how music can actually enhance the enjoyment of a video game. You won't have to worry about turning down the sound when playing this game, that's for sure. I just wish there were more musical tracks available in this game. With a bit more quantity, the musical feature would have gotten a rating of 8 instead of a 7.
Score: 7/10
GAMEPLAY
It's all about the speed, baby.
So I'm your new sidekick, Bats?
Game Information
Genre: Action RPG
Publisher: WB Games
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 500 KB
Players: 1-2 Player Mode
Analog Control: Yes
Vibration Function: Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: October 2006
When you pick up this game and start playing it, you would probably notice there are similarities between the designs and make up of the gameplay to those what was done in X-Men Legends.
It wouldn't be a far fetch to assume or guess that the game developers used the X-Men Legends as their outline on creating this action rpg game featuring DC comic heroes instead. The end result here is that you have a 1-2 players action rpg game base on doing stage missions for each progression of the story. Each of the story chapter missions are broken up into smaller separate parts with different objectives to complete those missions. From this stand point most of the missions are fairly short with easy objectives to obtain. Usually the objectives are making it to the exit point or saving a certain number of civilians. You get the usual boss fight at the end of each chapter mission. The difficulty of the game really depends on what difficulty level you choose to play from. Once you complete the game the first time around, more harder difficulty levels will be unlocked. As for the actual gameplay itself, since its base on an action rpg everything is focus around meleeing your enemies by hitting and punching them. You can also pick up your opponents or throw things at your opponents as well. This game can't be called a super hero game if there weren't any super powers involve and the game does implement those for each hero. For 80% of all the missions in this game, the game pre-determined which of the two heroes will be involved on the mission base on the storyline. This actually takes away your free choice of being able to customize and play your favorite heroes most of the time. In a single mode you choose which hero you like to control and which one the AI will control. You can always switch back and forth between which hero you want to control during the mission though if things start going bad where the AI isn't performing up to the task that you have hoped it would. But for the most part the AI does a pretty good job. You can also assign the AI to be more balance between offense and defense or more heavily geared toward one of the two tactics. The concept of the game is pretty easy to understand. Just bash everything around you and make it to the end goal point to complete the mission. As you destroy things around you including the enemies, Green Experience Bubbles will drop as well as Boost and Shield Tokens. Just collect the Green Experience Bubbles to increase your experience to level up. We'll explain Boost and Shield Tokens in just a bit. The gameplay also incorporated a bit of a puzzle solving element to the game. Nothing that is too hard though. It's just mostly inputting the correct buttons on your controller in a quick order to unlock doors or using certain super power from a hero to remove an obstacle. Outside of all that, this game is pretty basic with nothing too extraordinary offered to gamers. There are a few small key features that should be mention though.
Superpowers: Your magic source for this rpg of course is your super powers. Each hero has their own unique set of super powers although each set of super powers serve a similar purpose for all the characters. For example each hero will have a long range super power attack, area of effect super power attack, short power attack, and super heavy power attack. As you gain level you will receive a certain amount of points. These points can then be distributed to any super power to level it up. In addition to leveling up the super power, you can also boost the effectiveness of the super powers by equipping them with boost orbs. Boost Orbs: The Boosting System is probably the only really key feature in this game. Being able to individually customize each of the hero's super powers in term of their range, duration, damage, and speed is very nice indeed. As you kill enemies they sometimes drop Boost Orbs in various levels. Each boost orb comes in four categories and they are Range, Duration, Speed, and Damage. Each boost orb of course enhances a super power base on the name of the orb. You need to equip the orb onto your super power for it to take effect. The strength of the orb is dependant on its level and each orb comes in various levels. However you can actually combine 3 boost orbs into 1 boost orbs in hopes of raising a boost orb level. You can have a maximum for 5 boost orbs equip on a super power. Power Ups: Power Up orbs are randomly dropped by the enemies. There are three types of power ups. They are Health, Energy, and Duo. Health orbs replenish your HP, Energy orb replenish your MP and Duo orbs replenishes both HP and MP. Shield Tokens: This is almost like your money in this game. Shield tokens can be found lying around in the background of each mission or they can be a dropped from enemies after you kill them. Shield Tokens can be used to purchase new unlockable costumes or new addition Justice League Heroes.
The best thing you can say about the gameplay is that you can still have some decent fun playing this game. Unfortunately the fun is short term at best since the gameplay can be finished within 2 days or so. Add into the fact that the gameplay is unbalance and limits you with what Justice League members you can play for each mission. The main attraction of playing this game is to play your favorite Justice League heroes. You can't do that if the game keeps forcing you to play heroes that you aren't so hot about. Since some of the missions require you to choose three teams of two heroes because the mission requires three groups to do different objectives, you may end up having one of the lower level heroes stuck on an important boss fights due to them not getting enough experience time because most of the missions forces you to use a predetermine set of heroes. This is where the unbalance part comes into the gameplay. Believe me when I say you don't want to be stuck with a level 7 Green Lantern fighting Doomsday. You can have some fun in the end but there's nothing here that make this game a total package with a lasting impression.
You won't be getting your dollars worth of gameplay when you can finish the game in just 2 days.
Score: 7/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
Unlocking Hawkgirl for gameplay.
Gameplay is very short overall and somewhat easy too depending on what difficulty level you are playing the game at. Since gameplay is very short than you're not going to expect a lot from extras such as extra boss fights or extra missions to undertake in this game. The only thing that is considered an extra feature is the unlockable feature in this game. In this game you can purchase to unlock different various costumes for each of your heroes and unlock additional Justice League Heroes such as Hawkgirl, Green Arrow, and Aquaman by using Shield Tokens that you collect in the game as payment for them. Unfortunately the bad part is that you don't have much control over these unlockable features. In terms of costumes, each costume will give a positive and negative effect for your heroes. In other words they will help boost certain stats greatly but reduce other stats too as a punishment. The problem is that you really don't get much control as to when to use the costume. Changing costumes doesn't take effect right away, the change of costume only take effect on the next mission that the hero will appear in. This is sort of depressing that you won't be able to use any new costume right away until maybe a couple of missions down the road when the game will allow you to use the character that you had selected the costume change for again. This takes out the fun factor of having different costumes. I'm not exactly sure why the developers didn't just allow the change in costume to take effect right away. Just a bad move on their part. Now purchasing and unlocking other Justice League Heroes seems like a good and fun idea. But the bad part of this is that the game is very linear due to the fact that the story pretty much predetermined which Justice League Heroes you have to use on your missions for 80% of the game. This leaves about 20% of the entire game which is about say maybe 5 or 6 missions that you can only use your extra Justice League Heroes for. 5 or 6 missions isn't enough time to really develop and level your extra Justice League Heroes so it's almost a pointless task to even waste those missions by using extra Justice League Heroes. This really takes out the fun in having extra additional Heroes to play with. This is like saying here you can play Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) but you can only play him for a couple of missions. Who the heck only wants to play the best Green Lantern only for a couple of missions? Not me that's for sure. The game has some nice extra features but it takes away the fun of having them as well.
The replay value is base on a New Game+ through different difficulty levels. A New Game+ will carry over all your costumes and additional Justice League Heroes you have unlocked in the first game. You'll need to replay the game about 3 times in order to collect enough Shields to unlock all the costumes and extra Justice League members. The good thing is that it takes about 2-3 days to finish this game even at the harder level so replaying the game again isn't too much of a daunting task.
In the end, I wasn't highly impressed with both the extras and replay feature in this game. Not only wasn't there enough extras in the game, the extras that were provided are very limited in usage in the game to make those extras worthwhile to unlock and use. Replay is okay but really the game needs to be more in-depth with added incentive of wanting to replay the game than just playing it at a different difficulty level.
Score: 6/10
If Justice League Heroes was released a couple of years ago prior to the release of X-Men Legends, one can say this game has a lot of promise in it but unfortunately that's not the case here. If you haven't played any of Marvel's action rpg games from developer Raven such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance or X-Men Legends than you won't be too disappointed at the game. On the other hand if you have tried the Marvel counterpart of Justice Leage Heroes than you would know that Justice League Heroes comes of as nothing more than a poor man cheap imitation of X-Men Legends. The style and mechanics of the gameplay is too similar but only this time X-Men Legends does more and provides more than what Justice League Heroes provided. The future for the Justice League is uncertain. Overall sales haven't been impressive nor have the reviews or word of mouths from fans that have played this game. A sequel isn't guarantee but being a comic book fan, I would love to see another Justice League Heroes game. But if there is a sequel, there better be some major improvement other than just copying what another developer has done or else this series isn't going anywhere.
