Justice League Heroes
When the Earth is threatened, one team can be counted upon to stop evil in its tracks and ensure the safety of the populace. No, not the A-Team -- The Justice League. Comprised of Earth's greatest heroes (and Aquaman), the Justice League is DC's preeminent superhero team. With developer Snowblind Studios' Justice League Heroes, gamers are finally able to take control of the famed League and do battle with DC's most vile villains.
A top-down action-RPG in the same vein as Snowblind's acclaimed Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath, JLH is a moderately-paced button-mashing beat 'em up. There are no side quests, hidden routes or morality choices. This is station to station arcade action. If you love hitting robots in the face and you dream of one day being Batman, then you may enjoy Justice League Heroes. That is if the questionable design choices and unbalanced leveling-up system don't sap the magic from your dancing shoes.
The Robot with the Big Brain
Whenever a meteor strikes in the world of comics, bad things are certain to happen. Such is the case in Justice League Heroes. After a meteor touches down, Superman's smartest foe, Brainiac begins receiving mental messages from the alien rock. He knows that he must find a way to free the meteorite from the hands of the League, who managed to capture it shortly after touch down. But how can a sentient robot infiltrate the League's moon headquarters, the Watchtower, and abscond with the peculiar meteorite?
That is the launching point for Justice League Heroes. As the action progresses from the streets of Metropolis, the surface of Mars and the Watchtower itself, the story appears to be rather straightforward. But the final confrontation with Brainiac reveals a surprising twist that kicks Heroes into a new direction and saves the story from being too short and too obvious. It's this twist and the eventual final boss battle that do Heroes most proud.
The story and dialogue by Justice League Unlimited writer Dwayne McDuffie are a strongpoint. Though it feels as if the story were guided more by the stages Warner Brothers Interactive and Snowblind wanted in the game rather than directly from the plot, it still manages to hold strong. In fact, this feels like it could easily be an episode of the Justice League cartoon. If it were, that would save many DC fans from dropping $50 on what turns out to be a misguided dungeon-crawler.
Justice League Heroes begins with seven available heroes (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, and the Flash), but includes a half-dozen additional heroes who can be purchased with tokens collected throughout each level. The unlockable heroes are mostly b-list celebrities. Hawkgirl? Huntress? With the exception of Green Arrow and Aquaman, these aren't exactly the cavalcade of stars one might hope for from a Justice League game. What about Captain Marvel, the Atom or even Plastic Man?
Also available for purchase with the easy-to-find shield tokens are alternate costumes for each character. To its credit, Snowblind created all-new models for each costume and changed some of the animations as well. You can see the difference between Superman and his aging Earth-2 counterpart and when you spot the Dark Knight in his Batman Beyond "Infiltrator" costume, he looks like a completely different character. Each costume also comes with its own modifiers that affect stats both positively and negatively. The outfits you choose make a gameplay difference.
The characters models look great and the environments are drop-dead gorgeous. Snowblind really knows how to light a room, as shown in Baldur's Gate: DA and have some spectacular outdoor areas in JLH. The characters are voiced by some talented actors, including Ron Perlman as Batman, and are supported by a solid score. Though there are some technical issues here and there (slow-streaming audio, minor pop-in, occasional framerate drops), it's an altogether solid package.
With Great Power...
Each character comes with five possible powers, accessed by holding a trigger and selecting a face button (a la X-Men Legends). The powers are far more potent and useful than hand-to-hand combat, which feels a bit slow and unsatisfying. The powers are executed well, though it would have been nice to see a few more available. There are only so many times you can have Green Lantern box an enemy in a cage before it gets a little old.
Surprisingly, Zatanna is the most potent character in the game. In all honesty, I could beat the whole game with her alone. She can heal, cast an over-powered fire attack at low cost (when leveled up) and can turn 95% of all enemies into harmless rabbits. Sadly, the most popular DC character, Batman, is easily the most useless and joyless character you can select. Even Aquaman is more fun to play. Part of this comes from a reliance on the powers to make combat enjoyable. Batman's powers, such as calling in a fleet of bats, just don't cut it.
JLH boasts some power customization. Defeated enemies often drop power modifiers. These modifiers, which can increase duration, damage and range, among other things, can then be mixed and combined to create even more powerful mods. Three x1 Duration mods mix to become a single x2 Duration mod. Experimentation can lead to some mods of up to x7 power. You can slot one mod for each level you have in a particular. While the power itself doesn't alter, its effects do. With smart use of the mods system, you can turn good characters, like Zatanna, into unstoppable machines. Still can't make Batman any fun to play though.
The Right to Choose
The trouble with JLH doesn't come from its selection of heroes or the fact that you can't possibly unlock everything the first play through. Instead, what kills this game is the general lack of choice. The first half of JLH forces you to play as specific characters in each level. As the long levels drag on, you'll likely start spending coin to unlock new characters, only to have to continue to wait for their availability. I can understand Warner's desire to have players get acquainted with each character is understandable, but no gamer wants to be locked in to specific heroes for such long periods.
When I get a game full of characters I like, I want choice. I don't want to be forced into anything. Especially since almost none of the levels contain anything that specifically requires one character's powers. The one or two moments that do require a specific character could easily have been modified to give gamers choice and let them have fun with the game. Even on a second play through, you are hampered with selection limitations.
Once you do get some free choice, the game shows its biggest design flaw. If you decide to play a newly unlocked character for a while and neglect one of the original seven Leaguers, it will come back to haunt you later on. Guaranteed. As soon as I had the chance, I switched out the John Stewart Green Lantern for his Hal Jordan counterpart. What I did not know was that in the final third of the game, you are forced, once again, to play specific characters. Only, for my game, Stewart never had gone above level 5. Suddenly I was forced to use him to battle difficult enemies who aced him in the first 30 seconds. This isn't the only time that the unbalanced leveling will sting.
Part of the problem could have been solved if Snowblind designed a four-player game instead of the available two-character tandem. They've done it before with Champions of Norrath (and with online play, no less). To limit the action to two players in a game designed around the Justice League's seven-member roster is foolhardy. With four characters in the game, leveling up would have been far less of a problem. If nothing else, a more sensible minimum level standard should have been adopted for each area of the game. That way if a character hasn't been leveled up, they at least get automatically upgraded to a passable power standard.
There are also some frustrating AI moments when playing single player. In particular, the Doomsday battle works far better if you can coordinate a plan of attack. Your goal is to get Doomsday into an area where you can set up a forcefield and then attack him with the security system in the location. But the AI partner makes this frustrating as he will often block or even lure Doomsday out of the area. In situations such as this, it's best to let your teammate die and do it solo. Letting Batman die so you can win doesn't really fit the Justice League concept. With two players it's not a problem, but it shouldn't be assumed that two players are going to have at it throughout the game.
Punch and Kick and Punch and Kick
Though I am no big fan of the standard block-pulling puzzles often found in games such as this, they do offer some variety to levels. Justice League Heroes features no true puzzles. You are often tasked to destroy generators and similar devices, but nothing in the least bit complex. Now that we are at the end of the life cycle for both PS2 and Xbox, isn't it about time someone did something inventive with the top-down brawler?
Even without forcing in some puzzles, Snowblind could have improved the combat with better villain selection. Instead of crowding each level with the same nameless villains, why not pepper them with some minor, but familiar, bad guys? As for the poor robots you will be beating up, the enemies are identical for just about every level. Granted, the models have been changed to fit the theme of the level, but the AI and attacks are all the same. There are those who brawl, those that shoot lasers and those with flamethrowers. A wrinkle is added here or there (some fly!), but for the most part, it's just sugar sprinkled on the same stale donut. Mmm… donuts. Eww… stale.
I will say, however, that the final boss battle is brilliant. Truly, it's one of the best boss battles I've fought in a game of this type. Wisely, Snowblind allows players to set a line-up of eight heroes for this final confrontation. These heroes are essentially the lives you have in the end battle. So when one character dies, the next in line fills his place, always allowing for two characters on screen at once. If only the rest of the game used some innovations like this so that, even with only two characters on screen, it felt like there was a real team backing your play.
Closing Comments
Justice League Heroes is a good starting point for a new franchise. Though the game is a bit of a disappointment, particularly for its restrictions on character choice and number of players, it has promise. The sequel, if handled properly, could be considerably better and capable of competing with Raven Software¿s Marvel action-RPGs. For that to happen, Warner Brothers needs to let loose a bit and give Snowblind a free pass to utilize any characters and storylines they want.
Though it has some serious issues with game balance and tends to get a bit monotonous, JLH is enjoyable in short spurts. The story is good and the unlockable costumes are pretty cool. The core of the game works well. In fact, if you just admired it from afar, you might mistake JLH for a great game. But the level design is as basic and uninspired as it can get and the enemies are just an endless throng of nameless robots and Martians. Had JLH come out four years ago, it would likely receive high praise. But this is 2006 and the swan song of the current-gen consoles is upon us. There's no excuse in failing to deliver a bigger and more innovative experience.
Thank to Hilary Goldstein
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