Justice League Heroes

Pros • Intuitive, upgradeable powers system • Alternate costumes and additional heroes to unlock • Not only does justice to Batman and Superman, but Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Green Lantern… • Good voice work and some crisp dialogue • Great roster of DC heroes • Two player co-op	Cons • Even Easy mode is pretty challenging • Can’t pick the heroes you want to use for most of the missions • Won’t take long to complete, and little replay value
Bottom Line Justice League Heroes does for DC comics what X-Men Legends did for Marvel comics.

"While I wish I had more control over what heroes I could use on what missions, Justice League Heroes is exactly what we needed now--a strong treatment of all the major DC heroes. How can you pass up an opportunity to use the Green Lantern's ring to create giant green gears that chew up everything?"

Jason's Score: 8.0

DC heroes are on the verge of a renaissance, thanks to the recent Batman and Superman movies making those two comic icons look respectable again. Since there have already been some very strong DC animated TV series, what they need now is to conquer the video game sphere. Like movies, video games have been a medium that DC heroes have had trouble shining in (don't make me cite Superman N64 on your ass), and for no really good reason.

So it's a very good thing that Justice League Heroes gets a whole slew of DC heroes mostly right. By taking an action/RPG approach, they've not only given us a Batman and Superman that are fun to play, but also Zatanna, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, and a few other Justice League faces.

I am sure Snowblind Studios is sick of hearing the comparison, but the game is very reminiscent of X-Men Legends. You take two heroes at a time, one controlled by you, the other controlled by a second player or the AI. You stampede through levels full of hostiles, beating on them with your powers. All you have to do is pull the left trigger, and a menu of special attacks and defences will pop up, which you launch with the face buttons.

And those powers are very cool, being perfectly suited to the heroes that wield them, and very useful in a fight. You can also upgrade them when your heroes level up, and slot them with bonuses to make them even more dangerous. Batman can summon a swarm of bats to confound enemies. Flash can launch a blitz attack, switching angles after every hit. Zatanna can turn foes into rabbits and light them up with fireballs (She's easily my favourite character. When you fully upgrade and slot her fire attack, look out.). Wonder Woman can deflect attacks back at her opponents, or spin them around with her magic lasso. Green Lantern's power ring projects a massive hammer to flatten enemies, or a huge pair of gears to grind them up. And I could go on.

In fact, I will. I love that the flying characters have unlimited flight capability. Therefore Superman, Green Lantern, etc. can stay in the air as long as they want...or until a flying foe knocks them down. This becomes verrrry useful during boss battles.

Speaking of the Devil, the second most important thing for a superhero game to have is a good roster of villains. JLH has both classic foes like Brainiac and Grodd, but also more recent ones, including characters that have been established as the most powerful in the DC universe. I won't spoil it, but there are some tasty battles here, and I liked the wave approach to the final battle. Instead of the boss coming after you with wave after wave of enemies, you go after the boss with wave after wave of heroes.

The great roster of familiar faces is helped out with some credible voice work. Ron Perlman (Hellboy) provides the voice of Batman, and his voice is dark and morose. There's some witty dialogue too, including a great moment where a supervillain responds to one of Superman's threats.

I said that the game got the heroes "mostly" right. Well, X-Men Legends has a few things over JLH. For example, there are many more destructible aspects to the levels in X-Men Legends. JLH has its fair share though: there are lots of things that the heroes can pick up and hurl at their enemies, or use to bat them around. Lampposts, cars, barrels, other enemies...

JLH can be pretty challenging, even in Easy mode. If you get into a crowd of baddies, they can wear even Superman down very quick. Checkpoints aren't very hard to come by, though there is one gauntlet challenge involving Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter that took me quite a few tries to beat.

The biggest letdown is that you'll rarely get to choose which heroes you take. Most of the missions will present you with the two heroes you are to take, in order to sync up with the game's story and cutscenes. There are a few missions where you'll be allowed to pick, but that should be the majority of missions, like it is in X-Men Legends.

Returning to the good news, the game supports two-player co-op. If you're playing alone, another friend can jump in and take control of the other hero at any time. And, even if you're playing solo, you can switch between the two characters at any time.

For DC fans, there are some nice unlockables. After collecting Justice League icons hidden throughout the levels (or left behind by some of the tougher defeated foes), you can spend them to unlock alternate costumes, and other heroes, including Hawkgirl, earlier versions of Flash and Green Lantern, and, just for laughs, Aquaman.

While not perfect, Justice League Heroes is easily the best game to come out featuring DC heroes in a very long time. In many ways, it does what the Batman Begins and Superman Returns movies did; they did their best to erase what had come before, and set the stage for future greatness. If a new game gets made with the faults addressed, than Justice League Heroes 2 is going to really kick ass.

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