Review: Justice League Heroes (PS2)

Gamestyle honestly doesn’t know why it seems impossible to make a decent game based on a character from DC Comics. Honestly, even Marvel manages to do decent ones every now and then, the most recent being the rather fun, if flawed Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, a natural evolution of the X-Men Legends games. Meanwhile the most recent DC Comics game, Superman Returns, is anything but super. So, does Justice League Heroes, which is essentially the DC equivalent of Ultimate Alliance, break this trend? Unfortunately it seems not.

Apologies in advance but there are going to be a lot more comparisons of Justice League Heroes with the X-Men Legends/Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games, because Justice League Heroes is essentially the same game, with a few tweaks that show that developer Snowblind just weren’t paying attention when the first X-Men Legends game was released. The game is a top down viewed “dungeon crawler” with some RPG elements thrown in, essentially making it a scrolling beat-em-up with experience points. Heroes also features a “powers” system remarkably like it’s Marvel counterpart, allowing different heroes to use their abilities in exchange for using up their superpower meter, which depletes when a power is used. Use them too much and it will empty, causing your chosen hero to rely solely on their hand-to-hand combat skills until it recharges. Fortunately each hero is capable of doing this thanks to easy to use (though rather un-dynamic) combo attacks and regenerating health.

Story-wise it’s fairly typical comic book fare. Massive evil force unites normally anti-social supervillains into an unsteady alliance with the intention of dominating the planet and the Justice League, comprising of the some of the DC universes most well-known and some of the least well-known characters, attempts to thwart the dastardly villains plot. Well some of the Justice League anyway, as there are only eleven heroes to choose from in the entire game, four of those needing to be unlocked. Sure we have the big names like Superman and Batman, but it would have been nice to have a more varied roster of characters to muck around with. This was part of the appeal of the Legends/Alliance games, as not only did they have all the popular characters, such as Wolverine, Spider-Man and such, but you also had a few lesser known characters thrown in to add to give some variety (even if they did basically the same thing). Though honestly, the game needs whatever variety it can get it, as like most dungeon crawlers you’ll be fighting identical enemies over and over, gameplay which gets old fast.

Gamestyle blames the small roster on the developer’s decision to only allow players to control two characters at a time- which seems too few- especially when for a good portion of the game (almost half in fact) the decision of which characters to use is taken out of your hands. In fact, a lot of the game itself takes decisions out of your hands. Health regenerates by itself, eliminating the need for health pick ups (though a few still appear), and once a hero has been selected it can’t be changed. In the Marvel games, if a certain character wasn’t working, you could return to a save point and pick a more suitable character for your team. Here, all the in game save points simply save, and that’s done automatically as well, making you unable to make multiple saves during the same game, a practice most RPG players employ.

Luckily the one thing that isn’t automated in the game is its customisation options. Each hero can be given equipment to make up for areas where they lack. Batman, for example, isn’t a powerhouse like the likes of Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter, but he can be equipped with weapons that can stun a screen full of enemies instantly, allowing him and his partner to deal damage without the threat of retaliation. It’s a good system and shows that Snowblind has put some thought into these options.

A pity then that the graphics and audio didn’t get the same attention, as the game just doesn’t look that impressive. X-Men Legends is over two years old now, and quite frankly it was more visually impressive. The problem lies in the fact that while it’s set in a fantastical comic book universe, it just doesn’t look like it is. Even The Flash, in his bright red suit, looks rather subdued and fails to stand out in this world. Audibly, things aren’t much better with music that fails to stand out and voice acting that seems to be miss-cast despite some big names. As talented as Ron Perlman is as an actor and voice artist (particularly for his role of Hellboy, both in film and animated form), he just doesn’t seem right for the voice of the Dark Knight.

All in all, Justice League Heroes plays like a game that was developed to try and rival the X-Men Legends/Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, but missed a few points that made those games fun despite their flaws. While a decent dungeon crawler in its own right, it just feels unimpressive in comparison to its rival. The game is recommended to fans of its cast, while Gamestyle would point everyone else in the direction of Marvel Ultimate Alliance for their superhero action.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Garry Webber