Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters!

For those of you that read my articles often enough, they probably wondered where I was during March.  Really it seemed like the only game I wanted to review came and went, leaving me to really twiddle my thumbs until April where WonderCon took place.  Now? I have articles to write plenty of, thanks to WonderCon!  There is one game that would be coming out this month that I would have loved to review, but I realized that it was Portal 2 and if you’re not playing the game, then you’re not interested in the game. Simple enough.

Still, it was a huge thrill to go to WonderCon and see all the great sights, meet some great people that I wouldn’t mind talking to again, and play a few new games that will be coming out soon enough. The one that I’m going to endorse to you now would be Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters.

On Friday, mid-afternoon, Comic Booked’s Crimson Blur and I were invited to try out the game, an event that both he and I  were glad to join. First thing to happen though was that we were asked to turn off the camera that the Blur had, and we sadly did not get to take any pictures.  So… I did a lot of hunting to find some pictures to use for my article here!

The preview that we got to play started us off right in the midst of battle with our hero Hal Jordan.  I ended up playing the second character, who just so happens to be Sinestro.  We fought with the Manhunters, and it became very apparent how the feel to the game really was –  it felt a little like any of the action-adventure games that had a level system, such as God of War. This of course, means that one small irritation will be the camera angle.  Thankfully, it seemed like the only time when the camera became a problem was if the Manhunters came up from behind us, and then one of the players moved farther away from the first, the camera shifted away from the Manhunters and we were unable to see them.  Luckily, they were the melee attackers that bolted after us and the ranged attackers appeared in clear view for us both.

Much like an action-adventure game, you get to bring the pain on all the creatures that you despise and watch them as they are destroyed in your mighty grasp. Or Lantern powers, really. Watching as you suddenly create a sword from thin air and smash it into a massive robot, or creating huge fists to whack the Manhunters silly, is impressive – and those are merely the basic attacks. Pressing each of the trigger buttons gets you to activate other variations of the ring’s power, including a mace, buzz saw, a regular laser blast, and even a machine gun.  The only thing that keeps you from overusing these powers is the will bar, which compares to the mana or power bar that you see in action adventure games. You also have a level up system, in which the more you level up, the more accessories you get to work with.  Plus, as we found out during the game, when we press the trigger button, we four slots per trigger, which means you can have up to eight variations of Lantern abilities!

The second form of gameplay that the Crimson Blur and I got to play with was the flight level, where we fly in front of the screen like in Starfox or the flights in Kingdom Hearts 2, and shoot anything that appears right in front of us.  I can honestly say I got lost though, and found myself one too many times realizing I was staring at Hal and Sinestro and hiding nearly off screen on the top left corner and thus shooting nothing.  Which just tells me that I’m going to be really, really good at this part of the game.

Sarcasm aside, I do believe that this game will be worth playing,  just to see what other creatures that the Lanterns will have to face beyond the Manhunters.  I’m only saying this because, even if the Manhunters are the main antagonists in this game, it would be rather boring to just play against them.  Besides, watching as Hal throws a Manhunter towards Sinestro for him to hit the flying Manhunter with an energy baseball bat tickles my fancy, if you catch my drift.