During the 7th generation of console, there were still movie tie-in Marvel and DC games for each of the heroes/movies (though mostly for what is now known as Phase 1 of the Marvel MCU) , mostly under the Sega brand, and there was a 70 % chance of it being a beat em up because God Of War was still the new cock of the walk, leading the market to lots of imitators crafting up 3D hack n slash/beat em up in where to fisticuffs dozens of foes while playing as a digital Hollywood actor in costume. Yep, years ago, it was economically pheasable to pay for the actors’ likenesses without that alone costing more than the budget for the game itself. Looking at you, Square Enix’s Avengers.
The Green Lantern movie released in 2011 (starring a yet-to-bloom Ryan Reynolds) and… was definitely one of those, bad but not as bad as i expected. So after finally watching on a whime the movie last year on Neflix , i’ve decided to finally bother unearthing the disc from my 360 library. Hope you hankered for some tie-in movie trash of yore to be reviewed.
A shame DC is most likely never gonna touch the idea of a Green Lantern reboot in terms of live action film, so engrained is the stigma the 2011 movie has, because it would still make more sense than the Black Adam movie they did make, but who knows?
Btw, the game is also available on PS3, Wii, and there are DS and 3DS versions which are completely different games handled by a different developers, as it was common in the day for handheld release of popular licensed titles. Maybe we’ll get to those next. Most likely not.
The game it’s not a direct adaptation of the movie, but – as with Thor: God Of Thunder – uses the likeness of the actors from the then current movie and its characters for staging a different story, most likely refurbished from the old comics, wouldn’t know since i basically know next to nothing of Green Lantern aside from what i’ve seen in the movie.
This time we have it set after the events of the movie, with the Green Lantern Corps forced to face the Manhunters, which nowadays sound like a right winger insult to some LGBT group, and would have made for a more interesting narrative…. more than “robots”.
Yep, the Manhunters are robots that were created by the Guardians to serve as a space police force before they founded the Green Lantern Corps, before they became ossessed with a warped concept of justice and punishment, and here they invade the Green Lantern headquarter city of OA, Abin Sur’s (the Green Lantern that gave Hal Jordan the Lantern Ring before dying) son is involved, and honestly i think its not really that interesting or well written, but it’s perfunctionary enough.
I mean, i couldn’t say i expected much in terms of plot, so i got that, not much, but at least it makes sense, even if it’s not that interesting and the villains did have some more potential.
In terms of gameplay, this has all the expected hallmarks of a “GOW clone”, since it has the cinematic approach, in the sense levels are linear and will often have “traversal point” where you press a button to make Hal Jordan automatically travel to the next section, instead of giving you some agency and you know, make use of the flight ability that Green Lanterns have outside of the few space shooter like sections. That and the QTE finishers for medium-to-big enemies, and the whole feel, even if Hal Jordan’s ring constructs do not emulate 100 % the flowing feel of the Chaos blades in the original GOW games.
To be honest, levels feel quite repetitive even in the first part of the game, just immediatly having you do the same shit (like destroying Manhunters’ floating fortressess/ships) way too many times during a single level, but things get slightly better, with the expected few puzzle sections (because God Of War, again) to break up the combat arenas. Still more repetitive than needed, but on the other hand the enemy variety it’s not bad and eventually you’ll have to get serious even on the standard difficulty setting, there is some challenge even on the medium flavour, so to speak.
Combat is surprisingly not half-bad, not many of these have the God Of War style dodge system with the right stick (which can be done mid-air as well) and a parry/barrier option, plus you can do a chase move to continue or start the combos, you have a medium range grab and almost immediatly you’re given a long-range projectile attack, so there’s all the stuff you’d usually need for an enjoyable 3D beat em up game.
The only problem here is that you can’t really mix light and heavy attacks, for whatever reason, you can upgrade the light attacks and heavy attacks combos, but thankfully the constructs are fun to use, are introduced at a good rate and do expand your repertoire quite well so it’s not a deal breaker, but WHY a 3D beat em up game in 2012 didn’t have what even the first proper Dynasty Warriors game on the PS2 did it’s kinda bizarre.
Progression and unlocks are done in the expected fashion: you get exp-currency by defeating enemies, which you can spend to upgrade abilities, unlock moves, and as you level up you get access to new constructs (acting as special attacks you can use ARPG style) to unlock and equip on the special moves l, with two shoulder buttons used to open the loadouts, which is nice, usually you get just one 4-panels/move loadout.
On the downside, there aren’t that many constructs overall, and sadly the enemy variety does not increase as you go on, so what could be a decent game of this kind pretty much slums down to being average, mediocre, run of the mill, still not the worst for a tie-in movie game licensed thing, but very middle of the road compared to many others like it that are often (emphasis on “often”) better.
There are some “patches” on the issue the developers put in, like giving old enemy new weapons and functions, like now some of the fodder peons can be able to “corrupt” your ring making you unable to use special moves until you free yourself by attacking the peon that corrupted the ring, but it’s not enough.
Also, after unlocking the mecha armor construct the balance goes a little awry, and again, it feels like the developers could have added at least 2 more constructs to the arsenal, because you’ll unlock all of them well before the final mission.
On the flipside, there js local 2 players co-op, which isn’t a given, and more surprisingly it’s also drop in drop out, a treat given how missing it was in many games like this from that era.
It’s not completely bug free, as in mission 4 the NPC that leads you disappeared after a mini-boss fight supposed to introduce the baseball construct, hence i couldn’t progress because her should move on and then the game would let you proceed to the next bit, BUT thanks to a solid autosave and checkpoint system i fixed just by exiting the game and starting from where i left off.
And once i had the game suffer of what i call “Onechanbaritis”: the game seemingly bug out only to be the case of a lone goon that wandered off the arena and just didn’t feel like hanging out near you or try to attack you with any real urgency.
In terms of looks, it’s nothing great as well, looks okay enough for a tie-in movie game of the day, it definitely retains the overall color tone of the movie, which is fine and all, but in terms of locales it’s a bit sparse, despite visiting some alien planets only the Zamarionans level stands out a bit more, thanks to the garish combination of colors, but otherwise there’s definitely a bit too much of “factory-industry” looking places that look very similar, alongside the expected caves, rocky places and such, but overall it’s ok in terms of visual variety and pleasantry associated, though it could have done so much more since it has you move about alien planets and such.
Music is serviceable if completely forgettable, hard to name or point out any tune that stand out from the rest, in terms of voice acting i can’t say since the localized EU copy did have dub in Italian as well, with the VAs matching the ones for the live-action film.
In terms of extra and replayability, there’s not much: just some collectibles that extend the life and magic bar, various trophies for story progression, cumulative special move kills, beating the game at various difficulties, unlocking all sets of upgrades, etc. Pretty basic stuff, honestly.
Not uncommon, but also not surprising the lack of even a survival/gauntlet mode was lamented in reviews of the time, i mean, it would have been more welcome than the game being 3D capable, because 3D TV were starting to become a thing at the time… but were and still are a fad that didn’t go far, so nobody (so to speak) had/has them. Also, there are trailers for both the aforementioned Ryan Reynold’s movie and the Green Lantern: Emerald Knights animated film.
I mean, this one of those games that take 6 hours to beat and you’re basically done forever after just doing that, since there’s no much incentive to replay it, the collectibles are very few, so sweeping them in post and finishing the game on the harder difficulty.. is all, and most of the other cumulative trophies can be gained even during the first playthrough.
So yeah, can’t blame that many people basically used to rent (remember that?) and-or trade-in games like these immediatly after beating them once.
That said, this is FAR from the worst tie-in hack n slash/beat em up game i’ve ever played, especially for this kind of licensed side-story/tie-in thingies it’s one of the better ones, for what such a statement is worth.
Double Helix Games did an ok work with this, strongly average as it clear they lost interest/focus or didn’t have time to do a proper good game of this kind, but for a tie-in movie game of its time the main focus, combat, it’s surprisingly competent, even if not too deep and brought down by the lack of a good enemy variety, level designs that are very “auto-raily” and a ho-hum story that follows up from the events of the 2011 film but also isn’t that interesting on its own.
It’s “a’right”, kinda decent, even amongst the many “God Of War-likes” of the era.
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