Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters is an action game published by Warner Bros and developed by Double Helix Games. It is available now on Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, Wii and also Nintendo DS. The game itself is based on the upcoming movie Green Lantern featuring Ryan Reynolds. Throughout the game you will be dealing with an enemy called Manhunters who are an android race created once by the guardians to keep the peace of the galaxy. Eventually the Manhunters became obsessed and gave punishments rather than justice. For this reason the guardians were forced to create a new army known as the Green Lantern Corps and arming them all with a power ring. Obviously due to this the Manhunters wanted revenge upon the guardians.
You are in control of the main character Hal Jordan (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) who is one of the Green lantern Corps. You are armed with a power ring that grants you your super powers and lets you summon “hard light”. This is basically holographic projections that has mass making the projected object solid in form. It’s through using this special power that the game really gets interesting.
At the beginning of the game the first few levels you go through a story line tutorial, which will guide you through how to power up your ring and how to construct some weapons. These weapons comprise of a Gatling gun, giant fists and much more, constructing these weapons will enable you to do a combination of moves. Not only do you get to use rather unique weapons which the developers have come up with, you will also be able to fly, create shields and hit anything over the head; in a way you will be like Badass Superman. Players must learn how to master the Green Lantern power ring to help eliminate the race of Manhunters. You are also able to take flight and soar across the universe dodging past asteroids and blasting through planets all at the same time as destroying armies of enemies.
During the first few stages you will be introduced to the race of Manhunters, equipped only with a few basic weapons. As you progress through levels you’ll gain experience, which in can be used to unlock special abilities. You will have 12 to unlock overall, of which eight can be assigned at any one time. At first you will only come across a few Manhunters, but as the game progresses you will surely be met with hordes of them. Each will have different weapons and machines some have shields which do not pose a considerable threat to you and some come on sleds hovering around the screen. Most of them can be destroyed by a few simple blows. Once you learn how to construct your weapons and equip them to use as combination attacks you will see the true colour of the game. You will need these as you progress through stages and get an enormous amount of enemies all wanting to take you down.
The goals of Green Lantern are pretty simple for gamers to become familiar with. If you happen to come across a problem the answer will be on the platform you are on. Each individual stage you are placed on a single platform (not much roaming around) along with numerous manhunters and mines to destroy. The flying sections in Green Lantern play a big part in this game and all this is pulled off relatively well. Targeting enemies is simple just left trigger to aim, then A to blast them. Targeting can seem to be a bit loose at times but this does not affect the overall fun of blasting.
Once you start a new campaign you will be given the option of three different levels of difficulty, Emerald Night being the toughest option. Even selecting this difficulty setting the game does not seem to be very challenging, but overall the game play is very smooth and entertaining. Once you become familiar with the combinations and setup you can restart the game and conjure up some amazing combination attacks, enabling you to play the game over and over. The game can seem very repetitive as most of the game is focused around destroying Manhunters over and over again.
Multiplayer mode is available in the form of co-operative play; you and your friends can play locally with one controlling Green Lantern and the other controlling one of his allies. This can add some fun into the game as you can combine some moves to devastate your friends. Only downside to this is that your friends won’t be able to gain any achievements, this does not really affect the overall game play in co-op mode.
Graphics/ Audio
The graphics during the game play are excellent, they are extremely sharp, smooth and easy flowing which fits in with the game genre. Graphics are also very realistic down to the visual resemblance of Ryan Reynolds who plays Hal Jordan in the actual movie.
The sound is a good aspect to this game, with voice talent of Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan talking you through the game play and story line. The story line is well written and if some players are comic book fans they will not be disappointed.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
