Justice League was one of my favourite cartoons on television, and even though there's a new series (Justice League Unlimited) and you can still catch repeats of it on Boomerang, I'm a bit disappointed that there's aren't any new episodes being made.

Luckily there is a videogame coming out that will bring the popular characters from the first show back into the limelight. I recently had the pleasure of taking a look at an early alpha build of Justice League Heroes during E3. The alpha was for the Xbox, but the game is also being developed for the PSP and PS2.. So many things could end up being changed before the game is released this fall, but right now it looks like it will be very fun to play.

Now you may be wondering whom exactly you are going to be allowed to play in the game. Mainly the game is going to allow you to play with the core members of the Justice League. These main characters are Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Zantanna These different characters will offer a bit of diversity, more so when you considering their very different powers. I was also able to find out that there will be up to four additional unlockable characters, and one of them will be Green Arrow. Also several of the people who voiced the cartoons will also be voicing their respective characters in this game, - one of which is Batman – which I am personally thankful for..

The style of the battle system is similar to X-Men Legends, which is presented in a top down view on your characters, which works quite well. Now if you are only playing by yourself, the computer will control your second player. The AI of your teammate will also be adjustable to varying levels of reckless endangerment, and this means you will not end up with a handicap, as they may even remain alive longer than you. The enemy mechanics are currently quite vicious as well, with very nice AI. This includes Brainiac, a boss character, who uses little spider charges to try and kill you. These will literally skittle across the ground homing in on you, as he continues to attack.

When battling, at least early on in the game, you will run into your standard “run of the mill” robots, but they should become more advanced as you progress. you will need to take out generators (which look like electrical nodes) that are spawning all of these robots or more will continue to spawn, which prolongs the battle. When you kill an enemy you will gain combat experience obviously and loot drops like power-ups that allow you to boost the stats of your character. These power-ups may even be mixed together, evolving into a better power-up, which is a nice touch. This power-up system could even be related to the City Of Villains style in gathering power-ups. This combining of powers option was not present on the current build, but will be implemented in the final release.

Onto the combat mechanics, the game has a regular quick attack button, then a stronger attack to use as well. The stronger attack does require a bit more time to use, but it is very affective against enemies. The quick attack and the stronger attack are also able to link into combos. In addition to the regular attacks, you also have the jump option, which will send your character into the air, where you will also be able to use these types of attacks. Moving onto more specific attacks, of course there are the super power attacks for each of the characters as well. You may activate them by holding down the L button on the controller, then selecting it with the D-Pad. Since each character has their own unique power set, with Batman you could be throwing Batarangs, while with Superman you could be using your heat-ray vision to burn through your enemies. Moving on with this super powers, of course the different powers will grow with experience. Superman will be able to just fly around within the levels, never really needing to touch the ground, while the Flash can do his regular super-speed dashing for longer durations.

Moving back to actually battling, of course while you attack, so do your enemies. When this happens your life bar will diminish, but your life will refill itself slowly as you continue to walk around. But if you locate and walk into a safety room, it will fill up the health bar much quicker. Either of these things will -- at least -- keep your characters alive. This will also keep the action quite heavy, instead of needing to search around for med kits while battling. When we examine the fighting right now, the controls are pretty tight, where you can weave your character to opposite sides of the opponents to evade their attacks. This does add quite a bit to the feeling that these people are actually superheroes, and not regular Joes.

The graphics look fairly comic book like so the game doesn't come off feeling quite serious looking. While traversing the levels, you will notice that the environment is fairly interactive, as you will be able to pick up most objects that you walk by. In this build of the game it did not look like walls and other structures were destructible, but objects can be freely picked up and used to lambaste the enemy with..

The plot seems to involve Braniac quite a bit, which explains all the robotic creatures. It seems that he is searching for a relic in the Justice League’s headquarters, which is located in outer space as a satellite orbiting the Earth, called the Watchtower. Details on the plot will obviously be more fleshed out by the time the game is released, but it's good to know that the developers aren't stealing any used plotlines from the cartoon series.

I should also briefly the game's co-op play. The game sports two-player split-screen action and online play is not in the cards for this title.. This may be a bit of a let down, but the reason why this was not included ( according to one of the reps at E3) was that most of these kinds of games don't see much online play or don't usually include that kind of functionality to begin with. So there you have it on that front. At least two people can play the game together..