Review by: Brandon "Poozer" Cackowski-Schnell

It’s clear that the designers working on Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters have played a fair amount of God of War in their day. From the light/heavy strike combat system, the constructs which serve as both a magic system and extra combo moves, the jugs full of health, green energy (mana) and experience, the quasi-RPG leveling system and the set camera that follows you from one walled off fight to the next, the game plays like a much more kid friendly version of the famed action series. The bones of the game are good, with plenty of features added to make it as accessible as possible, and the various emerald constructs are a joy to wield, but too much repetition and too little enemy variety makes this outing better than your average movie game, but not as good as the game it emulates.

The game takes place in the recent movie’s universe but outside of the story of the film. Hal Jordan, hotshot fighter pilot has a power ring, given to him by the Guardians of Oa, capable of making whatever he can will into existence. Armed with this ring, Jordan and the rest of the Green Lantern Corps patrol the galaxy dealing with interstellar threats wherever they pop up. In the case of the game, Hal doesn’t have to venture far from Oa as the Manhunters, a race of sentient robots built by the Guardians to be the original galactic peace force, show up and start wrecking the joint in order to get their hands on yellow fear energy, the opposite force to the Lantern Corps’ green will energy. There are some minor twists to the story, but the basic theme is you busting up Manhunter robots as you move from one walled off arena to the next, pausing occasionally to fly about and shoot a bunch of stuff or take on a boss.

Hal has a number of green “hard light” weapons at his disposal including a light attack comprised of a pair of whirling swords and a heavy attack made up of a couple of fists that can be linked together along with dashes and evades to attack foes and earn more experience as the attack counter increases. The better your combo, the more experience you’ll earn, experience that allows you to level up as well as purchase upgrades to Hal’s attacks, his power ring and the various constructs you use. Upgrading attacks comes with a nice visual change with swords replaced with large, saw-toothed blades and fists turning into a pair of claw hammers.

Basic attacks and grab moves don’t require any ring energy however utilizing any of the dozen constructs, which range from a simple blaster bolt and baseball bat all the way up to a wearable mech suit and a fighter jet used to slam into foes, take variable amount of energy to create. As Hal’s construct creation gets interrupted any time he takes a hit, deciding where and when to create the bigger, but more damaging constructs is key to escaping unscathed, particularly later in the game when shielded enemies, flying enemies mini-bosses and sub-bosses all show up to ruin your fun. Having your construct interrupted with a punch to the face can be annoying, especially because the more powerful ones are just so dang cool, but it makes sense as otherwise you could just spam constructs all day.

Once Hal dishes out enough damage he can activate ring surge mode, a mode that replenishes health as well as gives unlimited green energy to create weapons. Knowing when and where to pull off the ring surge mode becomes important, even with the power batteries scattered throughout the story as some of the game’s later battles throw a large number of enemies at you with a fair amount of time between check points. Similarly, the game’s many bosses are usually long slogs of pattern recognition and damage avoidance as you try to whittle the boss’s health down. Most of the game isn’t too difficult which makes the bosses even more frustrating, and could be a problem for less experienced players

Luckily the game sports drop-in/drop-out local co-op so that a more experienced player can jump in and help out. The co-op partner doesn’t get any trophies or achievements, but they do get to lend a hand as Sinestro. It’s an odd choice for a partner as throughout the story, Hal will receive messages from Sinestro because Sinestro is off fighting the Manhunters somewhere else in the galaxy. To see Hal receive such a message with Sinestro standing right next to him is odd. There are plenty of other members of the Corps, both in the movie and in the fiction, so you have to wonder why they went with Sinestro. Similarly, when Hal is on Oa, the home to the Green Lantern Corps, he appears to be the only Lantern fighting the Manhunters, which takes away from the notion of the Corps being a huge force of crime fighters as opposed to three dudes and some old, blue guys.