| | Snowblind is still at it with their co-op action RPGs. They've been cranking these out under different labels for a while now (see entry 390), and they're pretty solid at it. JLH plays a lot like you'd expect; you pick one of the super heroes, then run around in an overhead view, smashing tons of bad-guys, slowly powering up your abilities, fighting harder bad-guys, boss villains, etc etc.
It's neat to see the different powers for Batman, Superman, etc, and to hear their little banter (sort of mediocre writing, but hey) as they smack people around. The game is made for two-player co-op; I think in single-player, the CPU plays the other hero.
The game has some annoyances similar to X-Men Legends (see entry 681), namely that you can't use any character in any level--usually you're just given two to choose from--and that you're always having to level stuff up. Why the hell does Superman have to level up? Would it be too simple just to let players smash things without having to worry about levelling? Shiminey. I mean, those old Capcom beat-em-ups didn't have any of these annoying quasi RPG mechanics, and those were darn fun.
But no, we're in semi MMO-style grind mode here. For instance, in a level where we were fighting more and more robots (yawn), there were these robot generating units. Superman (my buddy) wanted to milk them for XP, while Batman (me) just wanted to kill them and move on to the real stuff.
Combat also feels a little slug-festish, like it's slow to try dodging things, so you just end up taking a lot of hits (lots of tracking shots coming at you, too), and trying to dish out damage faster than the enemy. I found with Batman that if I tried getting a combo in on someone, then jumping away, his jump-away part was too slow, and more often than not I'd get hit instead of being able to dodge/evade. Maybe I should'a learned to use that "Block" button but eh, I want to be fast and evasive, and this game doesn't really cater to that. Tank tank tank!
Anyway, for what it is, it's all right, but I guess I'm a little burnt out on the slow button-mashing grindup aspect of these games. |
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