Contributor: Joe O’Malley- High School Intern (yep, an honest to goodness Teenager, folks!)
The Justice League is back!
KABOOM!—We begin our story with the chilling fact that the Joker has used a nuclear bomb on Metropolis- killing millions of people. Needless to say, Superman is furious! The scene starts with him using his heat vision to make an entrance through the wall of the police building where Batman is already trying to get answers from the prince of crime, who’s even more insane than usual. Superman proceeds to throw Joker around while the clown mocks him for not being able to stop the bomb. The Joker also teases Superman about the death of Lois and his son. In his rage, the last son of Krypton punches straight through the Joker (though you don’t actually see it) and lets out his last sinister laugh.
ELSEWHERE,—We join the J.L. in the midst of a fight over a Metropolis (which hasn’t been destroyed. Yet.) as well as The Watchtower. All of this fighting seems to be led by Lex Luthor, aided by all of the headline villains we know and “love”, including Sinsestro and Doomsday and Ares and Bane.
MEANWHILE,—The Caped Crusader goes to check out on the Joker at Arkham, only to find the Joker has escaped again. Batman is ambushed by the assassin Death Stroke. Following a quick battle, and then another with Bane and Luthor, Cyborg and Batman discover Joker preparing his nuclear weapon. Batman arrives at Joker’s location just as joker is about to detonate the nuke.
BAM!—They are teleported somewhere else which is now out of range for the trigger to work. And this is only the beginning of this EPIC and CHAOTIC story.
Growing up as a kid who preferred DC over Marvel any day of the week, I think that this game lives up to the standards of the franchise. The plot does take a slightly darker turn when we find out that Superman is an evil dictator. The storyline was an interesting change of pace from the recent Arkham Asylum series. With the Mortal Combat gameplay style and the creative character match-ups this makes for fun gameplay. The voice acting stays very accurate to the expected characteristics that go along with the all of the DC icons. However, we do not get the low scratchy voice of Christian Bale who has recently played the Dark Knight in the Batman movie trilogy. And this is the first time the Joker is not voiced by Mark Hamill in a video game in many years.
After you finish the campaign take a look at the other options of play in the single player menu. Personally, I enjoyed the battles where you have many choices of fights as any player that you want. The different modes include classic where you do battle with 10 randomly selected opponents of both heroes and villains, or if you only want to fight a select groups there’s also Heroes Only and Villains Only. But, if this isn’t tough enough for you, you may also play Poisoned where you are constantly losing health. You can also play Survivor and have your health bar carry over and you can only regain health if you preform special moves.
Parents, you needn’t be concerned for most children when they play this game. It’s classic comic book fighting that brings all of your favorite heroes and villains together. But, it is worth noting that the action is intense enough that some younger children might be better off not watching or playing. It’s somewhat graphic and there is a little foul language, but nothing major. Kids, you will be happy to know that this game also has a one on one multiplayer mode making for a friendly competition with your friends.
The game has adjustable difficulty depending on your preferences, but overall is a good challenge that won’t frustrate you once you get use to the button functions. Speaking of which, the game is very much of an all-out button mash at some points. For those of you who may not know, button-mashing is simply pressing random keys hoping for the best results. The tutorial makes reading the instructions not as important. At first the tutorial may seem like the hardest part of the game because you have to do each move 3 times to keep moving on, but you have the choice to skip it so you can get right to the actual game. Although, just a fair warning, it turns out to be quite helpful in the long run.
4 comments
“Parents, you needn’t be concerned for your children if they play this game. It’s classic comic book fighting that brings all of your favorite heroes and villains together. It’s somewhat graphic and there is a little foul language, but nothing major. Kids, you will be happy to know that this game also has a one on one multiplayer mode making for a friendly competition with your friends.”
Just a MAJOR heads up. The age of children watching someone play this, should be seriously considered. I have a friend that got the game (PS3 version), and played it with his young son in the room, who watched him play.
His son then went to school, and tried a few of the moves on a fellow classmate. NOW, had my friend had the Wii U version and been playing on the GamePad instead, his young son could have been shielded from the content and watching a cartoon instead. As a parent with young ones, I think that is one of the best features of the Wii U, that being games with the GamePad off-TV play.
Again, it might be comic book/Saturday morning cartoon type fighting, but for the very young, it might be too much.
Good catch. I had marked that to be more specific when I edited and it slipped past me.
Thank you!
No worries! It very well might be a game that is difficult to judge, some younger kids might not have a problem with watching it. I just know from my friend’s experience his toddler aged son thought it was so cool, he wanted to try the moves at school. 🙂
I do think that is where the Wii U version 1ups the other versions, because of the Off-TV play. A parent doesn’t have to worry about it. They can sneak in a few battles while the little ones are watching TV and eating some snacks.
Its funny you mention that… I just started work on a little piece where I talk about how Off Screen play is the hidden gem of that system. It will make so many more games completely playable.
Think about Assassin’s Creed Black Flag… I can imagine a world were TONS of kids dont think of that game as anything by a sailing game.
I used to play AC1 in from of my oldest when he was younger, but I would only do the exploration missions. He was convinced Assassin’s Creed was the “climbing game.” Skyrim was just a hunting and blacksmithing simulator to him too.