Green Lantern Rise of the Manhunters was developed by Griptonite Games and was published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
The game starts with some conversations with Sinestro and fellow green lantern corps members. They will instruct you on the basic mechanics of the game such as attacking, and learning new moves.
You run around on a 2D plain, built upon a 3D environment. You can fly, shoot beams, and as with the movie you can mold your will power to form certain objects (constructs), some of which are accessible using the Y, X and A buttons and some through the 3DS touch screen.
I quickly noticed the difficulty of controlling the character... First of all, it was not easy to target enemies with your beam. It could've been better if there was some sort of auto-target... You can only aim in eight directions which a lot of times would make you miss.
There's a lot of opening that you create when you fire a beam and you're standing on the ground, that also goes for melee attacks. Another thing is that I can't shoot beams while flying or running, I always have to stop and stand still which makes me prone to enemy attacks. The fights are more of a brute force style than strategy. Needless to say, it's just a lot of grinding.
It was hard to pull off combinations. There's an upgrade that reduces the lag between your attacks... But what the heck! Why do I need to do that in the first place? Is the Green Lantern some sort of robot that needs upgrades?
On wide areas, it can be a little boring to fly... Or I guess I'm just too used with Japanese games that I had an "air dash" feature. On smaller areas though, you will practically feel freeee! The exit points in the game are not well placed... For example, you go down from an opening door (down as in down direction), then you appear on the next screen "from the left screen" where you would otherwise expect him to fall from above.
Another thing I noticed is that the map overlays on the top screen, and accessing the map doesn't pause the game which makes it "intrusive" during play. Couldn't they use the bottom screen instead?
There are some good things about the graphics though, the animation for example is quite smooth. Green Lantern seem to move naturally. Coming off an attack for example, then you quickly press jump makes Green Lantern fly up in the air and twist. On some areas, the 3D effect makes some good blending. I mostly keep the 3D from 25 to 50%, anything more than that seems to hurt my eye or you get a double vision. Still not one of the best 3D that you'd see.
As I mentioned above you can buy skill upgrades to strengthen yourself and easily beat your opponents. As you travel through different worlds, you will be able to get new constructs which fall into 6 basic categories which are ground pound (heavy objects such as an Anvil and anchor), Blades, Missiles, Guns, Claws, Smash (such as a hammer). The constructs overall is what puts excitement in the game.
There are boss fights give a decent amount of challenge. However, there wasn't anything however that made me feel intimidated because I know "I am more powerful" than whatever they put in front of me. In some cases though, you will be required to think and it could take a few moments to figure out what you should do and that's a good thing.
Each time you travel across two different worlds, you'll have a third-person shooting experience (You'll get a space-harrier experience) but it's only for a short while.
The music is not so bad but not very good either. There are no voiceovers but just text conversations. I'm sure fans would love to hear their favorite superhero talk, but the game doesn't give you that.
As you progress in the game, it tends to get better especially as you get more kick-ass constructs. The game gets reasonably more Green Lantern-like.
Green Lantern Rise of the Manhunters 3DS is quite lenghty. The first phase is being able to save four different planets (including your own, Earth). And then the second phase... All those four again but you'll surely be hooked with finding hidden objects (spycam, memento).
Rise of the Manhunters 3DS surprisingly has a high replay value as it allows you to play a new game+ where you could collect costumes (so you may look like your fellow green lanterns), and other extras such as dosiers (character profiles), mementos and concept art. So despite all the bad things I've pointed so far, this makes you want to play the game more and somehow puts more value to the money that you invested.
The game is reasonably Green Lantern and I would recommend it to the fans of the character and series. However it has a lot of fundamental gameplay flaws and the graphics, if I would say does not really tap into the Nintendo 3DS's potential. This could've been a great game, but somehow it feels like the game has been rushed to beat deadlines.
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