Game #1143: Green Lantern - Rise of the Manhunters

  In the brightest day, in the darkest night, no mediocre tie-in game shall escape my blog.

 I'll defend Ryan Reynold's Green Lantern movie to the ends of the earth, and yet, I can't say I ever planned on playing Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters. But I like beat'em ups, so... here I am.

 While it would've been easy to adapt the movie, they instead opted to go the 'expansion' route, so the game takes place after the movie, with Hal joining the ranks of the lanterns as a rookie. There's maybe too much story and dialogue to be honest. This is a beat'em up, and a movie tie-in game at that, so nobody is expecting stellar writing, so it's a bit annoying just how many micro-cutscenes there are per stage, micro-cutscenes you can't skip. There are even a few forced-walking segments. So, y'know, replaying stages can feel a bit annoying when you can't skip the uninteresting fat. That said, the entire game can be played in multiplayer, the second player taking the role of a Green Lantern Sinestro, albeit he plays exactly like Hal.

 The gameplay is decent, weak and strong attacks, a grab and a dash attack. The right analog stick can be used to dodge in any direction and you also get a shield and a temporary super mode. To add some spice into the combat, you gain access to 12 different powers or constructs, from an energy bat, energy maces to even an energy mech and an energy minigun. You can equip up to eight of these, four by holding down R2 and pressing any face button, and the other four on the L2 button. That said... There are four constructs that you need to use every now and then to progress through the game, so might as well have them equipped at all times, reducing your choices to just four out of eight. The combat is nothing worth writing home about, but it gets the job done. Three out of the ten stages are some inoffensive auto-scrolling flying/shooting stages. Most bosses require a QTE to be defeated, which is kinda lame.

 To keep things interesting, defeating enemies nets you points which can be used to upgrade your abilities or unlock the eight optional energy constructs. Most upgrades are just passive benefits, but having upgrades is still quite rewarding.

 Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters is not the worst way to kill a few hours, that's for sure. Everything is serviceable, so fans of Green Lantern might get a kick out of it, provided they didn't hate the movie's aesthetics. 

 5.0