Game #1162: Green Lantern - Rise of the Manhunters(3DS)

  This is the blackest night.

 Well, Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters was a passable beat'em up... on the Playstation 3, but this is the 3DS we are talking about, so what did they do? They massacred my boy, that's what they did. This is a weird Action/Metroidvania hybrid that has some decent ideas but executes them oh so poorly.

 First impressions are sometimes accurate, and let me tell you, when I first booted up the game and had to sit through mini-loading screens every time I went into a sub menu on the options menu I was far from impressed. They are just option menus, they shouldn't need a goddamn loading screen. And yet, they do. But whatever, I pressed onward, picked NEW GAME and... one of the worst framerates I have ever seen on the console waiting to surprise me. Figuring out that the game would just send endless enemies after me was the next surprise, meaning that the game pretty much just expects you to fly around and avoid enemies unless the scrolling locks up and you need to defeat a few of them in order to progress.

 After the tutorial stage, you can pick from four different worlds. Every world rewards you with a new skill that you can use both in combat as well as to destroy certain barriers. The kicker is that you can't travel to cleared worlds... until you beat all four of them. Afterwards you can revisit any of them.... and you need to, because in order to beat the game you need to visit every world two times. Lazy. The stage layouts remain the same, its just that you get a new objective on each world. It's like some sort of misguided, streamlined metroidvania. Oh, and traveling to any world forces you to play a very boring flying minigame, which is exactly the same all eight times you have to sit through them.

 Combat is simple. You can jump, and pressing jump again lets you fly around freely. You can also punch and shoot energy with your ring, and, at first, this is all you get. As you clear stages you'll gain a grab construct, a charged punch(Useless in combat due to the charge time) and a charged projectile(Not AS useless, but mashing shoot works just as well) as well as four touch-screen abilities: Blades, Miniguns, a shield and a repulsion push. All four touchscreen abilities share the same cooldown. You also get the ability to call upon other lanterns, and as far as I could tell, all four of them do the same: Recharge your life bar. Defeating enemies and finding collectibles rewards you with XP that you can spend on upgrades, such as more life or more damage.

 I know that this is a port of a Wii Game, but as a 3DS game with a dash of Metroidvania.... why the hell is the map on top of the action, making it very annoying, instead of appearing on the lower screen? No, really, why? This is one of, if not THE,  dumbest design choices I have ever seen on this system.

 Green Lantern on the 3DS is not very good at all. The best part about it is the hand-drawn art that's used in lieu of cutscenes. That aside, it's pretty much a waste of time.

 2.5