Justice League Heroes features a pantheon of DC Comics' greatest costumed superheroes, specifically the most notable Justice League heroes made popular by the animated television series. The core members of the Justice League in the video game are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Martian Manhunter and Zatanna. This will be your core group of characters, although several more full-featured characters are unlockable, and within each mission in the game, a buddy system is in effect, so you'll choose the best two characters for each mission. You can either have the AI control your character, which can be set to offensive and defensive routines, or you can have a friend jump in at any time, playing through the game's 50+ levels cooperatively.
The storyline was written by Emmy Award-winning writer Dwayne McDuffie, best known for his work on Static Shock, Justice League and Teen Titans, and the game features voice work by Ron Perlman (as Batman) and Michael Jai White (as Green Lantern). The basic plot centers on the Justice League as they foil Brainiac's plot to destroy humanity -- what else is there for a bored, robotic megalomaniac to do? From the in-game cinematic sequences I was able to watch, it was made clear that this isn't the happy-go-lucky team you may remember from Super Friends. There's definite tension between characters, especially wherever Batman is involved, as revealed when he shrugs off Superman's greeting, stating that he never asked for any help against a robot invasion on Metropolis, with a delivery that absolutely drips with venom.
Fans of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and the Champions of Norrath series will be pleased to see how nicely the game makes use of the Snowblind engine. Justice League Heroes takes this core set of gameplay mechanics and translates them seamlessly into an action-RPG that is filled with the essential core of superhero combat, as well as a compelling character advancement system. Characters that can fly in the comics can fly in the game, for instance, and there are two planes of combat for you to engage in, allowing aerial combatants to fire down upon ground-based enemies with heat vision, energy bolts, lantern powers and so on. The powers are driven by an energy meter, right underneath the health meter, and both of these vital reserves will replenish themselves after a short break in the action, much like the shields in Halo.
The environment is also a key part of the gameplay experience, as nearly every object you can see can be picked up, uprooted, or otherwise hefted for use as a melee weapon or projectile, similar to what we saw from Irrational Games' stellar Freedom Force. Physically weaker characters (comparatively) like the Flash and Zatanna can pick up smaller objects to add some more weight to their hand-to-hand attacks, while Superman, Wonder Woman and the like can toss around cars and batter-up with lamp posts and tree trunks.