Culture

Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, (2.5/5).

Thank goodness Hal Jordan's ring is “the most powerful weapon in the universe”. If it were, say, the mere “best piece of murder-jewelry in the Virgo supercluster” then Rise of the Manhunters would be a bad game. Thankfully, the game’s ever increasing variety of different tools, from large claw-hammers to a jet plane to a gatling gun, just about manages to hold the blandness of every other facet of the game at bay.
 
It's clearly a plain God of War-style action title, wallpapered over with a lot of green energy-suits and giant lumps of quartz. Hyper-engineered space robots ascend effortlessly to meet you. And the handiest solution to their presence seems to be to toss them off the cliff they just flew up. Take that, advanced space-robots who are really, really good at flying!
 
The game is fairly ugly too. The enemies look okay, but teen heart-throb Ryan Reynolds looks like Ken from Toy Story 3 and the environments are too often grey - or tan - stone platforms studded with whatever detritus sounded vaguely sensible. It's this utter lack of variety in any of the game's discrete arenas that is its biggest problem. Compare the game to God of War II, which is known for its ludicrously dense procession of epic set-pieces, and it's clear how in 2011 Rise of the Manhunters simply isn't good enough.
 
That said, the combat is impressively solid. Enough unique weapons turn up to saturate all four face buttons more than twice over (triggers allow for eight assigned at once). This almost brute-force combat design lets the game break even. Using the floating throwable mines, then the circular saw thing, then the giant flailing spike ball or whatever else, makes the combat really flexible. Put a podcast on, ignore all context, and blast your way through legions of robots whose back story I don't care about.