Peak girl power. In an age where superheroes have been played to death, a fresh take is often needed, and there is nothing more refreshing than to give center stage to the girls in these stories, often neglected and set aside as mere companions or side characters. However, the DC Super Hero Girls franchise is more focused on pandering to young girls to have a bigger chance to sell them products, and this game is living proof of that. DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power is a half a beat ‘em up half a social media power fantasy that even your 11-year-old niece will find repetitive, monotonous, and underwhelming.
The game is set in the same world as the tv show in which it is based so, in a way, it serves as a tie-in title. Quick side note, DC Super Hero Girls started as a partnership between Mattel and DC to create a line of dolls aimed towards young girls and tweens. The show itself is entertaining, kind of witty, and funny more often than not. Its visuals, heavily stylized, are easily recognizable and reminds us of the Bratz dolls, and are complemented by the excellent voice acting, spearheaded by Tara Strong. Much of that is applied to the game as well, as it maintains the same visual style, the same jokes and wit, and the same voice actors from the tv series, which is nothing but good news to fans of the show, to whom the game is probably directed.
DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power presents a version of the DC universe in which most superheroines and villains attend high school. The main cast and 6 playable characters include three heroes: Supergirl, Batgirl, and Wonder Woman, as well as three villains: Catwoman, Star Sapphire, and Harley Queen. Because you can’t pander to young girls anymore without including good old Harleen Quinzel. And even though the game presents other female superheroes, such as Green Lantern or Bumblebee, you can only play as one of those six characters. Each of the six girls, all about the same age, has unique and distinctive personalities and traits, which offers some depth and interesting interactions. However, combat-wise, the six behave pretty much the same.
The core gameplay mechanics relies on heavy button mashing only interrupted by a special power. Each girl has different special powers which can be unlocked upon completing certain requisites, such as advancing in the main story or buying them with in-game currency. But you can’t use these abilities at will, but rather you’ll have to fill a gauge to unleash the ability you want, like Supergirl’s heat vision and frost breath, or Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth. And although satisfying to use, the truth of the matter is these special abilities only masquerade the raw combat mechanics, which are but a mere unpolished version of the Arkham series’ combo system which Rocksteady delivered more than a decade ago. And let’s not get started on the flight mechanics for Supergirl and Star Sapphire, which give flashbacks to another DC game, Superman 64.
The main story is, to put it lightly, dumb. After the destruction of a part of the city by robots, Lex Luthor offers to rebuild. But enlists the help of teenagers, the main heroes of the game, to decide which buildings to construct on the site. This becomes a rather useless in-game mechanic in which you get to use in-game money to place a building but that has little to no impact on story or gameplay. You can’t even come inside most buildings anyways so it’s merely cosmetic. After that, there’s an invasion of possessed toys and you need to fight them to save the city, which makes as much sense as any other thing at this point.
The game is divided into sections that give the illusion of an open world but it’s more like free-roaming in self-contained areas. In the public parts of the city, the characters will be dressed as civilians and pose as their alter-egos. In this part of the game, they can help the denizens of Metropolis with endless fetch quests and take pictures to post them to Superstar, an Instagram-like social network in which other characters of the DC universe can like and comment on your pictures. By increasing your social media presence you’ll gain followers, which in turn allows you to unlock certain rewards.
The missions themselves are self-contained beat’em up scenarios in which you fight a set number of enemies. The game scores your performance and allows you to repeat the same mission indefinitely if you wish to, but other than exploring for collectibles or getting more money, there’s no real reason to repeat the missions once they are over. Especially because of how monotonous they become after a while. Bosses tend to shake things up a bit but even then, most battles are over quickly and there’s no real sense of achievement.
The game’s main campaign can be complete in about 10 hours, and this time will double if you want to clear every single side mission and unlock all outfits, which are not many, to begin with. So, it begs the question, why does a game like this cost 60 dollars? The game doesn’t work well outside of its demographic, and even then, it’s rather subpar for an action game featuring such iconic characters.
