DCs greatest heroes are finally making the leap from straight action games to RPG. With this and Activisions Marvel: Ultimate Alliance lumbering into UK stores in late 2006, it looks like a belatedly bumper year for sprawling superhero titles. The story follows DCs big seven as they tackle multiple, seemingly unrelated threats. As things progress, however, it becomes apparent that Brainiac has been pulling some strings and more is afoot than weve been told. For those who arent sure, playing as the big seven will put you in control of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Zatanna. Each has their own set of distinct powers with developers assuring us that they arent being lazy about it, and each characters abilities custom programmed, with no clones meaning that teamwork will be a prevalent and necessary element of the game. Theres obviously a bit of common ground between this and Ultimate Alliance: both games are RPGs and feature the respective companys big guns. That said, there looks to be a fair amount of difference between the two. One is the cast size, with Justice League starting out with a relatively modest seven characters although more are unlockable as you progress compared to the 20 or so in Ultimate Alliance. That seems to make sense, really. The DC heroes probably average around double the amount of powers or applications of powers of their Marvel counterparts and theres only so much you can get to grips with in a given game. Similarly, Heroes only allows two players coop as opposed to Alliances four. The developers claim this is to minimise the amount of chaos on screen at any given time, and who can blame them? Theres only so many people you can watch moving at light speed and throwing around buildings at any one time, isnt there?. Another major difference is the use of flight. Whilst Alliance does feature characters with the power of flight, the game doesnt look to make full use of the feature. Heroes, by comparison, allows the flying characters far more more manoeuvrability, with the option to swat villains like flies using anything you find lying around like, oh, I dunno, cars. The basic message here is that its a good time to enjoy superhero games. Were off to put our yfronts back on the inside of our trousers now...