I have little doubt that the television series Heroes was inspired from the comic based games and movies that have come out in recent years. Thus, there is a certain amount of irony when the favor is returned and a game is now inspired based on the series that was inspired from more games and movies. Next, I’m sure they’ll come out with a spin off feature movie…based on the series based on the games, the movies, so on and so forth.

From roots like these, we can see that Heroes naturally translates into a game. There are plenty of characters with superpowers that can be put into a game context and the environments like Las Vegas and New York are not hard to make distinctive within a game world. The mobile game for Heroes is to television as TMNT is to its source material. Gameloft has turned Heroes into a beat em up arcade game. For the most part, the action is satisfying and some of the characters like Niki translate very well to the button smashing arcade motif. With projectile weapons that can be picked up and tables, chairs and plants you can hurl at someone else, Heroes evokes a little of Streets of Rage. On the other hand, the action dies down a bit when you start using someone like Hiro, which turns the game into more stealth instead of direct action.

The slightly isometric top down perspective adopted by Heroes gives an adequate playing field. There’s enough space you can toss things and do your special moves. There are only two buttons for Heroes: one is a special attack in which you have to collect blue orbs and the other is a regular attack which can lash out at multiple opponents. Yes, this is one of those games where you will face half a dozen enemies and separate them into two groups on screen mashing your button on one group while the other recovers.

You don’t have to be a fan of the television show to appreciate Heroes. As I said before, the source material translates very easily into a game. Enough characters make non playable cameos that will be appreciated by fans. And in between levels, there are some tidbits and quotations about the show. I liked the action in the game, which reminded me a lot of TMNT and Streets of Rage. The difficulty level is not very steep so it’s accessible to novices and pros alike. Like X-Men, this game is destined to get countless sequels simply because there’s no way to fit all of the characters into one action game.