"If this is what it is like to be in the X-Men, I quit"

The X-men came to the Genesis console in this game. Their debut would be a poor one. Being able to choose only from four characters; Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit and Nightcrawler makes the game limited. You can ‘summon’ Storm, Rogue, Iceman, and Archangel once per level as well. Jean Grey makes appearances by picking you up if you fall too far. Other familiar faces make their quick entrances either between or during levels. Sadly, this game featured a lot of Excalibur things instead of focusing in on the X-Men everyone loves.

Control is a nightmare in this game. On single player, you may not notice it when using either Cyclops or Gambit, as they are both excellent jumpers. Wolverine however, for being such a great jumper in the comic series, can barely get his feet off the ground. In addition to this, he is very short, which makes him that much harder to use. Nightcrawler suffers from the same problem as well, but only for horizontal jumps. The game tries to remedy this by allowing you to change which character you are at any point during the level, however, this may only be done a few times per level. After you've used up all of your switching, you are stuck with what you have. In multiplayer, the screen scrolls too slowly for both players to stay on it. If you have any sign of independence, you will be rewarded by falling off the screen and needing to be carried back on by Jean Grey. I strongly suggest if you are going to play this game with a friend, that you announce out loud what ledge or platform you will be jumping to, as annoying as that may be.

Each X-Men character has access to their unique special powers. These powers drain from an energy bar. Quite pathetically, these bars do not auto recharge, except for Wolverines. Because of this, you will need to do a great deal of the game using nothing but punches and jump kicks, which gets entirely dull after about two levels. The major villains of the series, such as Sabretooth, are all way too powerful. It is almost a joke to fight any of them without summoning one of the other X-men to deal the damage. While you CAN defeat them without this help, it takes quite a while and you will take a heck of a lot more damage.

The normal enemies are not very creative. They attack pretty much entirely from the same plane as you, some diagonally from above. Because of this, you may well never get hit for the first two or three levels. Life is not all that hard to come by either, not as if you will need it for things other than recovering from a boss fight.

The story is weak, too weak. You will start in the danger room, after a few minutes a level will appear. Whichever character you have will say a few lines. The character will then say a few more lines at the end of the level and you will return to the danger room. This process will keep repeating itself over and over. While in the danger room you can heal up, that being the only purpose this place serves.

One aspect I enjoyed was the look the game had. Some of the levels really had me believing I was in the location it wanted me to believe I was. Others not so much, for example the first one. There is not any noticeable image lag from any areas in the though sometimes enemy projectiles get lose and wind up being invisible.

The sound effects were not nearly as good as they should have been. About the only credit I can give here is that a punch sounded different from a laser gun. Other than that, sounds range from popping noises to shrieks. The music was better than the effects, but not by a whole lot. No familiar themes from the cartoon were used in the game. The only memorable theme in the game is that of the opening credits.

The game will take a couple of hours to complete. No large time investment needed, though if you think the controls are as bad as I did, the difficulty can increase a few notches just from missing what should be easy jumps, especially in multiplayer. Keep in mind what difficulty you play at. Unless you play at the highest difficulty, you will be unable to beat the game as each difficulty ends at the end of a different level with an annoying statement saying 'haha, heroes never beat me, try being a super hero!'

Music: 6/10
Sound: 3/10
Graphics: 7/10
Control: 4/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Story: 3/10
Replay Value: 4/10

Average: 4.6/10 [5]

I would not go out of your way trying to get this game; it really is not worth the investment.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/16/02, Updated 03/13/04