X-Men

"X-Mediocre"

Why are so many licensed games so bad? I was really into X-Men when this game came out and I tricked myself into thinking it was really good for a while. But once the bias of being swept up in the series' fandom wore off, I quickly realized it was anything but.

The X-Men have gotten together in their computerized practice room to go through some maneuvers. However, X-Enemy Magneto has beamed a virus into the room's computers to make the illusionary hazards it conjures up deadly real to the heroes.

And I'm not sure whether to blame Magneto's virus or the game itself for the cheap, annoying experience I had with this game.

You can play as Wolverine (of course), Cyclops, Nightcrawler or Gambit through each of the game's six levels of simu-deadly hazards. You can switch to another guy two or three times per level, but limiting the number of character switches you're allowed is just cheap shot #1, since it prevents you from sharing the damage around a little bit. And there's a lot of damage to be taken.

The X-Men don't really move and fight like veteran superheroes. Their moves and punches are jerky and a bit sluggish. Which isn't aided by the fiendish placement of enemies and hazards like spikes, pits, acid puddles and the like. Plus, the enemies often attack from all directions, as opposed to your guys who are limited in their avenues of attack to basically their left and right. You're going to get hurt, a lot, and health power ups in this game come along once in a blue moon.

And then there's the boss enemies. They are simply way too powerful and cheap for this bunch of X-Men to tangle with. Trying to hurt most of them is a joke, let alone hitting them at all. The only time you can hurt Apocalypse, for example, is after he nails you with a punch and takes off about a whole 1/8 of your life meter. Magneto, perpetually surrounded by an impregnable force field except on the rare occasions where he feels like punching you rather than shooting lightning at you, is even more frustrating.

And if all that isn't enough, the designers thought they needed to make things even cheaper by including an energy bar to limit how often your guy can use his super-power. Why they figured they needed to do that when the game's already hard enough is beyond me. And it's not like this is a bunch of superheroes that needs to be watered down so you can't just power your way through the game. This is Nightcrawler and Gambit, not the Hulk and Iron Man. The only really tough X-Men are in the group of back-up characters that can be called once per level, and were about the only way I could do any damage to most of the bosses. And if I'm going to talk about this, I might as well say that I'm pretty sure Nightcrawler was the only X-Men PC who was chosen for the utility of his powers rather than his popularity in fan circles.

Lastly, two player mode is absolutely unplayable. Both guys are confined to the same screen, which turns out to be quite a pain in the keester when there are a lot of platforms they both need to jump to (which is very often). You'll lose count of how many times one guy gets edged off a platform and has to be saved by Jean Grey.

The graphics are fairly primitive. When I think about them I get this image in my mind of some development guy going, "Okay, that looks ENOUGH like Cyclops, hurry up you guys! We gotta get this game out while the X-Men fad has as much time to live as possible!" The music is pretty lame; not the worst I've ever heard from a video game, but the sound effects are without exception all laughable. X-Men fans can probably find more to like than I did after my rose-colored glasses for anything X broke, but as a straight-up action game it leaves a lot to be desired.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/26/04, Updated 08/07/04