The Uncanny X-Men

"Kill the freaks!"

As a child, I have fond memories of watching the exciting X-Men cartoon that was on Saturday mornings. I loved the show so much that I went out and bought the VHS tapes and watched them to death. It's been a long time since then, but I have heard a lot of good things about some of the X-Men video games and how they are actually pretty entertaining beat-em-ups in the vain of Double Dragon. Well, it's either the people who told that to me never played Double Dragon or they just like playing really mean jokes to get me to play a truly awful game.

Right when I booted the game up I realized by the over-sensitive select button that I was about to experience something truly awful. Seriously, you have to just barely tap the damn thing or the arrow goes freaking nuts. A game is truly awful when you can't even select whether you want to play single player or two-player without a problem. Afterwards, this terribly over-sensitive button also messes with the character selection screen. You'd think that'd be the end of it, but it's not. The pause button is just as irritating, so if you try to pause it it'll end up blinking to the pause screen and then just return to the action. It's the other way around for if you want to unpause the game.

For a game that is trying to be an X-Men game it has a surprisingly low amount of characters. You can choose from Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Ice Man, Storm, and Colossus. Unfortunately, no matter what character you pick, you won't feel like you're playing as them at all. Wolverine doesn't use his claws, but instead shoots little beams out of his oddly shaped body in order to kill enemies that, surprise, aren't even lifted from the X-Men universe. Instead of fighting the awesome baddies created in the comic books, you face off against...wait for it...lady bugs and guns that come out of the floor. Sure, there are some bosses in the game, but I doubt you'll even play long enough to get to them.

Another hint before the gameplay starts that the game is going to be terrible is the fact that you can choose whatever level you want to go to right from the beginning. Unfortunately, none of the levels are fun at all, so why you would want to torture yourself playing them is beyond me.

In The Uncanny X-Men, levels are designed in the most terrible way imaginable. You walk around a bland world killing various bugs and other weird creatures by bumping into them (No, I am not kidding) or occasionally shooting them with something. Sometimes you'll have to go through an environmental hazard like some electricity, but oh wait, it gets even more redundant! To go from area to area you have to step on these annoying little portals that sometimes lead to nowhere at all. Most of the time you have to collect keys in order to fight the boss, and after you defeat the boss, you have to go all the way back to the beginning of the level to escape.

Of course, stupid little power-ups must add something to the game, right? Well, wrong, definitely wrong. There are power-ups that give you more attack power and there are power-ups that kill every enemy on the screen, but none of them add to the fun at all. The only reason they are there is to make your life easier...except for certain power-ups that actually work against you. There's this freaking magnet that makes you stand still (does that make any sense to you at all?) so the enemies can bombard you with their attacks.

On top of all this, you can't even get out of the "Practice" mode without restarting the game and if you die in a level you have to either keep playing that same level or restart. What the hell is that?

You have probably noticed that I didn't give this game a one or two like pretty much everyone else who has reviewed this terrible excuse for a game, but the reason for that is it is actually a little fun. This is mostly due to the cooperative mode that makes this terribly broken game a little enjoyable and while it may not be all that fun going through all of the levels, the game will last you sometime as it is pretty difficult. Honestly, that's enough to get a four from me, and this game definitely isn't as terrible as 10-Yard Fight (what were they thinking with that one?).

I said the game was difficult, but that's only if you play as someone who isn't Colossus. The other characters have real problems with getting killed easily, but Colossus can go through whole levels and just have the enemies bounce off his body without really taking that much damage. Why did they make such a broken character? The world may never know.

Since the developers didn't care at all about the gameplay, they must have focused on the story, right? Well, while that may hold true to some titles of today, back in the NES days, stories weren't really important at all. The Uncanny X-Men doesn't really have a story and just throws you in the middle of the mess with your only known goal besides collecting freaking keys and murdering large bugs is to defeat the main antagonist in the X-Men universe, Magneto. Besides that, there is nothing really at all plot-related and since you can play the levels in any order there doesn't really seem to be anything chronological about the game either.

Well, if all else fails, you can always rely on superior graphics for games that fail in the other departments for sure! Yeah, that is not true for The Uncanny X-Men. The environments look like blobs of different colored sprites and the characters look nothing like their comic book/TV show/film counterparts. Storm looks like a brown robot with green eyes (a masculine one at that) for example, and no one else fares better. The game also happens to be relatively buggy and some of the power-ups are so discreet you can't even tell what's different. Enemies move very oddly and there is virtually no animation at all throughout the whole thing besides very basic motions.

The audio, while not necessarily terrible, is very forgettable. You won't remember it at all once you turn the game off and the lack of sound effects that make a lick of sense hurt this area even more. If this game had no sound at all, you probably wouldn't even notice for a while. It wouldn't make much of a difference, would it?

The Uncanny X-Men will definitely take some time to get through since you'll have to memorize where all of the special items like keys are located and where all of the portals lead to. This is the game's most redeeming quality as you will feel somewhat compelled to complete it just to say, "Screw you, you awful, awful game!" That's what makes the game sort of fun: it's so terrible that you want to beat it. That might not make much sense, but that's just how it is. If you're ever bored, you could pop it in I guess to play with a friend because the game does have a cooperative feature available.

I was a fan of the show, but the game is simply god-awful. While it does have some redeeming qualities like the cooperative mode and the terrible level design does provide for more replayability just because you'll feel like beating it anyway, The Uncanny X-Men is an unremarkable title that is the epitomy of what an awful game is. Sometimes it surprises me that video games have done as well as they have with awful releases like this, but I guess if you ever want to set out to make an awful game, The Uncanny X-Men could be of help.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/08

Game Release: The Uncanny X-Men (US, December 1989)