The Uncanny X-Men

"Well....it's not Heroes of the Lance"

Wolverine! Storm! Colossus! These and other Uncanny X-Men appear on your NES to give you a...predictably horrid gaming experience.

Released in 1988 by LJN (Also known for stinkers Friday the 13'th and Jaws, hence ''predictably horrid''), X-Men tells the tale of 6 of Marvel's X-Men, with the lineup current as of the game's release (X-Men, you see, is based on a comic book where the lineup changes almost constantly). Apparently Magneto, an evil mutant with the power of magnetism, is up to some sort of no good, and so it's up to the X-men to stop him by going through 5 levels of various evil places.

However, these 5 levels will feel like one massive level with palette swaps, because they're all pretty much the same. You take two of the six X-men AT ONCE--a conceivably cool concept ruined by lack of play-testing (I'll address this later)--through five levels of vertically-scrolling action, stopping baddies like centipedes and the blobs from Deadly Towers. Nothing too revolutionary--or abominable--just yet, right?

Well, it gets worse. A lot worse. You see, each of the 6 X-Men supposedly have their own ''super-power''. Wolverine, for instance, has adamantium claws that make him super strong, while Nightcrawler has the power of teleportation. This would be fine, except that the hit detection, particularly while in hand-to-hand combat, is just awful. Enemies will beat you around while you try vainly to swat them away with a move that I suppose passes for a punch. What this does is immediately remove 2 of the 6 characters from the realm of play--Wolverine and Colossus. Nightcrawler, whose ''teleportation'' means ''walk through walls'', is still useful to this point (Despite the aforementioned combat difficulties)--except that Nightcrawler is the weakest of the X-Men in terms of life, and walking through walls actually hurts the poor guy! BAM! Another useless character. This leaves three useful characters, all of whom not-so-incidentally have projectile attacks--Cyclops and his lasers, Iceman and his ice-cube-beams, and Storm and her....well, something weather-related.

Perhaps you were smart enough to make the second character you selected--the one whom the computer controls in a one-player game--a projectile-hurling character. Now, Select--the abused little sister of the NES controller buttons--comes into play here, switching your characters' control (You take over for the computer's character, and vice versa)--and revealing the most deadly flaw of the game...

Friends, the AI that controls the other character should really be called AM--Artificial MORONHOOD. Press Select and watch the character formerly under your control go into seizures, punching left and right at foes that aren't even there! Continue up the screen, and there's a slight chance your hallucination-prone companion will follow you without your having to double back for him or her. Run into an enemy, and watch them stop dead in their tracks, allowing the enemy to pound on them as if said X-Man were the bottom in a BDSM relationship. The AI problem is only magnified if you choose to have Nightcrawler as your companion, as he merrily runs through walls without a care in the world--that is, until he explodes because he ran out of life.

The final nail in this game's coffin in terms of gameplay is that you have to find keys in order to progress. These keys can only be obtained by beating certain enemies, meaning you have to comb the entire level--at least the first time--for these keys. So what's the big deal? You guessed it--lose both of the X-Men you happen to be controlling at that time, and your keys go *ppppbth*, meaning you get to suffer through the whole level again.

Theoretically, the game should control pretty well--the Control Pad moves, A (A?! What does this game think it is, Golgo-13? [Which also had the ''reverse'' button scheme]) punches or fires your projectiles, and B jumps (I have no idea why) straight up in the air, regardless of whether you were moving at the time of the button press or not. Of course, the already-touched-upon hit detection ruins the game in this area, almost like it wants you to toss your controller in frustration.

The aforementioned numerous problems with the game do two additional things--they ramp up the challenge, and take away any desire you may have to further play the game. Having to repeatedly go through a level to collect keys that you never actually use pretty much guarantees you'll make no progress whatsoever, and also makes sure that the best use for this game will be to pour gasoline on it and start a fire, keeping your family toasty warm while burning all the lovely silicon and plastic that makes up the game.

X-Men can't even rely on its superficials to save it. The game is a mess graphically, with the centipedes that attack you probably being the best thing about said visuals. As already mentioned, the levels are all the same, cracks in the ground, etc. There are no changes in environment or anything like that from level to level. On the plus side, the lasers that Cyclops fires really do look like lasers, and I guess the characters you control can be mistaken for X-Men action figures if you have them face the bottom of the screen....

The sound likewise fails to get the job done. As you're attempting to save a ravaged world, you would expect tense, ominous music to accompany your mission. Instead, you get upbeat poppy tunes, which were mixed by someone who shouldn't have had access to whatever is used to mix NES music. The same goes for the effects, which are totally unmemorable. Though given the rest of the game, I'm likely paying the effects a compliment.

Overall, X-Men is a resounding failure. It's LJN's ''magnum opus'', in much the same way that Street Fighter: The Movie was Kylie Minogue's (She played Cammy). As with Hard Drivin', the only thing keeping this game from a 1 is the existence of FCI's Heroes of the Lance, undeniably the worst game in existence. Despite that, this game has nothing going for it. Stay far, far away from this one; don't even download the ROM in the hopes that maybe it's not as bad as I say it is, because it is.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 08/10/02, Updated 08/10/02