X-Men Legends

"Almost, but not quite"

For many years now, anytime a new X-men game is about to be released, it sees a surge of fans come forth. However, time and time again the games tend to fall short of expectations. Most fans still consider the old school arcade game the best to date. So, my question is this... what was it that made that game so fun? And why has no developer been able to generate a product with as much fun as that game? The future of the X-men franchise seemed a bit bleak with the Mutant Academy games along with Next Dimension. All of which were decent, but still failed to capture the over all fun factor that an X-men game should have. But, after many years of waiting for a true to the name X-men game, fans were finally treated with information about Raven software's new project, X-Men Legends.

With every bit of information released, the game seemed like it could easily not only be the best X-men game ever, but also the best superhero game ever. While the game does deliver fully in some areas, it surprisingly falls short in others, especially replay-ability.

Graphics: 7/10

Say what you will, I love the cel-shaded graphics when they are used properly. They are perfect for any game that is based off a comic/cartoon/anime/manga. And I must say that for the most part the characters look great. Even the graphics on the characters special attacks are all top notch. Usually any game tends to fall short on the graphics of other random characters, like your usual goons and other NPC's (see Spider-man 2), such is not the case with this game though. All enemies have almost the same amount of detail as the player characters. Some characters, like the mutant teens you have to rescue during one mission, do have repetitive designs though. In fact, all of them look exactly the same. One other bad point is that even with the over all decent detail the characters received, their hands and such look like blocks. Anytime you are watching a cut scene and you see them, it almost makes you want to laugh that Raven did so well everywhere else, yet failed to at least give them fingers, even if they didn't move independently.

I probably would have given the graphics an 8 overall, if it wasn't for the supremely awful FMV sequences. Seriously, I think I've seen better on PSone games. I'm not sure of the point of a lot of them also. Some of the sequences are little 30 second snips that do nothing to move the story forward. Why even waste the time to put them in?

Sound: 8/10

OK, so the voice acting isn't great, but I have heard much worse before. I would of preferred that they got the cast from the old Fox cartoon, but you can't please everyone all the time. The sound effects for attacks and such are all pretty well done as well, and characters sometimes say a line after defeating an enemy. While it does get repetitive sometimes, it is no where near as bad as say... the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game.

I really liked the way the music was presented too. While you are running around an area there is a softer melody playing and when you near an enemy it gets harder and breaks in with some electric guitar and such. I thought it was a good way to do things so you didn't have some repetitive tune playing during the whole mission.

Game-play: 7/10

Quite a bit to talk about here. First and foremost let's go over the "team play". By pressing L2 you can call your team mates to attack your target, most of the time they will run off and do their own thing though when you near an enemy. If you press L2 while you have R2 held, your team will do their pre-selected special attack. You can select what attack you want them to do in the character menu, you can also select how far you want their health to drop down before they automatically use one of your healing kits. You can also select whether you want them to be aggressive, defensive, or "normal". Although, I didn't see much point in changing this as I always had Storm on defensive, yet she always ran right up to a enemy and tried to hit them.

The AI is actually pretty good about fighting enemies without dying too quickly. Yet, incredibly stupid other times. Example: Cyclops is following me along a catwalk, I turn to go in a room and for some reason he magically walks the other way falling into a pit of spikes. Or how about when you have to cross a gap by riding a floating platform, when you run onto the platform the characters hesitate for a second to follow you, the platform begins to move away, and then they attempt to follow you, again falling to their death.

The skill tree system for learning skills is done pretty well. The set up prevents you from becoming way too strong early in the game, unlike Baldur's Gate II. Each special attack takes two points to learn it, then one point to upgrade the attack. You can do this 5 times, then you have to pay another 2 points to upgrade the attack again and move to the next tier. All in all it is a fairly well designed system. Most abilities require a level req. along with the point cost, so again it prevents you from getting very strong early on in the game.

The game does hit several road blocks at times though. The main one being that after you have beaten the game, you cannot go back and play previously played levels, and there is no ability to start a new game with your built up characters. The lack of this feature dramatically reduces any kind of replay value for me, and I'm sure a lot of others. Any other game in this genre has this feature, why did they not implement this?

Raven did however put in "combo" attacks though. However, this is not what it was made to sound like. We've probably all seen those pictures of Colossus throwing Wolverine, that actually isn't a combo attack. The way it was described made it sound like we were going to get Crono Trigger es que dual and triple attacks. Such is not the case though. All a combo attack is one person doing a special move, then another immediately following with a special attack of their own. The "announcer" says COMBO and you are rewarded with a small exp. bonus and damage bonus.

One good thing about the game though, is that it offers up more of a challenge than other games in the genre. You are severely limited in your healing pack capacity, which only makes things that much more tougher. I, for one, welcome the challenge.

It's amazing though that with all of this the game still fails to capture that over all fun factor that the old arcade game had. But, this game is definitely a step in the right direction.

Replay-ability: 5/10

The very fact that you have to start over from level 1 after beating the game really reduces the replay-value. You more than likely will not find everything there is to find on the first play through, and you can't go back and play previously played levels. So I can see a fan of the X-men wanting to go and collect everything. But really, what incentive does the casual gamer have to complete these tasks? Although Raven did do a good job of trying to make secret things actually worth getting. The comic books for example, give your characters a permanent boost in stats. The danger room disks allow you to play small levels which normally end very quickly. Doing this however, will reward you with a small exp. boost.

So again, I ask, why in the world can I not go back and find the things I missed? Why do I have to start all over from level 1? It really disappoints me that Raven did so much in adding little things, but left something like this out. Even my friend, who played with me through about 75% of the game was disappointed at this. He didn't want to play through everything again from level 1 either.

Fun Factor: 7/10

It was pretty neat being able to partially re-live those days of the arcade game. I had 4 people over and we were all having a great time playing. The wind was quickly taken out of our sails though as we found out there was no "new game +" feature. Any fan of X-men will most likely enjoy the game more than other gamers, which is a bad thing when you think about it. There should be more to the game to keep everyone occupied.

Rent or buy?

I would definitely rent this game first, even if you are a fan of the X-men. You can get pretty much all the fun out of the game during the first play through, which shouldn't take more than one rental to do.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/27/04