X-Men Legends

"This could've have easily been a classic, but it's still a good game."

Introduction- In this review, I'll be telling you about the various positives and negatives of this game. Hopefully I'll be able to give you a better understanding on X-Men Legends.

Graphics- The graphics in this game are rather nice. The cell shaded look is used properly and gives the game a different feel to it. For you old school X-Men fans, this will be something completely new for you. The costumes they have been altered from their Television show look. It took me some time to get used to this. The new look benefits some characters, but it also hurts some such as Wolverine in my opinion. I just can't picture him looking any other way than his classic apperance. The game also has some very impressive cinematic scenes which look great.

Gameplay- This is the meat and potatoes of the game. The gameplay in Legends is very hectic which can be good most of the time, but ever so often it can lead to your demise. You have at times up to 4 X-Men on the screen at one time fighting hordes of enemies. Unlike other games, there isn't any slowdown when fighting a large group of villains. If you have 2 or more X-Men on the screen at one time, you can switch to a different on by pressing a direction on the D-Pad. This game is basically an action RPG. You run around hacking and slashing the bad guys and you gain experience points and levels for doing it. When you gain levels, you can power up abilities and gain new ones. Each person has up to 4 moves they can use, you just have to hold down the R2 button and press one of the face buttons to perform a move.

You can also equip your X-Men with different items which can make them something to be reckoned with. You will be able to buy items from Forge. You'll need Tech Bits to purchase items. Tech Bits can be found by defeating enemies or by destroying practically anything you can get your hands on.

Storyline- The purpose of this game is to stop Magneto from shrouding the world in eternal darkness. At the beginning of the game you'll find yourself trying to stop the Brotherhood from kidnapping Alison Crestmere, she's a teenage girl with mutant powers. As you play, you'll find out why the Brotherhood wants Alison so badly and why Magento is trying stop the sun from shining on Earth.

Negatives- There aren't too many, but this game does have some. There is no new game plus feature in this game, so once you beat it, that's it. You can't replay levels you've already finished, this makes the game so much shorter. The camera angles can get wild at times. This can cause you to take some serious damage from a bad guy or accidentally walk off a cliff. Your allies A.I is pretty weak. Sometimes they'll sit there and let you get trounced and sometimes they just might walk off a cliff and kill themselves. Finally, this game is just very short overall. I'd say an average play through would be around 15-20 hours long.

Closing- One thing I forgot to mention is the Danger Room which is a big part of the game. During missions, you find Danger Room discs as long as Sketch Art and Comic books. The sketch art and comic books are things for you to look at. However, the Danger Room discs let you perform different tasks and when you perform all at one level you move on to the next level. You can also gain special items. There is also the Danger Room multiplayer mode. You can play up to 4 players in different situations. With up to 15 X-Men characters an multiplayer capabilities, this is a very fun game but also a very short game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/04