X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse

"Sundays are worth 2."

Stan Lee is a crazy, crazy man. He's considered a comic books guru for his work on several comic books, but we shouldn't just ignore the fact that the man thousands of our youth listen to for entertainment is still a freakin' looney. He takes himself extremely seriously in terms of power and influence in the world while pandering to the youngest of his ''true believers'' by making himself look even MORE childish. Now, don't get me wrong - I enjoy quite a bit of his comic book work, but when it comes to the real-world man rather than his work, he's a nutcase.

Now, what in the world inspired me to talk about Stan Lee's losing bouts with craziness? Simple - it seemed like a decent-enough transition into the game of choice for today. The game - X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse. The premise of it is simple - you take on the role of 5 different X-Men, doing whatever Professor Xavier bids you to do. Sounds like a normal day in the life of a mutant living at the Professor's School for Gifted Youngsters, eh? Well, it is...sort of.

Mutant Apocalypse follows Gambit, Wolverine, Beast, Cyclops, and Psylocke as they travel through various stages, taking on familiar enemies from the comics. Each X-Man has their own special, unique abilities that set them apart from the brethren, allowing them to handle the challenges of each stage differently. Gambit uses his standard quarterstaff and a deck of cards, which he charges with kinetic energy and throws at his enemies. Wolverine has his claws, which can do decent amount of damage but also allow him to scale walls. Cyclops can fire off powerful Optic Blasts from his eyes, giving him range and priority with his attacks. Psylocke is incredibly agile and can flip all around her opponents as well as use her Psionic Abilities, allowing her to render enemies defunct by slicing into their mind as well as their bodies. Finally, the mutant Beast has extreme strength and agility, allowing him to take down foes with a few hits as well as hand from ceilings with his feet.

The game follows a side-scrolling style, with your characters traversing the various landscapes and combating enemies while trying to reach the goal. At the end of each stage is a boss, whom you must successfully beat in a one-on-one match. Along the way, you'll have to contend with other enemies and obstacles, ranging from your lowly drone to more prolific fighters (such as fellow mutants).

Well, that's the basic rundown. You, as the X-Men, taking on other evil mutants (namely Apocalypse, given the name of the game). Let's talk about each individual section of the game and see if we can't flush out the series a little more, eh?

Graphics:

The graphics for this game are really good in terms of accuracy. Given the fact that this is a SNES game, the detail towards the more well-known characters is quite good. However, I found the design for some characters a little inaccurate, and thus made them feel as if they were rather inaccurate. For instance - Beast is a giant, blue person whom is a genius of mind and strong of body. However, the full extent of his agile nature is that he can roll into enemies, he can dangle from the ceiling, and he can jump and kick opponents with his feet. Sure, this isn't a graphical problem per se, but the fact that the character lacks any of his truly defining agility makes his overall presence look even stranger. Couple that with moves that look and act like they were taken directly from Street Fighter and you've got a character whom the game could have done without. All the other playable characters are accurate in design as they are in execution - Cyclops isn't very agile, but is muscular and gaunt; Wolverine is short, very fast, very strong, and very angry; Psylocke is lithe and light on her feet (despite the fact that her mutant ability simply HAS to be fitting into those tight clothes); Gambit sticks to his range abilities (bo staff and cards) than he does with his in-fighting. Each characters' graphics reflect their comic book incarnations very accurately, to the point where looking at the game would, at times, make you confuse it with the comic itself.

Now, the characters aren't the only things that are drawn well. The graphics for the backgrounds are nice as well, depicting the various locales with a comic-book feel while retaining an easy, platformer-type style. The enemies located therein might not be the best of animations - Apocalypse doesn't look quite right, in my opinion, and some of the lesser enemies look downright silly (with their oversized arms and head) - but their residences certainly do a good enough job of filling in the spaces around your character(s).

The Sound:

The sound definitely struck me as good, lemme tell ya. Everything, from your basic explosions to Wolverine's claws being jabbed into a wall sound pretty darn cool, it not accurate as well (until someone actually does this, though, I doubt if we'll know what THOSE will sound like). If anything, I felt the game could have used even more sounds, aiding the characters more by adding in sounds from their respective actors from the cartoon series. These same actors reprised their roles in the various fighting games the X-Men have appeared in, so I see no reason why they wouldn't have made brief appearances for this game as well. C'mon, you KNOW you want to hear Wolverine's growls and yells whenever he starts ripping into some unsuspecting enemy, so where is it? Bah, I suppose the programmers either couldn't get ahold of the individual actors, or they simply decided that the extra time and effort involved with programming those sounds would be too much.

The music for the game, in my opinion, was a little lackluster. Granted, there aren't any songs that are associated with the X-Men that you would readily notice (other than the theme song from the show), right? I suppose that's the reason the entire soundtrack for this game is original, and not too good to boot. The songs don't really have that much personality to them, nor are they really that well written. Granted, they DO seem to fit their individual stages well, but they're still not that well written. Just my opinion and all, but I felt the music could have been MUCH better - I mean, if a game's music makes you inclined to play another CD in lieu of the actual music, it's time to rethink your compositions.

Gameplay:

The gameplay for this game is simple. I'll not lie to you, it IS simple - you pick your favorite character (out of the 5 selectable players) and you go throughout the stages. Each character has a certain number of ''lives'' to each of them; if that character runs out of lives, you're forced to move on to the next character and hope you can either find an extra life (for your lost companion), or to simply complete the stage with whomever you have left. If you lose all your lives for all your characters, then the game is over and you are forced to continue.

Now, what happens if you get really far into the game and you have to leave? Don't worry, Watchers, you can put in a password to let you continue! That's right, you can simply write down the password for the stage you're at (which is derived from a combination of portraits of characters...interesting) and start from there whenever you want! However, I hate passwords, since I'm never good at remembering them, so I'm going to call this game's password mode ''poopy''. That's right, it's a poopy password system! POOP!

Ok, seriously it's not that bad. There are some sections of the game that might give you trouble, which is why it's nice to have characters that can traverse the same sections in different styles. Beast and Wolverine, due to their climbing abilities, can easily get around certain obstacles by climbing over them. Psylocke's agility allows her to bound off of enemies' heads, giving her the ability to bounce up to higher levels without having any platforms to reach (thus, she uses her opponents' head). Gambit and Cyclops are the walking tanks, being fairly strong in close while having extremely powerful ranged attacks - giving them the ability to take down enemies before they even get to them, which might cause the likes of Wolverine, Beast, or Psylocke problems.

So, what might detract from this game a bit? Well, as I stated in the graphics section, some characters have been inaccurately portrayed. Not just Beast, though - Apocalypse, an incredibly strong and near-invincible force, is toned down to the point where he's nothing but a teleporting fiend that even the likes of Beast can take down through physical force. There's something flat-out wrong about that, eh? However, I think an even bigger problem than that inaccuracies of character would be the lack of more popular characters. Granted, Magneto, Juggernaut, Omega Red, and Apocalypse make appearances, but why the devil is the Brood in this game? C'mon, where is Sabertooth or Mister Sinister? There have been hundreds of interesting villains in the X-Men world, and they pick the Sentinels (which are kinda interesting), the Brood (which are a weak rip-off of the Aliens from Alien), and [Wolf-Like Character]. What about your classic characters, like the Blob or Mystique? Where are the cameos from all the other cool heroes and villains in this game? It's this sort of thinking that makes me wonder if the gamemakers even knew much about the series. They picked a group of X-Men that, while certainly are popular, aren't quite as popular as some (Storm and Rogue would have been much better picks than Psylocke and Beast), and the supporting cast of villains struck me as if the creators of this game didn't know much at ALL about the comic.

Finishing Move:

Ok, so the game was pretty decent in terms of being a side-scrolling, platformer beat 'em up. However, some unwise decisions on the creative level might turn away ''true believers'' of the series. It's not a bad game, but for those of us who are familiar with the comic/show will find some flaws a bit too irritating.

---Final Score: 7/10---

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/02, Updated 06/02/02