X-Men Legends

"A Great Game for X-Men and RPG Fans Alike! Everyone else...? Eh."

The gameplay is really fun. Buttonmashing and mutant powers galore. My one complaint is that strategy isn't employed more with the AI. If I'm leading around 3 other X-Men, I want to be able to tell them to wait, patrol, or scout ahead, etc. and that option isn't found in this game. The RPG elements are really quite awesome, though. The game reminds me of Diablo because of the items, and the leveling up procedure. The controls are easy enough, but I keep finding myself forgetting to utilize key features in the midst of a battle, that causes me to take more damage than I should. I don't know if this is a personal problem, or the game's fault. The game also has some camera issues, but what game doesn't? 8/10

The graphics (on the X-box) are nice. Not phenomenal, but okay. Xbox has a cell-shaded look to it, which is kind of neat. I guess it's supposed to make it more comic-booky, but that doesn't really do it for me. I like the graphics though, it just doesn't have it's intended effect. 8/10

The music is okay. Like every game I get for Xbox, I lament the fact that it doesn't have custom soundtracks. I'd rather be listening to Pink Floyd or Bjork than the generic music found in most games today (Fable being the one exception). I dunno, call me spoiled. The voice acting is okay for some characters and cringingly bad for others. I looked some of the actors up on IMDB and I was surprised with the "names" they got for this game. Wolverine is voiced by the guy who does Spike on "Cowboy Bebop", Jubilee is Winnie from the "Wonder Years", Forge is Lou Diamond Phillips (most famous for being cuckolded by Melissa Etheridge. And for the movie "Bats". The tagline was "Bats. Bats. Bats. They're gonna get ya! Bats. Bats. Bats. Gonna suck you dry."), Patrick Stewart plays Professor MacXavier...er...Prof. X., the voice of Futurama's Bender voices Juggernaut, and Cree Summer voices Magma (the story's main character). Anyone who knows a bit about voice acting will recognize Cree Summer's voice. She's the voice of so many things including Elmyra from Tiny Toons, Max the sidekick from Batman Beyond, and recent Blockbuster Commercials. Her voice gets grating after a while. Oh, and Nightcrawler is voiced by the Fish from "American Dad". But not as over the top. It's one of the better performances in the game, actually.

As for the bad voice acting? All the enemies tend to get quite repetitive, including the bosses. But I can live with that. Ororo and Cyclops make me want to cringe everytime I hear it. Cyclops especially sounds like a wimpish 18 year old. Rogue's southern accent is so uneven, it comes off as British at times. 6/10

The story...well, I'm only on the third mission and the story hasn't impressed me much. There's one interesting twist, but so far the story centers around Magma, who's been targeted by the Brotherhood and rescued (and kind of kidnapped and brainwashed, depending on your perspective) by the X-Men. The dialogue is standard video-game dialogue, and it's difficult to see what Man of Action (Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Steve Seagle, and Duncan Rouleau) brought to the table, besides a far-reaching knowledge of X-History. But I'm not that far into it, so there could be twists I don't know about coming into it. I'll reserve my judgement, but if pressed, I would say, so far that it deserves: 5/10

And since this game supports multi-player, which I haven't tried out yet, I can only imagine the fun that 4 people would have each picking an X-Men and running through the missions, or beating on each other in the Danger Room. I can only imagine...but I can imagine that it would be the most b###hing experience of the game! 15/10

So let's review:

Gameplay - 8/10
Graphics - 8/10
Sound - 6/10
Story - 5/10
Fun Factor - 15/10

Also, keep in mind that I am a huge X-Men fan, and a big Action RPG fan, so this colored my review heavily. There may be flaws in the game that I overlook in my fanboyish gushiness, but from my perspective, this is a great game, and worth taking Fable out of the Xbox for. Especially if you love the X-Men and you love Action/Beat 'em Up games and RPGS. This is what the Beat 'em Up looks like in the 21st century. If you're not a BIG X-Man fan, you at least owe it to yourself to rent it and try it out to see if you like it. Although it starts out slow, and doesn't really get good until you play with four characters at a time.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/23/04