X-Men Legends

"The perfect genre for the X-Men"

After all the bad X-Men games and the general lack of recent X-Men games, finally one has arrived deserving of our time and money. This overhead beatem up style of Champions of Norrath with the constant four players is perfect for the X-Men universe.

Graphics: To be honest this is the game's weakest part. The style used has a certain washed out quality and characters have mitt hands and lack detail. During cutscenes when you zoom in close, the player models are quite rough. While I understand the reasons for this graphic style I believe having a Hunter the Reckoning level of detail and use of vibrant color would bring the characters more to life and keep some of them from looking too similar. That said, during gameplay the graphics are certainly adequate and its not a reason to downgrade the game. Certain special attacks are a delight just because of the amount of destruction inflict-able on a room and the amount of destructible items in every environment.

Gameplay: The game is fun, especially with friends. The difficulty is well balanced and the game never reaches that 'so easy its pointless' level while allowing the various X-Powers to visually impress and show their great power. The highly destructable areas add to the gameplay and it never gets tiring destroying things. As for complaints, certain characters with projectile specials share the same pattern and look which is slightly cheap to look at. The game suffers the occasional freeze up glitch and computer controlled characters will get themselves killed in some areas in an idiotic manner. When playing a multiplayer game its irritating to have sections where only a single player can play and this happens occasionally.

Story: Well its your normal sickeningly moral X-Man jaunt. As usual they pummel you with just how good they are. The dialogue is unbearable in places, especially for the main character who has to be the most generic goody goody in history. Wolverine was butchered, the dude is supposed to be edgy, in this he's a smarmy warm and fuzzy uncle type and it can be nauseating. Overall it gives you exactly what's expected, though its laid thick even for the X-men, no surprises here.

Sound: I'm going to hop past sound effects and music, they are your normal action fare, and jump right to the voice acting. Some are excellent{Nightcrawler}, some not so much{Rogue}. Frankly I think the worst part of the voice acting is the idiotic things they have to say, there is some truly bad dialogue here. Voice acting can be grating simply because they're saying stupid things. Overall, voice acting in games is often bad and this game is far from the worst offender, it won't make you regret buying it.

Replay Value: For a game in this genre the running length is excellent. First go through took me over 19 hours and I didn't do everything possible. The main reward{SPOILERS} is unlockable outfits for your X-Men which you can use in your second play through. This isn't the greatest reward and its irritating that they don't let you unlock and use them while playing through the first time.{END SPOILER} After finishing my first play through I didn't feel an overwhelming desire to play again right a way mainly because the entire group of X-Men levels at nearly the same rate including characters you aren't using. Because of this, you get an idea what every character can do so it isn't that new of an experience when using characters you didn't primarily use the first time. In this manner it lends itself more to a single run and party gaming. Some people won't feel this way and will play through over and over.

The game is fun, isn't short and works well for playing with friends. It's a buy.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/05/04