X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse

"A big disappointment"

I don't have that much money, so I tend to limit myself to buying one game every few months. So when I went into my local GAME store, looking to increase my fledgling GBA collection, I saw ''X-Men, Reign of Apocalypse''. Fondly remembering the excellent SNES ''X-Men, Mutant Apocalypse'', I picked it up to have a look. It promised a bleak and twisted alternate reality, shocking plot twists, and classic game-play. Coupled with the fact that the screen shots seemed to back up these bold statements, rather than the random looking things we're normally treated to, I bought it. Big Mistake. Let's find out why.

Graphics

Overall, no real problems here. All the characters look like their comic/cartoon counterparts, albeit smaller, and the action flows quite nicely without any slowdown. Well, there is some slowdown when you get hit by a certain enemy attack, but I think it's intentional, and will thus be ignored.

Game-play

Oh dear. This is where Reign of Apocalypse starts to fall down. For a start, enemy AI is atrocious. You can easily lead them into traps just by standing on the other side of them. Also, all enemies, even the bosses and the final boss, are all limited to two or three moves. They have a knock down attack, a shot attack, and sometimes a dashing attack. Coupled with the fact that all the enemies are also limited to these attacks, and you may start to realise just how repetitive and boring this game is.

What about level design? Sorry, did I say design? The levels may all look different, but they're mostly the same walk from left to right battering countless enemies as you do so affairs. As the game reaches the end, more and more traps are added, but there are only three types of trap. There's a mine, which is practically invisible unless you're under a good light source, which disappears after it's triggered, and then there's the spikes and flame pits, which don't. There are only three levels I can remember which don't follow this formulae. These levels are a case of walk around on a small area, battering countless enemies and wait for the boss to appear.

Now, what about the game-play mechanics? Fighting, in most cases, is simply a case of using the same move over and over. Due to the fact that levels are just flat areas, there are none of the tactical considerations of Mutant Apocalypse. The only tactics are ''stay away from traps'' and ''don't go near the arena sides, as enemies have the nasty habit of attacking you when you don't even know they're there''. The jump feature is practically useless. You can't jump over things. It may look like you've jumped clean over a bullet, but in fact it will still hit you. The only way to dodge a bullet is to move up or down on the screen, which, thanks to the traps in some levels, isn't always possible.

Also, if you have a friend who has also made the mistake of buying this game, you get ''treated'' to a 2-player game. This is much better than the main game because at least the enemy AI trouble is solved. However, there is still little difference between the characters, which means the person who can combo faster will win. No more to it than that. I've heard that the more characters you complete the game with, the more options you get in 2-player mode. Yay. I can't wait to go through 17 boring levels 4 times just for more in 2-player mode.

All in all, a bland, flat, repetitive experience.

Sound

Again, repetitive sound effects. The regular punches sound OK, but Wolvereine's claws sound like he's just scraping them together. And when you suceed in killing an enemy, you get the same, flat scream. Even the Sentinels give the same noise, and aren't they meant to be robots?! The only difference in scream is when a woman gets killed, and thank the lord they put that much attention to detail in.

The music starts out decent... But soon gets very annoying. There aren't that many tunes, and spread over 17 levels, you'll be hearing the same music over and over and over and... You get the point.

Story

There is no story. One of the major things that made me buy this game was the story which was promised, and the only thing I saw approaching any kind of story was the discovery that they were in an alternate Universe. Other than that, all dialogue is simply an excuse to throw another bland level at you. One of the supposed highlights is that you can fight formerly good characters as bosses. This you can do without the characters feeling the slightest ounce of regret. Fighting Phoenix as Cyclops? ''It looks like Phoenix is a bad guy in this world.'' Gambit, Beast and Psylock don't even get that much. Geeze, you don't even get a bog-standard ''You can never defeat me!!'' speach when you meet Apocalypse. And the ending? Lack-lustre would be a compliment.

Buy, rent or download?

Normally, I only advocate the use of ROMS when you just can't get the actual game any more, but this is a rare exception. Even if you rent it for £1, that's £1 wasted. Download it, play it until you're sick of it, then delete it, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Overall

Nice graphics couldn't back up the rest of the game, which feels like it was rushed out in a week by a junior programmer.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 03/27/03, Updated 03/27/03