X-Men Legends - Review

Added October 13th, 2004 by Sallizar

Introduction:

The only X-Men games the past few years have been generic fighting games or low rate movie licensed games based on Wolverine. While these are decent games, they really don’t take into account the fact that the comic book roots of the franchise are about a team of mutant heroes. “Team” being the operative word here. Activision has teamed up with Raven Software to put together a game similar to a dungeon crawl game like Gauntlet but they replaced the warriors and wizards with our favorite spandex clad heroes and the goblins and orcs with Brotherhood of Mutants villains. In Legends, gamers will get to control a four-person team of X-Men as they try to put a stop to the Brotherhoods latest nefarious scheme for world domination.

Gameplay:

X-Men Legends' story revolves around a young mutant named Magma. The game starts with Magma being kidnapped by Blob and Mystique. The player is than put in the role of Wolverine to attempt a rescue mission that basically amounts to a tutorial level. That’s where my problems with the game design starts. Activision has consistently advertised the game as a multiplayer co-op game, but three quarters of the first level must be played single player. You eventually run into Cyclops and player two can jack in and control him for a few minutes before the showdown with Blob. Then, immediately after the first level, you are forced to wander around the X-mansion in yet another single player section. It takes a solid thirty to forty minutes before you can even start playing with four players. You’re thinking, “Hey, no big deal, it’s just a half an hour.” The problem is that this happens over and over throughout the story. As soon as you really get some marvelous four player action going it jerks to a stop and three people have to just watch while player one plays the game by himself. Sure, it gives the story some sense of purpose and direction but it thoroughly messes up the multiplayer aspect of the game. After you finish off a boss just send the other three players for Chinese takeout. Player one can fill them in when they get back.

Gameplay is reminiscent of recent dungeon crawlers like D&D: Heroes and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. You basically open a door, walk into a room and dispatch a whole bunch of bad guys, then open the next door until you find the level boss. X-Men Legends does a good job of keeping it from being mindless button mashing though. Multiple combos are available that can knockback, stun or throw opponents. You can also perform power combos that do tons of damage by having two characters both hit the same enemy with a mutant power attack at the same time. These combos generate extra expereince points for all characters so using teamwork to pull off as many as possible becomes essential in multiplayer. Some levels even feature basic puzzles that will require certain mutant abilities to pass. You might have to build bridges of ice with Iceman or use Cyclops’ optic beam to weld a hole closed. Enemies will have various resistances to certain effects so the team you take also plays a big part in your success or failure. If most of the enemies are mental resistant you better leave Jean Grey in the X-Jet, but if the enemies have physical damage resistance she’d be a good choice.

Beneath all the punching, clawing and blasting is a fairly complicated RPG engine. Each character has a three section character sheet that defines how they’ll function in the game. The attributes section determines each mutants Agility, Body, Focus and Strike. These attributes determine the damage you’ll do, how much health you’ll have and how often you can activate your powers. Each mutant’s skills section is different. This is where you’ll allocate experience points to obtain and enhance each mutant’s signature powers that we all know so well. Storm for example has various weather effects like lightening and a whirlwind attack. She also has some “always on” skills like adding lightening damage to her melee attacks and a leadership power that increases combo experience points if she’s in the game. The last section is dedicated to equipment. Each mutant can equip three items with effects that range from a common item that gives a one point attribute bonus to a rare item that add hundreds of damage to your mutant attacks. Strategizing the best combination of skills and equipment to use to build out a team is one of the most fulfilling parts of them game.
Graphics:

During development X-Men Legends was converted from a standard looking 3D engine to a cell shaded engine. This turned out to be a blessing and a curse. The actual in-game engine looks really good. The environments have tons of destructible objects and terrain and the characters and their various mutant power affects are well animated. I do find the black outlines on the characters to be a tad thick but it looks fine in game. Overall it creates a really great comic book look for the game. Cut scenes rendered in the game engine really suffer though. The characters faces look incredibly blurry and have very little detail up close. Professor X giving a briefing in the map room looks more like a Q-tip wearing a suit in a teeny tiny wheelchair. At least it’s a psychic Q-tip though. What I find really odd is that cut scenes for the really important events are done in full CGI that looks much nicer. Not sure why they couldn’t have used these to spice up the briefings and minor scenes.

Audio:

The X-Men animated series in the early 90s and the recent X-Men feature films have cemented in place a certain vocal styling for the majority of the X-Men. Activision was able to get Patrick Stewart to reprise his role as Professor X, but unknowns do the rest of the voice work. Overall it’s a good cast but some of the characters seem just a bit off. I live in the Southern U.S. and even the most southern person I know doesn’t say “y’all” as often as Rogue does in this game. Sounds effects are appropriately comic booky, right down to the “shinckt shinckt” of Wolverine’s claws. The musical is well done and fits the genre. None of the music particular sticks out, but it doesn’t have any really bad moments.

Controls:

The control setup for X-Men legends is similar to other dungeon crawl games I’ve played. The face buttons are used for various basic attacks and black and white are used to pop health and power pills. Activating mutant powers is as easy as holding the right trigger in while you tap a button. For example Cyclops’ Optic Beam is Right Trigger + A. When playing without four flesh and blood gamers plugged in, you can press the left trigger to have any AI controlled characters attack your current target. This helps when attempting combos alone. It’s a solid, but simple, control scheme overall that fits the game well.

Directional Pad - Change Hero
Left Thumbstick - Move Character
Right Thumbstick - Camera Control
A - Punch
B - Smash
X - Use - Pick Up - Throw
Y – Jump
White - Use Energy Pack
Black - Health Pack
Left Trigger - Call Allies
Right Trigger - Superpower Selector
Replay:

Throughout the game you’ll be able to unlock various X-Men to add to your team. There are fifteen in all including some fan favorites I didn’t expect like Jubilee, Gambit and Psylocke. You’ll also be able to unlock additional costumes for most of the characters including Wolverine’s classic yellow and blue spandex. Unfortunately the majority of these are unlocked by beating the game. After you’ve finished there isn’t really a reason to play again besides the new costumes. You also can’t start a game with your already leveled up characters like you can in most dungeon crawl game. If you restart it’s a brand new game that you’ll have to start completely from scratch. Might be fun to play again if you get a different group of people to play with, but once you and all your other X-fan friends have finished it I’m betting it’s going to end up in a used bin.

Summary:

Put four X-fanatics in a room together with an Xbox and X-Men Legends and stand back, cause that’s a lot of X. I was able to round up just such a group and we proceeded to make our way through the game. Between bites of pizza Hot Pockets, shouts of “Here comes a Fastball Special!”, “Watch your health Jean”, “When is Alpha Flight going to get such a cool game”, and “Slow them with your ice beam, Bobby!” were heard. At this point, one of the guys turned to me and said, “I just called you Bobby, that’s how you can tell a game is good”. It seems X-Men fans have been waiting for a game like this, but what about those gamers not into the comics scene? If you like dungeon crawl games and you’re wondering what all the fuss about the flaming bird thing at the end of the second X-Men movie was then you should still get a kick out of slicing up folks named “Bub”. It’s a great RPG that even non-comics fan can enjoy. Here’s hoping for an even better sequel that puts the emphasis squarely on the four person team play.