X-Men Legends
Activision is at it again with the X-Men license, this time with X-Men Legends. I needed a new game, and with the heavy ad campaign that is going on for it, I figured that I might as well give it a chance and see what it's like. Of course, I knew going into it that it would not live up to the hype behind it. Prime example of something like that would be Fable, but that's for another time.
The game starts out with the usual set-up for X-Men: humans are being dicks to the mutants, and Hell is breaking loose. Enter a couple of bad guys (Blob and Mystique) who kidnap another mutant girl with the power to control lava. You start the game out as every fanboys favorite, Wolverine, and must chase them down to save the girl. Along the way through other missions, you learn the true motives of all the bad guys and set out to kick their asses.
The characters that you get to pick and play as is fairly vast; there are 14 normal characters and one hidden character that you can play as. Most of these are the fan favorites, such as Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit, and the super heroine with the crappiest nickname, Jean Grey. I mean, no one could think of anything for her, so she just uses her real name? That would be like me using...you know what, nevermind.
The cast of enemies is just as vast, and almost any casual fan could identify. Of course, their names usually tell you what their powers are: Pyro, who can control fire. Avalanche, who can cause earthquakes. Blob, who is a giant fatass. Juggernaut, who kicks ass, and Magneto, who obviously has something to do with magnetism or VCR repair.
For almost any mission, you can take up to four X-Men that you have in your stable of superheroes. Most of the time you want to have some balance, such as taking maybe two people who can do energy or mental attacks, and two who are almost exclusively powerful physical attacks. It lends a little diversity to the game, and gives you the choice of either shooting someone from far away with Cyclops' optic blast, pick them up with your mind like Jean Grey, or punching them in the face and then have them fly through a wall with Colosuss. You could probably guess which one I like doing more.
Since it's X-Men, you would think that the game is just a straight action game, but that is not so. This is more of an action/RPG type game, that allows you to level up your mutants to kick even more ass. You can gain new attacks, and upgrade those attacks and other previous ones. You also don't have to be stuck with just using one mutant only throughout the missions, and can switch to anyone else in your party by using the control pad.
Scoring Breakdown
Graphics and Sound
The game looks very nice. The overhead camera makes it so you can see everything, but at times it can be cumbersome when you go underneath something and it either keeps trying to zoom in so you can't see, or you get under something that won't become transparent and you can't see. For the most part though, the camera does cooperate, but like all games, there are times when the camera seems to be more interested in something besides you.
The game itself seems to have a somewhat cell-shaded look,especially in the little cut-scenes. It still doesn't look bad though, or take it to idiotic levels like Zelda: Wind Waker. There's not a great deal of articulation with the characters either. When someone picks up a box or anything else, they do it with their fists, which brings back memories of Final Fantasy VII and the giant block hands.
The sound for the game is decent enough. The voice acting at times can leave something to be desired, but they did one thing that surprised me, and that was get Patrick Stewart, who plays Professor Xavier in the X-Men movies, to actually do the voice acting for the game. Other than that, don't expect to hear anyone from the movies. At times, the accents for some of the characters can get to the point where it's almost sad, like in the cases of Nightcrawler and Colossus. The enemy voice acting gets very repetetive very fast too. Every time you clear an area of enemies, as soon as you come to more bad guys, they say one of about four or five things, depending on who you are fighting at the time.
3...out of 5.
Gameplay
This is where I tend to think the most problems of the game are at. Almost all the types of characters you can play as are just the same as other mutants with similar powers. Take Gambit for example. Oh look, he can throw pink cards at people. Okay, but then you have Magma, who can throw lava at people, in exactly the same spread as Gambit and his cards. Jubilee is the same way with her...what the Hell does she throw anyway, fireworks? Colossus can deliver a charged punch to people, but Rouge can do the same thing, only her move is green instead of silver. Beast can do assorted melee attacks, but you could also use Wolverine, who is just as good, to do the same thing. There are only certain points in the game where you may have to use a particular person, but those only involve making a bridge made out of ice or mental stuff. It would have helped out the game to have missions where you have to take someone because they have to do something. Add to that if you don't want to use someone at all, you don't have to. There are characters that I have that I have not used more than once just to see what they can do. You think I would want to use them just to level up, but the game takes care of that by leveling everyone up like I was using them in missions. So little Jubilee, who has not been used yet, started out as level one and is now level 26, the same as everyone else.
There are two particular PC games that this game seems to rip off, but no one really notices. I've heard that there is not another hero game that has the play style like this, but that's wrong. A couple of years ago, there was a little game called Freedom Force that was done by...I think EA. Same character set-up, same camera set-up, just about same everything. The only real difference between this game and that one is that this one has Marvel characters.
The other game that this somewhat takes from is the Diablo series from Blizzard. Every level is a what could be classified as a dungeon maze. You gain new items left by the enemies that you kill, and every now and then you run into a higher up grunt bad guy that's a different color and has some other power, like resistence to energy, physical, or menal attacks, and an aura for this that makes it so other enemies can gain the advantage.
Even though many things in this game have been done before, this game does them well.
4...out of 5.
Story
The story for this game is like an amalgimation of various Marvel stories: first you have to fight off the humans and save them at the same time, then you have to fight other mutants while protecting the humans who are fighting you, then you have to fight the giant robot Sentinels and protect the mutants and humans, both of whom are fighting you, then you have to save Professor X, then blah blah blah...Aaaaargh my brain! It's almost completely linear, except in a few cases you get to pick which mission you want to do first. This game also has a few "flashback" missions which you don't have to do, but allow you to complete tasks from the X-Men's past, like the first time they fought the Sentinels, or the first time they had to take on Juggernaut. It's nothing real new from the Marvel Universe.
2.5...out of 5.
Overall
Marvel fans will like this game because it’s the first one in a long time that is actually good. Casual fans should like it because it’s a good game even if you’ve never been that big into Marvel. While there are some faults in the game, there are things that is does well also. It’s not perfect, but if there are going to be sequels to the game, it’s a Helluva step in the right direction. Definitely rental worthy, and purchase worthy if it fits your tastes. It could stand to have online capability, but so could almost all games that are done nowadays. It’s not hurt by it since you can only have up to four characters at a time, but if in the future you can have more than that, it would be great to play with someone else.
3.5…out of 5.
Bottom Line
I've watched the two movies, seen the '90s cartoon, and been somewhat of a fan of the comics when I could get them to know the characters in the game, but even if you don't know anything about the franchise, it's still fairly enjoyable. If you don’t want to throw down the $50 for it right now and feel like waiting for the price to drop, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what I do most of the time anyway. However, if you want to go out and get it now, no worries, because you’re not getting ripped off.
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