Platform: PS2
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Raven
Genre: Role Playing/Adventure
ESRB: T
# Players: 1 – 4
I personally, have never been a huge fan of X-men; however, I thoroughly enjoyed the movies and generally entertained by the characters. Needless to say many entries of X-men titles haven't been held as worthwhile games. By not just focusing on one specific X-men, the story does revolve around a new particular X-men, Activision has included all X-Men and specifically exploiting the strengths and weakness of each member of the crew.
Story: More and more mutants are evolving from "normal" humans, and Magneto has a special interest in a young girl named Alison. Immediately Magneto sends in two of his most valuable assassins, Mystique and Blob. Their duty is to kidnap Alison and bring her back to Magneto, for whatever reasons he has on mutant world domination. Sadly upon their arrival Wolverine ambushes the parade and is able to save Alison from Magneto's grasp. The story then revolves around Alison and her power, later she becomes known as Magma, and essentially the story becomes a struggle for humankind. Overall the story is nothing you wouldn't expect from an X-Men game. 6/10.
Graphics: X-Men takes the route that many games have taken of late with cel-shaded graphics, however, the quality doesn't seem as good as Mega Man Command Mission, or Viewtiful Joe. It may be the distance of the camera with the isometric view, but they just don't look as crisp. This isn't mean that the graphics are disappointing, but it isn't on par with other games using the same graphic style. However, the animations are very well done, the characters move fluidly and the attacks combine nicely. Also, the explosions are gorgeous giving a great scale of damage, especially considering that they are the X-men. However, I absolutely hated the amount of invisible walls in the game, there were far too many it really felt like you were entrapped in a certain area instead of being in an expanded world, it really ruined some of the experience. However, the action was still fluid with no slowdown, and the action was very entertaining to watch. 8/10
Gameplay: How X-Men Legends fell apart in the most important aspect of the game is absolutely astonishing. 15 playable X-Men was unheard of in other X-Men titles, however, Activision knew that there was more to X-Men than just Wolverine, or did they? The single player is what destroyed the X-Men Legends experience; your ally AI is completely idiotic. Before, I get into that let me breakdown the core gameplay. As stated there are 15 playable characters, there are the more popular characters like Wolverine and Cyclops, but the also included the lesser known characters like Beast and Nightcrawler. Also, each character comes with their own special abilities, for example, Cyclops of course can use his Optic Lens, and Jean Gray naturally uses her psychic ability. However, you can equip 4 different powers ranging in level and damage so the characters can be somewhat customized. The RPG elements also make a huge role in the game in terms of experience and abilities, this part of the game was very unique and added a lot of strategy to the game.
After one of your characters levels up, you must push the select to get to the menu screen, and this is where the game starts to go downhill. For some reason the menu screen would take time to go through a loading screen for some reason. It didn't happen all the time, but some times it did and others it did not. The problem is with 4 characters leveling up at different times, you would have to stop the action and wait for a loading screen then be able to customize you character and go back to the action. This really slowed down the pace of the game and the action, it gets extremely frustrating. However, once you are on the loading screen the options you have are incredible, you get about 2 points for each level you go up that are split into two different areas. The first areas you can level up are your stats, Strength, Agility, Stamina things along those lines. The second aspect you can add these points two are abilities, such as Iceman's ability to glide in the air for an extended period of time, or Wolverine's ability to heal quicker. Not only are character specific abilities customizable, but so are basic abilities, like Might which allows to lift heavier objects. This in turn allows for a huge variety of customization and adds a lot to the strategy of the game. Equipment can also be equipped to help defense, agility and health regeneration, sadly only three types of equipment can be attached at one time, and the items aren't very "in depth."
The battle system if very familiar as well, it is an exact copy cat of games like Baulders Gate and Champions of Norrath, literally the same exact set-up. However, pressing different patterns of the attack buttons allowed for longer and more damaging combos. There was also the ability to use a very weak double team system, for example. If Cyclops and Wolverine used their default special abilities on the same person and at the same time you would perform a combo. However, these happen more by accident than on purpose as the entire gameplay is hack & slash at heart, which does become extremely repetitive. X & O are your attack buttons, and by pushing these in a certain succession you can link some of your attacks longer for more damage. To mix things up a bit there is also a button to grab and throw objects and your enemies, which does add some fun to the gameplay. Almost every object in the environment is destructible. Planters, snowmobiles, bus stop benches, walls, refrigerators, everything. However, I found it very strange that the X-Men would actually go around and destroy everything in their way, not very hero like if you ask me. Items to heal yourself with health or magic points, was a simple push of the L1 or R1 buttons, respectively. Also the use of your special attacks was very easy, by pressing the L2 button and holding it down an icon of your assigned moves to the X, O, Triangle, and Square buttons would appear. By pressing the L2 button and your choice of button it would perform that special ability.
Now we come to the AI, the computer AI is pretty well done, it sometimes can be a tad difficult in single player, but other than that, the enemy AI is pretty well done. Sadly, your ally AI practically forces you to be Wolverine the entire time, because your allies hardly attack. Granted, you are given the option to customize how you want them to act in battle, but even if you set this to aggressive, they still are extremely cautious. Basically, in order to suffer the least amount of damage you would be forced to use Wolverine as his health regeneration ability, keeps you from suffering a ton of damage. The good news is you can switch between characters on the fly during a battle. Simply press the proper direction on the D pad and you would be in control of Storm, Cyclops, or whomever you had in your party at time. Sadly, as I stated, you could only be a different character for so long as whatever character you chose receives a massive amount of damage, because the computer attacks you solely and the ally AI doesn't seem to help you out but a special ability move on occasion.
Now, the multiplayer is the saving grace of this game, playing with your friends as your favorite X-Men is just so much fun. It truly makes you realize how you ally AI really should have been like, instead of the occasional saving grace shot. Also, with 4 players you are able to really customize your party, I for one used Beast, and found myself constantly upgrading my defense and Might abilities, so that I was able to lift the snowmobiles and such, while my buddies worked on their strength and flight abilities. Sadly, the ally AI customization wasn't really able to use their abilities, because as stated the AI is almost nil. As for the multiplayer what makes it so nice is the fact that any body can join in or leave at fly. Simply pressing the start button and the D-Pad in the direction of the character you want to be. The multiplayer also keeps things moving in terms of the games puzzles. For example, in single player if you happen to be Wolverine, and need to put out a fire, you would need to press the D-Pad in the direction that Iceman was in. In multiplayer, whoever was controlling Iceman could just use his special ability in and bam right into the action. This is a minor setback, but still keeps the pace of the game going.
The puzzles in the game aren't extremely difficult, and an icon also pops up where an ability is needed. Essentially any real puzzles are basically non-existent as you know when and exactly where to use them. However, the ways to solve the puzzles are many, for example in one scenario a wall is needs to be broken down, you could use Cyclops Beam attacks, or Colossus abilities to break it down. The puzzles are simple, but at least you don't need specific abilities to solve them. Sadly, even with the games great multiplayer the single player is so incredibly dull and frustrating the game falls massively short. 6/10.
Sound: The games sound effects were well done, the explosions sounded real, and they really gave you sense of being in the action. The voice-overs were also well done, during combat, but really fell apart during the cutscenes and during the plot of the game. Professor X was actually done by his real-life counter-part; sadly he was the only one. The rest of the acting was average at best, and the worst part was that whenever you had the option to choose your dialogue the sound would be cut and half. With these mishaps the sound is above-average, but nothing spectacular. 7/10.
Fun Factor: As stated, unless you are a huge fan of X-Men, the only way you can have fun with this game is with 4 players and a lot of patience. 6/10
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