X-Men Legends

Activision is on a roll lately with their superhero games. First Spider-Man 2 and now X-Men Legends. It is nice to see these great franchises get the love and attention they deserve and not just end up as yet more cookie-cutter bargain bin bound crap with a big license attached to it. X-Men Legends is a well put together action RPG that will keep both casual fans and the X-Men obsessed happy.

The story in X-Men Legends is very well put together and thoroughly interesting. You start the game as Wolverine who is sent to rescue a mutant called Magma from Magneto’s gang of thugs known as the Brotherhood of Mutants. In typical video game and comic book form, things start out very small and very simply but eventually grow to the point where the fate of the entire world is in balance. Nearly all of your favorite heroes and villains play a role in the game, and they have all been recreated perfectly here. As an added bonus to the standard story missions are even some flashback missions thrown in that let you control the X-Men in their classic uniforms which is a treat for longtime fans of the series.

The game plays very similarly to other action RPGs such as the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance series. You basically run around and beat the crud out of the bad guys. You can select a team of four X-Men including Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Psylocke, and many, many more. You can switch between characters at any time in order to take advantage of each mutant’s unique powers when the situation arises. Not all missions let you use four X-Men, but most of them do, and leading a team of mutants into battle is really pretty exciting and the team aspect was well implemented here.

Combat is fairly simple and straightforward. There are two melee attack buttons that you can use to create combos. You also have four different special moves that are exclusive to each mutant. These moves are just like you would expect. Wolverine slashes with his claws. Cyclops shoots enemies with his optic blast. And Storm uses various weather effects. All of the attacks are easy to use and the game has a very fast pace to it. You are limited in how much you can use the mutant powers, but this makes you balance your melee attacks with the special powers and I think it works well to create a game where you can’t just blast your way through every room.

Somewhat of a concern is the fact that it is actually much more difficult to kill your X-Men than it is to keep them alive. Wolverine automatically regains his health, and there are a ton of health packs spread throughout the levels that the rest of your team can use. This makes the game extremely easy, but it is still very satisfying because it will take even the best players around 20 hours to beat it.