This game is a real treat for anyone who grew up watching X-Men or any other super hero cartoon or reading the comics.
X-Men is an old, yet immensely popular superhero franchise, that appeared in a number of good, bad and ugly video games. As most of you already know, X-Men are a team consisting of mutants with good hearts, led by the charismatic psychic Dr. Charles Xavier, popularly known as Dr. X. He has a school for training mutant with talents, and he teaches them to learn to live side by side with human beings. His once good friend and another powerful mutant Magneto (Erik), however, has different thoughts. According to him, only mutants should live, as they are superior in several aspects. Thus the forces of good and the brotherhood of evil go on in to a lengthy spell of conflicts. This conflict has been highlighted in most X-Men games till date.
However, this time around, the plot has a major twist when the X-Men and the Brotherhood joins forces to defeat another brutal mutant force, Apocalypse. Apocalypse is believed to be the oldest Mutant, who was raised by the Pharaohs. His concept is “Survival of the Fittest”, and he doesn’t deem X-Men or the brotherhood to be good enough.
The game starts off with Magneto, Sabretooth and Mystique (brotherhood members) teaming up with Wolverine, Storm and Cyclops to save Dr. Charles Xavier from a military facility. From that point onwards, the game unfolds as you have to defeat the four generals of Apocalypse and a couple of other villains who have decided to join forces with apocalypse. Of these villains, Omega Red and Lady Deathstrike are recognizable.
You can select a team of 4 from a total of 16 x-man and brotherhood characters. This gives the game a very good replay value, as you can experiment with different team combinations. Some objectives require a particular Mutant skill, which all the characters may not have. As an example, only the strong characters or characters with telekinesis ability will be able to move huge boxes or crates, which are blocking some hidden entrances or shortcuts to the objectives.
There are two basic attack buttons, a weak attack and a strong attack. Combining these buttons, you can unleash devastating and really good looking combos. In easy mode, most foes will die easily (except bosses), but if you play in the normal mode, you will need some good and lengthy combo sequences in order to defeat the bigger enemies. And as added icing to an already tasty cake, you get to use super powers. Each character has 10 special powers, with one being the ability to block. Also, some characters have passive abilities and the ability to fly. These mutant powers can work as projectiles, explosions that act in radii, shields, power-ups, etc. Each character has a desperation move that causes massive damage to all units present on screen.
You have to gain stats and experience points in order to unlock these special powers and increase your characters strength, agility and attack damage. You can manage the distribution of gained points manually, or opt for automatic upgrading. Automatic upgrading is more convenient, as otherwise you’d have to pause the game every 3 or 4 minutes for distributing the points. This gets really annoying after a while. Also, through the course of the game, you will be picking up power and health packs which can be used in replenishing lost health and power. Yes, there are two separate meters for power and health. Also, you will be able to pick up gears and armors for further bolstering your character’s usefulness.
Like a standard RPG game, your characters gain experience and level up. A level 40 character can be really deadly. Leveled up characters come really handy, especially at the later portions of the game. Thus it is also smarter to use a few characters and level them up, instead of using all characters. The non playing characters level up, too. So this means when you’re magneto is level 40, your totally unused Colossus will not be 0 or 1, he will at least be Level 30. So the game gives you an option of completing the game using all of the characters. Three characters needs to be unlocked, which includes Iron Man.
You can get team bonuses by mixing up specific characters, e.g. the “Brotherhood of Evil” team gets 5% XP bonus.
The game is divided in to 5 acts, and lots of areas to discover and sub-missions to accomplish. You will need to beat the sublevels, too, if you want to unlock everything. You can unlock training modes (danger room disks, in the games lingo), concept arts, comic book covers, etc. by collecting specific icons. You also get money in the form of golden and silver crystals, which can be used for purchasing items and level ups.
In every act, the allied forces establish their base in a particular mission. You will come back and forth to this base for changing team, receiving mission briefings, or just interacting with non playable characters. There are many NPCs from the X-Man universe in this game, which disappointingly includes Mystique as well. Not being able to play as Mystique was a big letdown, as her morphing skills would be really interesting to see.
The best part of the game is the signature moves. All characters act and behave in the same manner as they do in the movies, cartoons and comics. And the in-game conversations with the villains and the small cinematics are also highly enjoyable. The main villain Apocalypse has a clear-cut bad guy attitude.
The gameplay gets a bit boring after a while, but it is still enjoying as you can change characters on the fly. Tired of slow moving big guys? No problem, select characters that can fly.
The music is okay, but the sound effects are really cool. You will get a lot of destructible objects spread throughout each level. Breaking them is fun and useful as coins and other powerups are often hidden within. But the pleasure of breaking these things are further enhanced by the excellent smashing sounds.
There are no noticeable bugs or glitches in the game, and the installation is very neat as well. The game is not very resource hungry. If you keep anti aliasing off and lower down some details, you can even manage to play this game on a PIII or an old Celeron.
I really enjoyed playing this game, and as I have said in the beginning, I recommend it to any superhero fan.
There is also a multiplayer mode, where you can play the entire game with friends. You can also go one on one in a brawler type game. But those modes are not that great. The better part of the game resides in the story mode.