X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse Review

But what about the Brotherhood? They are a major part of this game now since they comprise half of your team, so how do they look? Well, the big name members of the team that you may end up playing with are Magneto, Scarlet Witch and Juggernaut. They all look simply superb, especially Magneto, as he dawns his trademark indigo cape and mental protection helmet. Juggernaut looks very intimidating too, as his incredibly large size and massive armor suit make him look like a steroid-induced NFL lineman. Even Toad has his rather gross and unnatural look to him, but supposing he is a human toad that is to be expected. He’s got his webbed feet, his disgustingly long and green tongue, as well as his “bugged-out” eyes. He also moves by hopping around so that too makes his character seem more authentic. So really, when it all comes down, Raven did what they could to give each mutant a more authentic look, and they did their job quite well. But what about your environments and special effects?

If you played XML, you may remember how claustrophobic some of the levels may have felt. A lot of the areas you visited were inside buildings that basically followed one set path. Well, that whole aspect is hardly present in RoA. Raven made sure to add more variety to the environments you encounter, and they did yet another fine job. Granted it isn’t all perfect, but it’s actually pretty close. You’ll visit anything from tropical islands, to various manufacturing plants and the even the Pyramids of Giza themselves. Levels are also much more open and expansive. You will have a ton of room to move your team around, which allows for battles to really span the television screen. There is also a healthy balance of levels in which you are outside and inside buildings. That adds a nice touch to the game, as a superhero team like the X-Men would hardly have missions geared more towards the outside than inside and vice versa. To compliment this improvement, you’ll almost never have that “Didn’t we just fight those guys?” kind of feel in doing battle. Each level in each Act (in which there are five) brings about unique and different enemies for you to tussle with. Now granted a lot of them may look the same in the actual level itself, but thankfully there’s just enough variety there so it isn’t quite as noticeable.

Finally we have the special effects, which are basically comprised of the destructive aspects of your environment and the looks of each mutant’s powers. Just like in XML, your environments have a lot of things which can be literally destroyed. However, in RoA, Raven wanted to emphasize that whole ideal that much more by allowing even more destruction. Why did they do this? Well that’s simple, because there is a lot more to be found in the things that you can destroy. Whether it may be tech credits, health/energy packs, equipment or the items that unlock various features of the game, they can be found hidden. Raven actually encourages you and your mutant team to destroy everything that you can, because they want you to feel that rush. Plus if you do want to find all the unlockables in the game, you pretty much have to anyway. Then we have each mutant’s powers. All these have been given a significant upgrade since XML. No longer does each mutant only have four main useable powers in battle. Now each team member has about twelve each to work with. This was done to make battles more interesting and exciting, and boy do they do just that. For instance, Wolverine now has new abilities such as a “spin-o-rama” claw attack and a “scream” that can scare enemies away from you. Storm now has all the types of weather available at her disposal in terms of ability use. This includes lightning, strong winds and winter-like abilities. Pretty much all the mutant powers look extremely cool, and seeing them destroy what you are able to in your environment makes the experience that much sweeter.

Really the only downside to the game in the graphics department is the occasional frame rate issue. In certain missions you will have a ton of enemies around you and that obviously requires even more actions on your part to get rid of them. Well that may bring about a very noticeable slowdown in the sequence of action on the screen, as for some reason the GameCube doesn’t seem to be able to handle it quite that well. This was noticeable the most when fighting the first Horseman of Apocalypse as well as the mission in which you fight a never-ending number of cyborgs. So even though it hardly happens often, it does happen, and that is obviously something that probably could’ve been worked on for the final release. But nevertheless, even with that small flaw, RoA just does another incredible job of presenting the X-Men universe graphically. The cel-shading/anime/manga style works beautifully yet again and is bound to please any loyal fan of the popular Marvel team.

So with an excellent display of graphical expertise, Raven also managed to scrounge up a fantastic group of people to lend their talents for the music and sounds. The music in RoA is both great and not-so-hot at the same time. The game is comprised of five different Acts, each divided into multiple missions for each. So with a lot of missions you would expect a lot of different action-themed music to go along with it right? Well, in some cases it ends up working that way, and in some it just downright sucks. There isn’t a lot of actual “memorable” music than one might think would be in the game, but when it is, it’s pleasing to hear. The best music in the game unfortunately comes towards the end of it, when you encounter environments such as the Madria Temple and the path to Apocalypse’s Tower. At the beginning, some of the music is pretty decent to hear, but most of it isn’t really something you might find yourself whistling to. But in the Madria Temple, the whole musical score sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings and its “battle for middle earth” concept. The same can be said about Apocalypse’s Tower, that music gets intense as you edge closer and closer to your final objective. The way it sounds is enough to make even the most hardened XML player a little nervous.

Thankfully the small shortcomings in terms of consistent exciting music are made up with the authentic voice acting of the game’s characters. Whoever Raven hired to provide the voices to all the characters made a fine choice in judgment. Each member of the X-Men, Brotherhood and the enemies you face and sound just like they should and probably would in the cartoons. Wolverine has his trademark “I want to kick butt and take names” tone of voice, but of course we all know he truly has that caring core to him. Cyclops has his familiar “nerdy and leadership-like” tone of voice, which is what Wolverine tends to make fun of all the time. Then Rogue has her southern accent, Colossus has his Russian voice and Nightcrawler speaks his German dialect. Just every member of each team speaks how they should, and this in turn makes conversations between the two flow like they probably should. Obviously the X-Men and Brotherhood don’t really care much for each other, but since they are forced to work together, there is always tension. You won’t be able to count the number of times a member of the X-Men or Brotherhood threatens to beat the living daylights out of a member of the opposite team. Iceman and Juggernaut tend to have a lot of those conversations, and Toad never seema to know when to keep his mouth shut when it comes to objecting to missions. This same applies to Apocalypse and members of his team. Especially with Apocalypse and his associate Mister Sinister, they are downright evil stricken characters. They are both bent on global conquest and their ideal of “only the strong should survive”, so obviously their dialogue and tone reflect that.