X-Men Legends Review

The X-Men is an awesome group of superheroes, no one really denies that. Unfortunately most of the games they’ve been featured in the past have been less then stellar. There have been the somewhat enjoyable 2D sidescrolling games and such, and the rather entertaining arcade machine. But when it comes to an overall feeling, X-Men games just haven’t truly captured that particular comic book universe. To be brutally honest, most X-Men games really could only be enjoyed by the most hardcore fans of the comic book team. This however, dramatically changed with the release of X-Men Legends. Raven Software was indeed taking a risk pitting a comic book superhero team into a role-playing environment, but someone finally got the formula right!

Alison Crestmere is an 18 year old girl who all of a sudden discovers that she has the power to create lava and control boulders. This suddenness causes the Brotherhood of Mutants to strike. For whatever reason, Mystique, Blob and Pyro of the Brotherhood attempt to kidnap this young lady in BROAD daylight. This boldness beckons the call of a certain X-Man in the ever popular Wolverine!

Wolverine takes the streets in pursuit of Blob who is on fast tracks to get this girl out of the area, and he has plenty of Brotherhood supporters to deal with! So your first mission is simple, find Blob, find Alison and find out why the Brotherhood tried to kidnap her in broad daylight!

X-Men Legends is a game that you can either play by yourself or with up to 3 additional people. So a human player can actually take control of one of whatever available X-Men there are for your team. Unfortunately the first mission only focuses on Wolverine for about 90% of it until you meet up with Cyclops. Then two people can play the game, but only until the second mission after you go through the X Mansion with Alison do you have at least four team members at your disposal. This can indeed frustrate some people who want to play, so it’s almost best for you to go through the first mission all by yourself to avoid the boredom of your friends.

But once you get through the first action packed mission with Wolverine and Cyclops, it’s an absolutely blast to play from then on in!

One of the many beauties of X-Men Legends is the fact that it takes little time to learn all the main controls of the game!

You have two main buttons for melee attacks, one button for jumping, one for opening doors and accessing new areas and then various two button combinations to regenerate team members and use their various powers!

It’s safe to say that after about a half hour or so you really should be quite familiar with all the game’s main controls. Plus if you read the instruction booklet beforehand, then it might take little more than ten minutes to be able to play the game well. There really isn’t much else to say here, the game is just easy to learn, and that’s a great thing!

This is one of the biggest areas in which Raven Software truly shined in developing this game. X-Men Legends sports a very cel-shaded type of graphical layout that really does a superb job of making the player feel like he or she is truly experiencing the comic book universe of the X-Men.

Now what makes it even more unique is the fact that many of the character avatar designs were created to be sort of “modernized” in a way that isn’t a direct copy of the comic book/tv characters. None of the X-Men are wearing any “special” costume they might be wearing in the comics or on tv, they each have their own unique set of apparel. Now that doesn’t go to say that some of the costumes they wear don’t mirror the look of their comic book or tv counterpart, because some actually do. But the sort of comic book and modern feel of their looks really make them just look great and independent.

Then there are the little things that are apparent with some of the X-Men members which just makes you proud of Raven Software that much more for working hard! Each distinct claw of Wolverine’s is easily seen in this game, and watching the animation of them going in and out of his hands is pretty darn cool! Then you also have others like Cyclops’ “visor” in which he projects his eye beam attack through. You also have Colossus’ “metal-like” body and even the “devil-like” tail of Nightcrawler. The attention to detail of each X-Men member featured in this game is just amazing in certain regards. The only thing that really could be thought of as disappointing is when the characters actually talk to each other, their mouths never move, and that’s something Raven really should’ve done to make the experience even that much more immersive.