Game Review: X-Men Legends
I'll start calling them Game Review or Movie Review, depending.
Got an XBox and the above title for Christmas. X-Men Legends is what I like to think of as a Multi-player "Hack and Slash". This means that you and your friends control a character and walk around and beat up on bad guys. Sure, you can do combos, have special abilities, even solve an occasional puzzle, but basically it boils down to you and your buddy going around and beating the shit out of the bad guys.
I love those kind of games.
They're not really as popular as they used to be. Games these days tend to have moved on to other genres: your First Person Shooters (Halo, Doom), Real Time Strategy Games (Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires--I love these games too, I'll kick your ass in Starcraft, and you probably shouldn't mess with me in Warcraft either), Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs--Ultima Online, Everquest, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft), Sports games, boring one player games, etc. The Hack and Slash genre hit its peak in the Genesis/Super Nintendo era and was on the decline by the Nintendo 64/Playstation 1 era. However, every once in a while a good hack and slash comes out (Check out the Baldur's Gate games on Xbox or PS2--they are fricking awesome), and I fricking love it when that happens.
So as for the game itself, it's pretty damn good.
Strengths: Very good game play. The levels are filled with good amounts of bad guys, and your team is smart enough to actually help you and not be a hindrance (when the AI is controlling your team). You can use some decent combos buy yourself, and can combine your special abilities with other members of your team to unleash some devastating attacks.
The character development is AWESOME. May be the best part of the game. You level and add strengths and abilities as you go along, and the abilities are all fun, fit the theme of the character, and easy to use in gameplay. Another nice touch is that you don't just level the character you play with, or just the four members of your team; everyone levels with you. Whoever you are playing with usually stays a level or two higher, but you aren't penalized for rarely using Beast, even though every once in a while you'll need him. Great touch there.
The Danger Room adds a unique and exciting element to the game. There are a TON of hours of game play, and if you ever need a break from playing the game, you can hop into the Danger Room and play a variety of different game types, from fighting your friends one on one, to playing "Challengers Versus Champions" where you can be any player in the game (both human or computer) and try to beat any number of characters in the game. Great addition there.
After beating the game, you unlock the classic outfits for the XMen, which is a great touch.
Weaknesses: As usual with a hack and slash, sometimes the enemies can get mundane; a greater variety of bad guys would have been nice. It wasn't bad. however. Also, when playing multi-player, there are times when you slip into a "one player" section, and are forced to play by yourself for a while. While this is a unique twist to a video game, it wasn't what I would call a good one. It didn't happen too often though, so it wasn't terrible. My biggest disappointment was the last level and last two bosses. They were WAY too easy. Now true, Sam and I had leveled too crazy high levels at this point, but the game should have been expecting that. Also, there is not difficulty setting, so it's not like you can just up the level you're playing at.
Characters: The characters were awesome. Almost all of them were EXTREMELY fun to play with and were effective. Hell, even Jubilee was a fun and useful character, and she's the most useless X-Man ever. Wolverine was probably the best all around character; there was really nothing he couldn't handle. Cyclop's optic blasts just butchered the Sentinals, of course. Psyloche's psyonic blade could kill damn near anyone in one stroke. Nightcrawler was a GREAT character; his Teleportation Fury was BRUTAL. He teleports around his enemy, stopping just for a second to beat the crap out of him. That move can pretty much kill any enemy and leaves them no chance of touching Nightcrawler. Also, he has a move called Leap of Faith which is GREAT. As long as no one is controlling him, he can save a teammate from death. It's as simple as that. He was an awesome member of the team to have. Finally, Storm was incredibly powerful. Her Chain Lightning could kill EVERYBODY. It almost wasn't fair.
The most disappointing characters were Beast and Rogue. Neither had any special abilities that were exciting--Beast was damn near worthless in that department--and just weren't that affective overall. Rogue at least was a good Melee fighter, but they could have made her steal life ability a lot better than it was. However, that's two out of, what, ten, twelve? Trust me: it was hard to work everyone in you wanted to play with.
Overall: I'd give the game an 8.0 out of 10. XMen games rarely disappoint, and this follows the rule. I would have gone higher, maybe even a full 9.0, if the last level had been a bigger challenge. But this is a classic game that has some nice new twists with a lot of hours of game time on it. It is well worth the price, and I highly recommend you go out and get it.
Besides...you must prepare...The Age of Apocalypse is coming. :-)
Got an XBox and the above title for Christmas. X-Men Legends is what I like to think of as a Multi-player "Hack and Slash". This means that you and your friends control a character and walk around and beat up on bad guys. Sure, you can do combos, have special abilities, even solve an occasional puzzle, but basically it boils down to you and your buddy going around and beating the shit out of the bad guys.
I love those kind of games.
They're not really as popular as they used to be. Games these days tend to have moved on to other genres: your First Person Shooters (Halo, Doom), Real Time Strategy Games (Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires--I love these games too, I'll kick your ass in Starcraft, and you probably shouldn't mess with me in Warcraft either), Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs--Ultima Online, Everquest, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft), Sports games, boring one player games, etc. The Hack and Slash genre hit its peak in the Genesis/Super Nintendo era and was on the decline by the Nintendo 64/Playstation 1 era. However, every once in a while a good hack and slash comes out (Check out the Baldur's Gate games on Xbox or PS2--they are fricking awesome), and I fricking love it when that happens.
So as for the game itself, it's pretty damn good.
Strengths: Very good game play. The levels are filled with good amounts of bad guys, and your team is smart enough to actually help you and not be a hindrance (when the AI is controlling your team). You can use some decent combos buy yourself, and can combine your special abilities with other members of your team to unleash some devastating attacks.
The character development is AWESOME. May be the best part of the game. You level and add strengths and abilities as you go along, and the abilities are all fun, fit the theme of the character, and easy to use in gameplay. Another nice touch is that you don't just level the character you play with, or just the four members of your team; everyone levels with you. Whoever you are playing with usually stays a level or two higher, but you aren't penalized for rarely using Beast, even though every once in a while you'll need him. Great touch there.
The Danger Room adds a unique and exciting element to the game. There are a TON of hours of game play, and if you ever need a break from playing the game, you can hop into the Danger Room and play a variety of different game types, from fighting your friends one on one, to playing "Challengers Versus Champions" where you can be any player in the game (both human or computer) and try to beat any number of characters in the game. Great addition there.
After beating the game, you unlock the classic outfits for the XMen, which is a great touch.
Weaknesses: As usual with a hack and slash, sometimes the enemies can get mundane; a greater variety of bad guys would have been nice. It wasn't bad. however. Also, when playing multi-player, there are times when you slip into a "one player" section, and are forced to play by yourself for a while. While this is a unique twist to a video game, it wasn't what I would call a good one. It didn't happen too often though, so it wasn't terrible. My biggest disappointment was the last level and last two bosses. They were WAY too easy. Now true, Sam and I had leveled too crazy high levels at this point, but the game should have been expecting that. Also, there is not difficulty setting, so it's not like you can just up the level you're playing at.
Characters: The characters were awesome. Almost all of them were EXTREMELY fun to play with and were effective. Hell, even Jubilee was a fun and useful character, and she's the most useless X-Man ever. Wolverine was probably the best all around character; there was really nothing he couldn't handle. Cyclop's optic blasts just butchered the Sentinals, of course. Psyloche's psyonic blade could kill damn near anyone in one stroke. Nightcrawler was a GREAT character; his Teleportation Fury was BRUTAL. He teleports around his enemy, stopping just for a second to beat the crap out of him. That move can pretty much kill any enemy and leaves them no chance of touching Nightcrawler. Also, he has a move called Leap of Faith which is GREAT. As long as no one is controlling him, he can save a teammate from death. It's as simple as that. He was an awesome member of the team to have. Finally, Storm was incredibly powerful. Her Chain Lightning could kill EVERYBODY. It almost wasn't fair.
The most disappointing characters were Beast and Rogue. Neither had any special abilities that were exciting--Beast was damn near worthless in that department--and just weren't that affective overall. Rogue at least was a good Melee fighter, but they could have made her steal life ability a lot better than it was. However, that's two out of, what, ten, twelve? Trust me: it was hard to work everyone in you wanted to play with.
Overall: I'd give the game an 8.0 out of 10. XMen games rarely disappoint, and this follows the rule. I would have gone higher, maybe even a full 9.0, if the last level had been a bigger challenge. But this is a classic game that has some nice new twists with a lot of hours of game time on it. It is well worth the price, and I highly recommend you go out and get it.
Besides...you must prepare...The Age of Apocalypse is coming. :-)
posted by Michael Pondrom at 6:52 PM
1 Comments:
Excellent suggestions Barry!
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