X-Men Legends (GameCube)

Legends captures the camaraderie largely in the gameplay. It plays like Diablo, in which you trawl through an area beating up bad guys and earning experience to spend on new skills, but unlike Diablo and its subsequent clones, this is all about teamwork rather than a lone adventurer trawling the dungeons. At preset points in Legends, you can arrange a team of four X-Men of your choice. But as you play, you control one X-Man at a time while the computer runs the other three (and it does so surprisingly well). The result is a fluid brawling system. For example, you can charge in using one of Wolverines' powerful swipe attacks to take out the first enemy, then change over to Storm to fire off a lightning strike that weakens everyone, then swap to Nightcrawler for a series of precise teleportation strikes to pick up the stragglers. Or you can just hang back as Cyclops, picking off enemies at your leisure while the other X-Men rush ahead. To encourage the group dynamic, simultaneous attacks result in combos that do extra damage and earn more experience. Many of the enemies also have resistances to certain types of attacks, which encourages you not to rely too heavily on one X-Man's powers.

As you play and your characters advance, there's a skill development system for each X-Man. At first glance, it looks like it might offer a lot of choices, but a character's progression is tightly controlled by the level requirements for his powers, not offering as much choice as you might first think.

The levels are mainly straight forward, with a few timed challenges, some missions, and the odd base defense task thrown in for good measure. As with most RPGs, your objectives are usually contrived excuses to drive you from point A to point B. There are various minor puzzles requiring the use of X-Men powers, but these tend to fall into two categories: building ice/lava/telepathy bridges or having Nightcrawler teleport past a barrier to open it. There are plenty of boss battles, but they tend to rely on brute force rather than puzzle solutions.

The gameplay is clearly oriented towards action, sometimes cramming the screen so full of mayhem that it's hard to get your bearings. There are a surprising number of destructible objects. With a strong enough character, you can pretty much pick up or break anything you can see. At first, this gimmick is mainly for treasure hunting; you'll want to bust open crates, barrels, and furniture to look for healing and power potions. But as the game progresses, the destructible objects make the battles even more gratifying.

Battling superheroes can do a lot of damage. As your attacks get more powerful, particularly in the latter part of the game, X-Men Legends captures this wonderfully with shattering windows, crumbling walls, and flying debris accompanying your fights.

Any negatives? Yes. Perhaps the biggest problem is the typical bad camera that plagues many action games. You can swing it around to see what you're doing, but that's not always possible. Sometimes you're fighting things you can't see and at some points, the camera gets trapped behind a wall or outside the level.

Then there are minor issues of consistency. Although there's lots of spirited voice work (there's something incredibly gratifying about having Patrick Stewart announce the names of your X-Men as you select them), there are times when it seems like an actor didn't bother showing up for their recording session; you hear half the conversation and you read the other half. The story also feels somewhat disjointed at times. It would have also been nice touch to have the option of playing as the Bad Guys, but alas, no such option is included.

X-Men Legends has such respect for its license, it manages to accomplish something most superhero games can't do: It makes you actually FEEL for the characters! X-Men Legends is unique for the way it brings out the sense of camaraderie among this band of superpowered outcasts in colorful costumes, celebrating their diversity not just in the way it tells the story, but in the way the game plays. The developers at Raven obviously know their stuff. They've done a phenomenal job of weaving the universe into the gameplay, storyline, cutscenes, and all the little nooks and crannies you can explore if you want. When you can successfully translate the central theme of a comic into a gameplay experience, minor problems like camera control and an inconsistent story fall by the wayside.

Legends is a compelling game even for those who aren't fans of the license, but it's an absolute must-have for X-Men followers.

It uses all the main and most popular X-Men, as well as introducing a new character in the main story mode.

The enemies you face throughout the game aren't that powerful but come in huge numbers, meaning that battles become extremely frenetic. This is both a strength and a weakness; with destructible environments you really feel like you're in a comic battle with enemies being thrown through walls and blasts of energy exploding crates and soldiers; however, it's all too easy to lose track of your party in amongst the melee.

The graphics are good but not stunning, and there are more than occasional glitches and bugs. Sound is impressive and gameplay solid most of the time, spectacular occasionally.

In summary this is an enjoyable group fighting game, not the best RPG on the market but one of the best on the 'Cube and certainly the best X-Men game to date.

However....what a game it is!!!! Its hard to believe but this is a brilliant game...such a basic idea, decent storyline and amazing cut scenes to boot...but its simply outstanding. You even get to play as Professor X at one point. It really is brilliant to play. The best way to describe it is by saying it is a cross between Diablo (in that you level up your character and pick up objects to advance your characters abilities ie DNA regenerator, elemental deflectors etc which you give to forge so that he can use them for scrap metal in order to make stronger pieces for you) and the 2nd NES teenage mutant turtles game where you slashed your way to the end.

Each of the 15 characters have 4 special moves in the arsenal in addition to the basic punches and kicks. Basic attack, advanced attack, advanced defence...and once you reach a certain level, you unlock their x-ability which in wolverines case means when you use it, he will dash around at warp speed attacking every opponent before they can blink.

Awesome game.