X-Men Legends

This game is great.

It's a brawler with RPG elements, in the Baldur's Gate: dark Alliance / Champions of Norrath / Fallout Brotherhood vein, but better executed. I would recommend this game before any of those games. The controls are "pick up and play" easy, and the mix of characters keeps things interesting.

One great feature is that I was playing the game during the Juggernaut attack flashback, and my brother came in and wanted to try the game out too. All he had to do to join the game that I was playing in story mode was to pick up a controller. No interruption in my game whatsoever, and the easy to learn controls meant that he didn't screw me up either.

For those who don't like the ultimate costumes, various original costumes such as Wolverine's make appearances in flashback, and they are also unlockable.

The AI characters are pretty smart, and don't do stupid things like charge off into nowhere or run off of cliffs and for this I am grateful. Sometimes AI wolverine even does a better job than my wolverine, which is a high compliment.

I'm not finished with the game. I just beat Magneto (he was a wimp, even though Sabretooth and Mystique were helping him during the fight), so I think that I'm pretty far along in the game. When I'm done, I will probably re-play the game to find all of the the danger room disks that you need to unlock the ultimate offensive attachments of the mutants, but a harder difficulty with fewer dropped potions and stringer enemies would make things more challenging, and the game doesn't have this. However the game does have a "Danger Room mode" where you can play as any character in the game or team of characters and play against any character or teams of characters that you've met (I tried to beat Magneto, Juggernaut, Cyclops, and a Sentinel with a team of wimpy brotherhood marauders, and the result wasn't pretty, so I swiched teams and stomped them up with Juggernaut).

Oh, and the writers knocked the story for this game out of the ballpark. Better than the output of any X-men comic this year.

Possible negatives include the cell shaded graphics, which are good enough for the overhead perspective of the game, but look awful in some game-engine cut scenes. Still, the story is great, and I prefer the good story to the pretty, but useless, cutscenes of a "Baldur's gate 2." Another negative is that this Brawler with RPG elements is less "Brawler" than, say, Kingdom Hearts, but the variety and customizations of you characters makes up for that. Instead of using the same attack pattern on level after level, you can mix characters or level up characters differently for different styles of play. I also like the simpler controls and lack of complicated combos. A final negative is that the game is not difficult, and over in about 20-30 hours. My game is at the 31 hour mark and I'm just about done, but that's the genre standard so the value here on game difficulty and on depth still compares well to similarly paced games.

Hmm...well, first off, I remember reading a review by Derek Mok before buying the game, and almost didn't because of his bad review (of course, I bought it anyway out of boredom and curiousity). As it turns out, he had played, oh, approximately 5% or so of the game. As such, he got lots of things wrong, and, since Amazon's evidently deemed fit to still place his review at the top of their list, I'd hate for others to be misled as I was.

First, the Danger Room bit where he claims you can only train one of your characters. At first, this is true, and the initial trainings act as a tutorial, teaching you the combo sequences. But there are many, MANY Danger Room exercises to be found as you progress through the game, and the Danger Room becomes a big part of the Story Mode as it allows you easily level your characters up by replaying old training exercises.

Now, as a side note, don't confuse the Danger Room I mentioned in that paragraph with the Danger Room option that's accessed through the main menu. THAT Danger Room mode sucks; everyone's gotten that point right. It does have about 10 minutes of entertainment value, as you can play as the villians, but that's about it. But no, it's the Danger Room exercises within the Story Mode itself that I'm referring to. I know, a bit confusing if you haven't played the game.

Also, some people complain about the save game engine; in my opinion, it's really not bad. It isn't a "Save Anywhere" style as in Champions of Norrath, more like the Save Point system in Final Fantasy, but the SP's are spaced fairly conveniently. After playing all the way through, I'd say they're spaced about 20-30 minutes apart. At the SP's, you can also access the Danger Room (the Story Mode style, mind you), change your teammates (which is necessary if you come to a point where you need a bridge built or a flier), and buy equipment/health thingies (I wanna call them potions 'cause that's what they are in every other RPG, but oh well...).

On to mission length. Yeah, the missions are long, but like I say, you get enough Save Points along the way if you need to stop for a break. Also, a mission will never start unless you confirm that you want it to. The flashback sequences are optional also, although I'd highly recommend playing them. Still, Derek said the first mission took him 2-3 hours. What, did your intestines explode mid-game? My first time through, the first mission took me maybe 45 minutes, and that was checking each nook and cranny. Second time through, twenty minutes, tops.

However, don't expect the whole game to look like what is presented on TV; those clips are just the FMV sequences. Though the in-game graphics are pretty darn good (they look just like a comic, anyway, which is something I'm more than happy with).

The character balance is good, but like almost any RPG, the fighters (like Wolverine and Beast) are overpowered at first while the ranged fighters (Cyclops, Storm, etc.) are weaker; as the game progresses though, they really balance each other out, and by the end, the ranged fighters are really capable of so much more than the melee's are. Additionally, there are mixed characters like Nightcrawler or Gambit capable of either role, depending on how you decide to level them up. Good system all around, in my opinion, which is something I expect from Raven Software. They've got too much experience in the field not to have balance by now.

My only beef was that Psylocke isn't available until way late in the game. Such a bummer for such a cool fighter. Of course, there are characters I would've liked to see, both villians (umm...lemme put it this way, so I don't spoil anything: I really would've rather fought the villian who sets up a sequel in the final FMV than fight Magneto) and heroes (Havok would've been great as a playable character, as would somebody like Cable or Bishop or even Quicksilver, though Bishop makes a VERY small cameo as a child), but there's so many X-characters that it's hard to make beef when there's so many of them out there.

All in all, a great, addictive game with enough RPG elements to keep role-players interested and enough action to keep more normal people entertained as well. And bottom line, ignore the guy who makes judgment and writes his review before he's even gotten a quarter of the way into the game.

It's Grand theft auto Vice City of comic book superhero games. There are tons of characters to gather throughout the game and choose from. Among them are Wolverine, Gambit, Iceman, Beast, Rogue, Jubilee, Nightcrawler to name a few, and they all have a wide selection of unique and powerful moves that can be strengthened with experience. All Throughout the game Professor X sends you on various intense missions as the team while at the same time you play the role of the young mutant Magma as she's dealing with her newfound mutant burden and she's just enrolling in the school and going through danger room training sequences and introducing herself to all the other schools mutants. While on the missions, you (The X-Men) get to fight Pyro, Blob, Mystique, Toad, Avalanche, Sentinels, Morlocks, Magneto and even Juggernaut in one of the sequences where the heroes recall certain historic fights that they've been through and you're left to act them out. Juggernauts rampaging through the mansion looking for Xavier to kill him and he's plowing through everything in sight, tables, furniture, walls, and it's just one of those sequences in games where you actually feel like you're in there yourself running after him. I think the voice of Juggernaut is the same voice of that cigar smoking talking robot from the Simpsons. There are a few entire days worth of gameplay and believe me it is so involving that it will pull you right in and not let go and everything else around you in the room you're in will seem very distant.

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