X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse
More of the same mutie-fueled hack ‘n slash action, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Published: October 17, 2005
The first X-Men Legends didn’t arrive all that long ago, but it was a nice change of pace from the till-then fantasy-heavy dungeon crawls that had hit the PS2 at the time. It wasn’t especially varied, though, and once the novelty of pairing up comic nerd-style X-Men teams in little four-way geek session wore off, some got a little tired of the crawl.
Well, there’s good news and bad news, true believers. While developer Raven upped the geek factor in the game, embedding tons of little references to past teams and managed a slightly ham-fisted attempt to rope the Age of Apocalypse storyline into a game that didn’t completely mess with the continuity, it’s still strikingly similar to the last game – to the point where the two may not be told apart at first glance.
That’s not fair, of course, the game has had some overhauls, namely in the variety and complexity of the environments, but there’s still a ton of crate smashing and button mashing to be had. Luckily, the best improvements are in the RPG parts of the game, allowing (and later forcing) some real choices about how your team is chosen, how the individual powers are bulked up, and what kind of stat improvements are ladled on top of each character.
Of course, should you want to just get right to the hacking and slashing, the game will happily auto-level your characters for you, and even assign equipment to the most appropriate players as the situation calls for things. It makes buying upgrades from characters back in the various hubs around the world that your characters lounge in between missions a hell of a lot easier, too, and so even if you’re an RPG freak, the ultra-micromanagement or equipment swaps can be left to the game.
There’s also the obviously cool team-up of the X-Men and their former enemies, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (or is that just Brotherhood of Mutants now?), and the give-and-take between rivals is awesome. That Raven threw a ton of secret team combination bonuses in place, so picking the right characters from the right timelines (there are Ultimate, Uncanny (or, uh, classic, I guess) and Age of Apocalypse variations among others) means bonuses to everything from attacks to health regeneration to skills. It’s a neat little bonus for those willing to try to mix and match things up.
The whole team up, of course, should be familiar to anyone who read the whole Age of Apocalypse storyline that crossed over a crapload of X-Comics. For those that didn’t waste half their life savings trying to keep up, the truncated version is that the first person to ever undergo mutation way back when in Egypt has finally waged all-out war on the planet – humans, mutants, it doesn’t matter. Survival of the fittest at its most basic, is how Apocalypse feels the dominant species will survive into the future.
Thing is, the big A has a thing for power. Wait, make that powers, and he has no problem shacking up with one Mister Sinister to “borrow” the powers from a host of mutants to make himself stronger. All this genetic splicing and dicing is all well and good, but one of the splicees is none other than Quicksilver, Magneto’s youngin’, and after realizing Apocalypse is far too powerful to be dealt with by the “bad guys,” he quickly taps the expertise of his former foes to try to stop Apocalypse from wiping out the whole planet.
It’s this unlikely match-up that gives the game most of its legs. The little snipes back and forth from both sides do make for some entertaining commentary for X-Men fans, and it helps thicken up the mythos a bit to give the game more of an RPG slant.
Well, there’s good news and bad news, true believers. While developer Raven upped the geek factor in the game, embedding tons of little references to past teams and managed a slightly ham-fisted attempt to rope the Age of Apocalypse storyline into a game that didn’t completely mess with the continuity, it’s still strikingly similar to the last game – to the point where the two may not be told apart at first glance.
That’s not fair, of course, the game has had some overhauls, namely in the variety and complexity of the environments, but there’s still a ton of crate smashing and button mashing to be had. Luckily, the best improvements are in the RPG parts of the game, allowing (and later forcing) some real choices about how your team is chosen, how the individual powers are bulked up, and what kind of stat improvements are ladled on top of each character.
Of course, should you want to just get right to the hacking and slashing, the game will happily auto-level your characters for you, and even assign equipment to the most appropriate players as the situation calls for things. It makes buying upgrades from characters back in the various hubs around the world that your characters lounge in between missions a hell of a lot easier, too, and so even if you’re an RPG freak, the ultra-micromanagement or equipment swaps can be left to the game.
There’s also the obviously cool team-up of the X-Men and their former enemies, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (or is that just Brotherhood of Mutants now?), and the give-and-take between rivals is awesome. That Raven threw a ton of secret team combination bonuses in place, so picking the right characters from the right timelines (there are Ultimate, Uncanny (or, uh, classic, I guess) and Age of Apocalypse variations among others) means bonuses to everything from attacks to health regeneration to skills. It’s a neat little bonus for those willing to try to mix and match things up.
The whole team up, of course, should be familiar to anyone who read the whole Age of Apocalypse storyline that crossed over a crapload of X-Comics. For those that didn’t waste half their life savings trying to keep up, the truncated version is that the first person to ever undergo mutation way back when in Egypt has finally waged all-out war on the planet – humans, mutants, it doesn’t matter. Survival of the fittest at its most basic, is how Apocalypse feels the dominant species will survive into the future.
Thing is, the big A has a thing for power. Wait, make that powers, and he has no problem shacking up with one Mister Sinister to “borrow” the powers from a host of mutants to make himself stronger. All this genetic splicing and dicing is all well and good, but one of the splicees is none other than Quicksilver, Magneto’s youngin’, and after realizing Apocalypse is far too powerful to be dealt with by the “bad guys,” he quickly taps the expertise of his former foes to try to stop Apocalypse from wiping out the whole planet.
It’s this unlikely match-up that gives the game most of its legs. The little snipes back and forth from both sides do make for some entertaining commentary for X-Men fans, and it helps thicken up the mythos a bit to give the game more of an RPG slant.
