Review: X-Men Legends
Score:
70%
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X-Men Legends, as everyone knows, is a port of the popular PS2, Xbox and Gamecube game, with a sequel later this year or early next on those systems (and the N-Gage!). Before that happens there is an outlet for the interested X-Men fan and that is the N-Gage port of those larger titles. To do this review right I bought and played all the way through the Xbox title (damn glitch on that comic book kept me from 100% completion) before reviewing the N-Gage version. So first let's talk about the home version before we get mobile. If you have played one of those versions or are uninterested in those you can skip this next bit and won't lose much.
X-Men Legends is the first X-Men RPG Marvel has ever graced us with and, while it is more Action than RPG, the game is pretty decent and avoids the many pitfalls of the super hero RPG that have kept it from becoming a staple of gaming in previous years. Characters have pretty much all their powers from the word go, and you just focus development where you want it each time you level them. It's a good system and it works. The game plays much like Gauntlet Legends or other top-down Action RPGs and mostly suffers from control issues within game play, where it seems the powers that be couldn't make up their mind if they wanted you to control one player in an action experience or all in a strategy one. Aside from these it's a game worthy of much of the attention it got, which leads us to its little mobile cousin, X-Men Legends on the N-Gage.
For people coming from the big version of the game there will be a few shocks in store. Barking Lizards obviously made the hard decisions early on and almost completely rebuilt the game. The graphics are some very nicely done sprites (which appear captured from the 3D models of the bigger versions) in an isometric environment that does its best to feel 3D without killing performance on the 'Gage. This first shock is mild and really is forgotten once you get into playing the game where your next shock is coming. This one tends to irk gamers both familiar and unfamiliar with the games that started this franchise and it's simply that combat has been reduced to an attack button (5) and a power button (7). There are no combos, you cannot lift and chuck any item in the level including each other (the Fastball special was my favorite touch on the bigger versions), and you have ZERO control over your co-horts attack patterns in real time. These would seem big cuts and they are, but oddly these benefit the mobile version in ways hard to believe.
The console version gave you so many controls and options for both combat and party manipulation, that they overwhelmed you and took you out of the battle. Since everything was real-time you would be so busy trying to rally your team around a specific enemy, or find something to throw, or get off a combo, that you never even used the powers that made your character famous (Wolverine excluded). Worse was that you wouldn't often know what was happening till it was all over. By contrast, battles in the N-Gage version are filled with Optic Blasts (my fave), Permafrost, Kinetically-charged playing cards and all the goodness that sets the X-Men apart from, say, Catwoman or Batman. All party control has also been cut down to a series of pop-ups and single stats screens, all of which cause the action to pause while you cycle around juicing up or re-energising your exhausted team.
My favourite refinements of the game are the pop-ups that pause gameplay - they were so needed in the console version and noticeably absent. Players have a character select pop-up which lets you switch instantly to another member of your core party (sorry, no NPCs allowed even if they're fighting with your party, like Havok or Gambit early on). You also have a mutant powers pop-up that let's you change your current button 7 power. As I tended to sit back with Cyclops and orchestrate the battle with beefs and Optic sniping, I used this A LOT, switching between War Cry and Optic Blast constantly. Finally you are given an item pop-up, which while conceptually great was a hassle and I never used it. The reason is that the items are not labelled, and the graphic representations for anything other than health or energy packs are confusing at best. You also have no information about your other party members or the items within this pop-up so sometimes you'll be trying to feed something to someone who's already out cold (oops!) and typically will give the wrong items to people by accident. Instead the stats screen is really where you heal and deal with status issues since it has a full display of your party, items, powers, item descriptions, and is also the place where you level up your characters.
A lot of the interface elements are greatly improved in the N-Gage version of X-Men Legends. While much of the combat and items were greatly simplified (Forge's shop is completely gone, as are the tech bits), it doesn't take away much from the overall experience of the game, which is well driven with a fun comic book styled plot that is rich enough in X-Men characters (good and bad) and locales.
All in all, X-Men Legends for the N-Gage is everything that the console versions are and once you adapt to its quirky collision detection, isometric view and simplifications, offers a lot of gaming value for the action-RPG-loving 'Gager. To it I say 70% and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Reviewed by Chris Rydberg at