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X-Men Legends Review
Just when you thought the Marvel-licensed games would die down after a slew of titles based on the recent deluge of motion pictures, an odd little title pops up from Raven Software and Activision. No, it’s not based on any of the recent X-men movies, nor does occur in any specific time in the X-men universe. Legends sports an entirely separate story without interfering with the current (or past) story line in the popular comic book series. It would be easy, even, to write it off as a quick way to make a buck from the sudden popularity of superheroes. However, although the game isn’t perfect, it wouldn’t be fair to say that. While the game does have its quirks, there are redeeming moments if you’re willing to stick with it.
First off, Legends boils down a hack and slash RPG. For the large part of the missions you “control” four mutants at once, pounding away at generic soldiers with different colored textures. It’s not to say that you are controlling all of them by yourself. The game allows you to switch between fully controlling one of the four while the other three are controlled by sometimes-competent A.I. In fact, I cursed the game several times when my “helpful” A.I. teammates thought it was a great idea to leap into the electrified water/molten lava/endless pit. Fortunately, Xtraction points (or beefed-up save points) are all over the place and you won’t have to go far before being able to save and fix your team up by selling/purchasing equipment. Now, your teammates’ intelligence isn’t always at the level of a bag of erasers. They fight competently (although you’ll be dealing out most of the damage) and if you’re in a pinch, you can command all of them use a chosen mutant power, allowing for powerful combos that deal extra damage and experience. Even with the sometimes incompetent team A.I., there is little to worry about as the enemy A.I. really consists of running up to you and executing their most powerful moves to compensate for their lack of intelligence. I don’t really hold this against the game. It is, like I mentioned, a hack and slash RPG. The truly great parts are getting into the fray and executing powerful mutant powers that blow your enemies away. This is why you need to stick with the game to truly see the great parts, as it gets better as your team becomes more powerful and you find a combination of X-men that suits your play style. In fact, in addition to the gameplay, the entire game really picks up as you progress through the storyline.
Now, the storyline isn’t very compelling to begin with. The story centers around a young mutant named Alison (or Magma) that discovers she has the power to manipulate molten lava and rocks. Naturally, the “bad” mutants wish to capture her for a reason that will later become apparent and, naturally, the X-men leap in to save her. You follow Alison’s struggle with the idea of going to Xavier’s mutant school and honing her powers. Of course, Alison becomes an X-man (although arguably not a very useful one during missions) and the story focuses on the typical X-men plot of evil humans (General Kinkaid) making a bad impression on mutants and evil mutants (Magneto’s gang) making a bad impression on humans. Then there are the X-men, there to save the day. Overall, Legends' story is lacking for a game with such a heavy amount of dialog and cut scenes. In between missions you control Alison while she explores the X-mansion, which is essentially the library for all the load screens, cinematics, and artwork that you earn during missions. Frankly, I didn’t want to see another load screen after a half an hour into the game. Do we really need to load the character configuration screen?
Speaking of which, I don’t see reason for the frequent and normally long load screens that permeate Legends. Although the environments are not necessarily drab, the character models are horrendous. I believe the developer was trying to implement cell-shading to make the characters appear as they would in a comic. Unfortunately, they decided to attribute about 20 polygons to each model. Not only that, but the X-men themselves (the main focus) seem to be using textures that look like they may have been recycled from 1995. Despite the repetitiveness of the levels and the poor character models, the lighting and environments themselves are decent.
I could go on about the problems that I found, but Legends isn’t as bad as it may appear. Sure, the voice-acting is abysmal (Alison’s voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard and even Patrick Stewart is flat and shows no emotion while voicing Xavier) and there are a million other discrepancies. The fact is, there are numerous X-men to choose from (some that you will most definitely use more than others), some that I’ve never heard of. Definitely worth a rent and a buy for fans of the X-men series. You probably can’t find a better X-men game on the market on the moment and in the final hours of defending the earth from all-out war, you’ll love swinging foes around with Jean Gray’s telekinesis and throwing them into the air with Storm’s whirlwind. The sad part is that this game is like a ruby in the rough, but there are still rough edges where the hard rock remains. Some polishing and this game would have truly shined.
 
Written by Chad Phillips. Posted year 2004.
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Released on
September 21, 2004
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