X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse Review

By Gary Kearney

I don't know all that much about the X-Men. Basically I've seen the movies and played a game here or there. However I have always thought the whole mutant power angle was pretty cool and from what I had seen there was a fairly clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. So you could say I was a little surprised that in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (RoA) for the GameCube that things were not quite as black and white as usual in the X-Men universe as good mutant and bad mutant need to work together in order to overcome a really evil force, Apocalypse. Nothing like mutually assured destruction to make enemies all friendly-like or as someone once said, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.“

You can probably tell from the very informative title that this is a sequel to X-Men Legends. I'll tell you about some of the stuff that might not be so easily deduced from the title. RoA is best described as a hybrid game...it's a cross between a RPG and an action game. It should be noted that the RPG elements are pretty straightforward and on the simple side. So if you love action games but cringe at the thought of doing inventory management or worrying how you should go about allocating your experience points, you can breath a sigh of relief. Heck, there is even an option where you can have the game take care of leveling up your characters...what could be easier. Of course if you are into all of the numbers, attributes, skills, and the variety of options that can be experimented with, then go right ahead and tinker away. Just don't go expecting the depth of a Final Fantasy or Zelda.
RoA begins with a very well done cinematic with members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants breaking into a fortress-like prison. Along the way they run into several of the X-Men....it's usually at this time that a huge battle would follow, but instead both groups of mutants join together and end up rescuing Professor Xavier. It's from this point where you get involved and the game gets moving.

I was a little surprised that my lack of X-Men knowledge was actually more of a problem than I figured it would be. RoA does not spend much time introducing you to the characters or their individual abilities. Granted, fans of the X-Men will be thankful that they don't have to hear for the millionth time why Magneto wears a funny looking helmet but for those of us that don't already know all the different powers and abilities we are left at a little disadvantage. But, seriously, how many gamers are going to even try to play this game without at least a little bit of X-Men knowledge?

While you might not be too far off by saying that RoA is a RPG-light game (especially if you let the game take care of that stuff) , it is certainly not light on the action side of the equation. Throughout the game you control a group of four and the mix of the group can be left up to you. That is, once you get the characters you can combine them in a variety of ways. This can lead to some interesting groups with the mix of the Brotherhood and X-Men. Even with my limited X-Men lore, I know that something is a bit off when Wolverine and Magneto are taking orders from each other. But I think part of the fun for many X-Men fans will be the chance to play as one of the members of the Brotherhood. There is just something about getting to test drive the powers of a bad guy that's appealing. In all there are around 16 different playable characters and naturally each has a multitude of unnatural powers. On average each character has about 10 mutant powers for you to play with. Luckily the control scheme makes it somewhat easy to spin through powers and assign them to specific buttons. It's a lot of fun to try out each of the different characters and see what they are capable of especially when there are so many different powers to be used.

The basic gameplay is similar to a Diablo or Gauntlet style. You have four members in your group and you can control any one of the four that you want at the push of a button. It's nice that the AI for those that you are not in direct control of is decent and at times it is darn right good and you rarely have to do any backtracking to find lost members. You have both close and range attacks for your character. One of the interesting aspects of the game is how you can use the different abilities of individual members to help the team. For example you can use the range attack of one member of the group to stun an enemy and then have another member walk safely up to the bad guy and perform a close attack. The battles are entertaining and I found that the controls behaved themselves for the most part.

Graphically RoA isn't going to move you one way or the other with the exception of the cutscenes which are very well down. The style is slightly cell-shaded and colorful as you might expect. I did have trouble at times keeping track of which character I was controlling and where that character was. Heck, I had difficulties tracking down the bad guys at times. One more than one occasion I would find myself trying to attack someone on my team instead of the bad guy. There was just something a little confusing with distinguishing teammates, backgrounds, and enemies. This wasn't true for all the levels, just a couple. I was disappointed in the voice talent with the huge exception of Patrick Stewart as the voice of Professor X. Everyone else seem to have taken voice lessons from William Shatner...and that's not a good thing.

It's a given that in a game like this that you would want to bring some friends along to play with you., it's practically screaming out for multiplayer. Unfortunately the GameCube version does not allow online play. But if you happen to have three friends hanging out at your house you can get them in on the action and this is where the real fun is.

My last comment, neither positive or negative in and of itself, is that it really pays to know your X-Men trivia. There is even a mini game where you answer X-Men trivia for experience points. I didn't do very well with it but I could see that the true fan will go nuts over it and probably rack up a ton of XPs. You can even get special increases in certain group attributes by getting specific characters together in a team. So it is worth your gaming while to play around with the different outfits for each character and mix up the group to see what happened.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 82%.  X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse is an enjoyable hybrid RPG/action game that is accessible to the novice X-Men fan but pays the bigger dividends to the true fan.