X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse

I bought this game years ago out of a discount bin. Played it minimally and then proceeded on to something else. Well, I decided to play it again and I won it as well. As far as the two X-men Legends games, I think I have a slight preference for the first one, but I think I like this one a bit more than the second Ultimate Alliance game. The Marvel Ultimate Alliance games were sort of sequels to these games; however, at the end of this one a sequel is indicated as it showed a villain laughing maniacally, but this did not carry over to the Ultimate Alliance games. Then again, at the end of the first Ultimate Alliance game it was indicated that Galactus would be the primary villain of the second game and that never materialized either. That would have been cooler than the crap they did do as the second Alliance game would do the Civil War storyline (which I hated) and have a very weak villain at the end. This one has a good villain fight at the end which is not usually present in these games. Dr. Doom was alright, Magneto would have been cool, but he wasn't the true ending boss. This one on the other hand as a great final fight and a great villain in Apocalypse.

The story has the X-men and Brotherhood coming together to take on the evil Apocalypse who believes that only the strong shall survive. He has kidnapped Polaris and also has his sight set on three other mutants for his scheme. Helping him is the equally maniacal Mr. Sinister. Along with other powerful mutants his nefarious plans take him to the mutant haven Genosha, the Savage Land, Canadian outposts, New York and finally Egypt. It will take everything the X-men and the Brotherhood have to defeat this powerful foe. They will also have to stop themselves from fighting each other.

The game play is action based RPG. You go through a level with a four person team you choose and there a are a lot of characters to choose from. You control one of them, but you just need to push a button to switch out and control another. I used Wolverine and Cyclops the entire way, but switched up the other two. It is a bit annoying leveling up as I just think it began to take too long near the end. Not to power up the main stats, but rather to power up your abilities. You get four points to charge up the normal stuff, and only one for abilities so unless you work at it indefinitely, you are not going to charge too many things to max. The fighting is rather cool, but the level design is kind of uninspired. Kind of how like in the second UA game, the levels are kind of uninspired and very monotonous.

The game is fun, just not anything all that great. The loading in this one is horrid. I realize it is PS2, but Final Fantasy X did not take this long to load and it had more voice acting and better graphics so really no excuse for such a long load, especially to just access the menu! The voice acting here is okay; however, Charles Xavier was awesome as Patrick Stewart did his voice. Kind of a bummer Ian didn't do Magneto, but pretty much the rest of the voices are very familiar sounding from countless anime cartoons I have watched. Nice villain here and good story. Make the levels more varied and this one could have been incredible. Say more like the New York stage, its level was different and it was also the shortest, all others were like one hallway after another. Still, the game at least has a nice variety of characters to control.

Sadly I couldn't play the first game since I don't have a gaming console, but I was absolutely excited when i found out that the second X-men Legends game would also be made for the PC. Speaking as an X-men fan..this game is great! About 20 playable characters (X-Men + The Brotherhood), cool powers (tho it did somewhat bother me that some we're not equal to the powers in the comics, for example Wolverine doesn't automatically heal), good voice-work (I really like the fact that they only used Patrick Stewart from the movies in this game), the story in the game is quite good (even tho a bit cliché, but it's obvious that Raven did try and succeed in creating a good comic-book story), the AI is OK i suppose (you only control one x-man at a time, the other 3 that are in your team are controlled by the computer but they really do seem to be able to take care of themselves quite well), the Danger Room (a cool thing, where you get to beat challenges and level up)..This part of the game is very well done and deserves praise. But speaking as a gamer..The game is fairly easy and soon you get the feeling that it's all just a routine (a fun one tho) when you keep beating up zounds and zounds of enemies, most of the levels are quite well-done, but it's obvious that some parts are only there for you to kill a lot of enemies and Level Up. The graphics make up a good comic-book feel and are good, but nothing really special...I'd give this game a 7/10, it has plenty of action, the story/characters are good, X-men and the Brotherhood team up, fun and exciting boss fights and it's quite long. Otherwise it's a bit too easy and a bit routinely done...

Review of the PC release(though I believe they're all close to the same). I'd like to, but I haven't played the first one. This is a third-person action(meaning, not turn-based) role playing game(of which I've hardly played any, so bear with me for this), where you get to play as the X-Men. Apocalypse executes a plan to take over the world, and they reluctantly team up with The Brotherhood to take him to school. Me, I'm ecstatic that they chose to do so. Yes, it shows that they're willing to do what it takes. However, of considerably greater importance, we get to utilize their awesome powers, most of them fantastically realized, and usually working out excellently in this. You can throw enemies around(and without touching them if you use Telekinesis), pick up large objects, fly and even teleport, in this. The attack types span mêlée, radial, projectile, and various special ones. Then there are the abilities, and you're looking at a ton of stuff you can do(your opponents can do their share of nifty stuff, and that adds extra spark to beating them). There are 18 different familiar faces to play as, and each has roughly around ten skills(yup... that does make about 180 total), many of them unique. The game-play consists of you running around with a team of four(all of them chosen specifically by the player; and co-op multi-player is possible, as well, allowing up to 4 friends at the same time), fighting lackeys and doing basic adventure game stuff, like searching for, and using, items. Frankly, it can get kinda repetitive; it's clear that a lot of effort went into making that aspect fun(and it is), and thus they wound up with that being all you do. It is entertaining, and it doesn't run out of steam(actually, it may be a little short for this kind of VG) before you've completed this. The challenge of Boss battles(a couple of them creative and interesting) climbs at an uneven rate, with odd spikes up and, honestly, at times down. To its credit, this has a well-done and easy to get into control interface(well, it could do with more commands to issue), that is impossible to get lost in, and keeping it simple to keep track of stuff. The relatively dynamic camera does get in your way sometimes, so it's good that they made it so flexible, and the turning of it a mere press of the button away. Conversations with NPC's have the finesse of there being several versions of some of them, and bringing certain mutants along with you trigger them, and apart from that, they're plain(and you'll often find yourself hearing the exact same pieces of information a second time), with the lack of any impact of you choose to say rendering it entirely obvious that they're there solely for the purpose of delivering exposition. Your side of it will almost without exception be written, not spoken. They try(too hard, perhaps? It does arguably get to be excessive) to give us fans of the Marvel universe a real treat. You get to visit tons of locations(did someone say Savage Lands? What about Genosha?), face numerous famous foes(including Morlocks and Sentinels) in combat, and meet quite a few well-known characters. It's really a shame that last-mentioned mainly act as a sort of stationary library chapter, where you can just ask each of them who they are and what they can do, and regardless of what their relationship is with who you're running around as, they'll spill the beans as if they've been granted a vocal chord that very instant. Music is fitting and sets the mood well. Sound is in general well-done, if it can be limited. The voice acting is fine(and casting can be spot-on), and there are strong and convincing moments here and there, in spite of every single accent and dialect being hideously overdone. Dialog ranges somewhat, with many silly or otherwise poor ones(with that said, the majority of the taunts are well-done). This gets the personalities right, if they can be a tad exaggerated and one-note. The briefings are not really about explaining what you are to do(with that said, you're seldom uncertain what is expected of you to make progress), they're arranged cut-scenes that display interactions between the two groups(I suspect they could think of nowhere else to put them in this; heck, there are impeccable ones between them, when they aren't over the top). This has a well-done plot, with cool twists. Among the story-telling tools are utterly, righteously bad-ass fully animated cinematics, one for the end of every act and also an intro one. The mini-map is helpful enough, without taking away the mystery and fun of exploring. Levels can at times be linear and/or monotonous; on the plus side, you can largely go wherever you want(whether or not it really makes sense), provided you've already been there, or made it to that area. You get to visit nifty places, natural and science fiction ones, immediately recognizable ones and brand new ones. The graphics are well-done, with gorgeous design work, almost always well-done effects, and everything that moves is done in an appropriate style that has them looking like something out of, yup, a comic book. This uses a dependable physics engine, and you can destroy and affect a reasonable bit of the surrounding environment. AI is well-done, I've yet to see an ally go over a ledge. For the sake of re-playability, there are unlockables in this, such as concept art, training courses, comic covers, etc. You can see how many there are of the things, so you'll know if you have it all or not. This does appear to be rushed and unfinished, with shortcuts taken. There are also bugs and glitches, mainly smaller stuff. The stability could be better. There is mild violence, devoid of blood or gore in this, and language is infrequent and not beyond moderate. I recommend this to all fans of the source material. 8/10

My mother bought me this game for my birthday and I have to say I'm glad she did. The game was fun and exciting. I don't think its that tuff like the first one, but the cool thing is the X-Men get to work with one of the Brotherhood. Especially the all so powerful Magneto. Whats good about the game is that you face a lot more enemies your probably not used to knowing. The second best thing about the game is that the further you go along with it, the more powerful you get, which means more killer power moves. Some original and some really knew and cool. Its to the point where they have more powers that are so cool that you want to play the game over again just to see what it'll do to your enemies.