Previewed: September 6, 2005
Previewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Raven Software
Beenox (PC Version)

Release Date: September, 2005
Genre: Action-RPG
Players: 1-4
ESRB: Teen

Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)

Anyone who has been following this game’s development already knows that for this adventure the X-Men have to form an uneasy alliance with Brotherhood in order to save the Earth from Apocalypse. With the addition of villains as playable characters we now have a huge cast of characters available including a few surprises I’m not even allowed to talk about yet.

With 16 playable characters, each with 10 unique superpowers, half the fun is just mixing and matching the perfect team to blast your way through each of the 70+ levels in this game. There is an interesting dynamic in place where Brotherhood and X-Men characters don’t always work and play well together.

This also surfaces when you encounter and talk with other characters in the game leading to some humorous dialogue options. Having Wolverine try to talk to a member of the Brotherhood will get you some options that you might not get if you are playing Magneto.

In order to get up to speed with the old and new X-Men characters as well as the Brotherhood, there are all new training scenarios waiting for you in the Danger Room. Characters now have many more powers available to them that you can assign to hotkeys. Character selection is handled with the traditional D-pad input, much like the recent Fantastic 4 game.

The AI and scripting for the computer controller characters has been improved to near-perfection. You can go into the team management options and set preferences for each character’s aggressiveness and their favorite superpower. You can also adjust how often they heal; a useful feature since everyone shares from a central pool of health power-ups.

Rise of The Apocalypse also allows you the freedom to micromanage all of the RPG elements of the game or automate a lot of the tedious chores like distributing items and choosing skills when you level-up your characters.

You can now switch out your character’s powers, almost in real time, with only a few quick button presses. This is especially nice in multiplayer so the game isn’t constantly being interrupted by somebody in the team tweaking their abilities during combat.

There are literally thousands of items to be found and collected in X-Men Legends II, and there is some unique scripting in place so that you seldom find the same item in the same place on subsequent replays. There is also a unique set of items that you can only find in the exclusive online missions, so there is obviously some incentive to play online. There are also a host of secret items and collectible comic book covers. There is also a new Hero Stash system designed to allow you to store all these new items and access them later.

The game is designed so you are free to roam in and out of missions. If one mission proves to be too tough you can try another and come back later. A new character, Blink that you rescue early in the story, has the ability to open teleportation portals back to your base. This proves to be a most useful power, but the designers have been careful to balance its use so you cannot abuse it.

Gameplay has been overhauled to really make use of the team’s superpowers. There might be some items stacked behind some burning debris and Storm will need to extinguish the flames with some ice, or perhaps Magneto will need to use his powers to pull a lever or operate a console that is otherwise out of reach. Cyclops might have to blast something with his deadly red beams. Some puzzles require multiple characters and multiple powers to solve.

Multiplayer has been totally revamped to provide for a much richer cooperative experience, either locally or online with Xbox Live or GameSpy on the PC. There is exclusive online content and some well-thought-out gameplay mechanics in place like the ability to rejoin the party with a squeeze of the left trigger if you fall behind.

Gameplay isn’t the only thing to be given the royal treatment. Academy Award nominee, Blur Studios was brought in to create some of the most fantastic CG movies ever seen outside of a Square-Enix game. The opening movie will blow you away and there are plenty of engaging cutscenes that intersperse the massive and open-ended storyline.

There is also a massive collection of some of the most amazing splash screens I’ve seen in my 20+ years of gaming. This is some high quality art of all of your favorite heroes and villains in exciting action poses.

The game graphics are simply beyond words. Even the screenshots and movies don’t really do them justice. Only the Xbox and PC versions were available for testing and while the PC offers higher resolutions there was virtually no discernable difference in the overall quality of the textures, lighting, and particle system effects.

In fact, any improvements that the PC might offer visually are probably countered by the awkward keyboard and mouse input. While the game is perfectly playable on the PC you can tell it was designed with a gamepad in mind and thus plays better with one.

Character design has been greatly improved with larger characters and a cel-shaded art style that gives the game a much greater comic book feel to it. The color palette is rich and diverse with heavy outlines around the characters to make them pop off the environments. The camera is lower and close so everything is much larger and more detailed than before.

The missions are captivating with unique locations like the Weapon X facility, the Infinite Factory, plus other detailed indoor and outdoor environments ranging from Egypt to the South Pole. The levels are massive and intricately designed with multiple paths and plenty of hidden areas.

The audio presentation mirrors the quality of the graphics and gameplay with excellent voice acting for all the characters, including the majestic voice of Patrick Stewart as Professor X. The music is perfectly matched to the cutscenes and the gameplay with dynamic cues for a tempo that complements the action.

Fans of last year’s X-Men Legends game are going to absolutely love what Raven has done with Rise of the Apocalypse. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the original game for several reasons, most of which have been addressed and resolved in the sequel. Honestly, I had a hard time tearing myself away from the single-player demo, and once I started playing multiplayer I was hopeless hooked.

X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse is going to be one of the most amazing action-RPG’s of the holiday season. Whether you are a hardcore X-Men fan, an RPG-lover, a single-player, or a multiplayer, this game has something to offer everyone, and with more than 70 branching levels and over 100 hours of gameplay, there is a whole lot of X-Men coming to your consoles and PC later this month.