Gasp, shock, and amaze! X-Men Legends, released in the midst of the film trilogy, features an original story when it could have easily just retold the mysterious origins of Wolverine… or alluded to them some more. Early on, the 4-player role-playing game takes as its central character a blonde New Yorker named Allison, and as its mission to find out why the Brotherhood so badly wants her in their ranks….Okay, so maybe you do start as Wolverine. But you’ll quickly collect your fellow Mutants from Xavier’s Mansion, after which time the game lets you swap between your chosen four at any ‘X-traction Point’. The gang’s all here: Storm, Iceman, Beast, Gambit… even Cyclops, who was voted the least likable X-Man in a poll conducted for this post. 2 whole people agreed. Anyway, there’s stat upgrades with every level up, armor and item drops, and a slightly-skinny skill tree that represents all the best of homo-superior’s powers. To earn your keep, you’ll have to fight a pretty steep difficulty curve with all your button-mashing might, but there are the special moves and various combos to keep combat interesting.Legends adopts the at-the-time popular cel-shaded style in honor of its comic book roots, but to the effect of making the small character models look grainy and not…meshed with the big locales. It’s not a big issue, especially when they procured the voice-acting talents of several screen actors–even Patrick Stewart to renew his film role as Professor X. X-Men legends is fun alone or with company, and certainly offers a lot for fans of Marvel, superheroes, Marvel Superheroes, and action-RPGs alike.

Posted on August 27th, 2008 by katie