Earth Hour 2010
Growing steadily every year since its kick off back in 2007, Earth Hour returns... [more]
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- PS2
(Activision)
Yet another comic based game, X-Men Legends pays homage to the Marvel comic of childhood renowned and Hollywood fame. The game play is essentially split into two modes – story mode, where you play the part of Alison, a young girl coming to terms with her newly discovered mutant abilities who is adopted by the X-Men as a pupil at the Xavier school for mutants – and team combat mode, where a team of up to four X-Men battle their rival mutants and human foes to make the world a safer place for mutants to tread.
The game play is both challenging and entertaining. It’s difficult enough that you don’t find yourself bored within the first hour (which, honestly, is quite rare these days in the third person combat world of PS2), but it’s straightforward enough, and the learning curve is reasonable enough, that it’s not overly challenging at first blush. You first learn the skills associated with controlling one super hero in the action rich environment before having to come to terms with controlling a team of four, monitoring the health of each member of your team, making sure that each hero’s powers are being purposefully and effectively employed, as different enemies are resistant to different types of attacks.
All in all it’s good comic book lookin’ fun. In my opinion, I’d like to have seen the graphics a bit more in keeping with the movie – a little more realistic – the cityscapes lend themselves to a bit of photo realism, but instead they opt for comic through and through. Sound is good, but can get a little busy. Each of the X-Men and each different type of enemy have their own little catch cries, which, in addition to becoming a little repetitive, can get a bit much when you’ve got a whole throng of them on screen at once.
Game play is good – you can quickly flick between characters, call on your peers for assistance, and of course summon your mutant abilities all with a pretty straightforward combo of keys on the controller.It’s got too much in it for an overnight rental – I’d either buy the sucker or wait until it’s out for weekly rental somewhere.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
