To make matters worse, the moves seem to have little to no impact on your opponents. Everything (with the exception of the super moves) is entirely under-whelming and too often, yield some depressing results. Contact of the moves just seems horrid and blows just don’t seem to have enough weight to them. Most likely it’s just a result of rushed animations but the action often looks and feels like it has been lifted out of a cheap B-Movie.
The super moves are the compete antithesis of what has been stated above, they are far too powerful and at times, can deplete as much as half of your life bar. At times you may come to depend on them far too often than you should be in a fighting game. Their usage in combos is negated because it simply is counterproductive to the game. Why waste your time trying to perfect a combo when one move will take away half of your opponent’s energy?
There are some nice ideas introduced into the game such as the counter system and the super meter allocation system. Super moves are different in accordance with the level that you are at on your super meter with Level 4 being the highest. The bar fills whenever you land an attack on your opponent. You can select whether you want it to fill to level 1, 2, 3 or 4 simply by pressing a button in the midst of combat. The counter system is nice a nice way to mix things up in combat.
The levels are generally large and expanse, featuring multiple levels and a multitude of destructible objects. Each of them are varied and the next one will provide a unique experience than the previous one in terms of not only looks, but also feel. You can interact with them in various ways, sometimes you can hit your opponents throw them and some characters can actually use them as weapons. They are rendered quite well and are very faithful to the Marvel licensing.
Again, the audio department yields some mixed results. The video sequences are accompanied by some excellent voice acting that really fits the characters. Each of the characters will yell and scream in a voice that fits the bill. The character voices themselves are quite nice but the audio suffers when it comes to actual gameplay. The contact noises are quite weak and there isn’t even announcer to tell you when to begin the fight. It just says it on the screen and you’re thrust into the battle. The music is just standard forgettable fare.
There are some huge problems with the camera system. Because the levels often take place in confined areas, they’ll have walls and extreme ends to them that can block the view of the camera. Well if you end up bashing your opponent against a wall, the camera has this huge tendency to become caught in the environment, successfully blocking your view. This happens because the game wants to preserve the orientations of the characters, if your character is facing left the camera won’t take the initiative and change the perspective so that you’re facing to the right, even if that means you can’t see what’s going on.
Some of the game’s largest problems arise from issues with character balancing. Some characters are simply way too powerful while some are simply far too weak. An experienced Wolverine player will be able to dominate any other character with proper usage of his healing maneuver. Likewise, some players are far too weak and will have a hard time taking down their opponents in the 99-second time limit for each round. There isn’t enough variety in the combatant’s move sets either; characters feel too similar to one another. Most of the characters feel entirely too generic with the exception of their super moves.
X-Men does a few things right but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. There’s not enough here to warrant a purchase and there’s just enough to qualify it as a rental. It’s too repetitive and the entire game just feels rushed. Pick this one up only if you’re desperate for a fighting game and if you have kids, stay away from this one, your kids will love you for it.
D
It’s absolute mutant mayhem and while it’s decent enough, it’s not really as good as it could have been. Those desperate for some 3D fighting action might want to check it out but others should stray away from it.
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