Publisher: Activision
Ages: six and up.
Parental
Advisory:
Violence
For more entertaining X-Men action, Activision's X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse brings the experience on home. This action RPG is fun to play and offers considerable depth.
In the game, the X-Men and the Brotherhood have formed an uneasy alliance to reclaim Earth from the evil Apocalypse. The fun comes in creating, customizing and controlling a team of four powerful Mutants, selecting from 16 playable characters that include Wolverine, Bishop, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Storm—and Brotherhood Mutants— such as Magneto, Toad and Juggernaut. Players get to effectively create their own dream teams of X-Men characters, which is intriguing and fun.
Each of the 16 playable characters has ten individualized superpowers, as well as fighting, melee and ranged attacks and extreme powers. Gamers can instantly switch between team members mid-fight to take advantage of the unique abilities of a particular character and make use of his or her combo attacks.
The game features double the superpowers and customization capabilities of past games, the debut of several new playable characters and some 100 types of enemies and new environments. There are also some 70 free-roaming zones that allow players to regroup, begin new missions, complete unfinished missions, gather information and stock up on equipment.
The game offers good online and offline multi-player action. Up to four may participate in a story-based co-op mode. And both online and offline multi-player modes feature dynamic joining capabilities that allow friends to jump into the action at any time. Finally, six multi-player skirmish modes offer head-to-head "versus" action, side-by-side battles against enemies and more.
Graphics and audio are excellent and do an admirable job of bringing the X-Men world to life. The only downside is that the game has some significant load times that keep everyone waiting. As one would expect, the game is a violent one.
X-Men fans will find lots to like in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, and anyone who is into action games can also enjoy the experience.
-Wayne N. Kawamoto, Managing Editor
