X-Men Legends | DJcube

Alone, you are mighty. Together, you are legends.

NA release: 21st September 2004
EU release: 22nd October 2004
JP release: N/A
Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
NGC Magazine Score: 80%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

The third X-Men game that isn’t related to the films, and another to get Patrick Stewart in to voice the role of Xavier. I get it, the comics even pointed out how similar the characters of Professor X and Captain Picard looked in an X-Men / Star Trek crossover comic before Stewart was cast in the films, but I still find it a little bit odd for him to voice multiple different depictions of the character. Still, it’s more of an oddity than a complaint as he’s a great actor, so I can’t blame the developers for getting him.

X-Men Legends kept popping up as an “RPG” on various websites (wikipedia lists action RPG), so I was surprised to discover that this is nothing of the sort – it’s a co-op beat-em-up. When playing solo, you can swap between your squad of four X-Men, with the others being controlled by the CPU. This is done in a really strange way where the three characters following you barely take damage, but also barely hurt the enemies. At one point I decided to stand back while they fought two weak enemies and they were all standing when I got back – it’s like they’re just pretending to fight. Oh, and they also love falling to their deaths.

This means that the game is much more difficult playing on your own as, while you essentially have extra lives, you only really have the strength of one character. This means that pretty much every enemy is a bullet sponge and quite tedious to fight. Making matters worse is that, until you reach a high level as each character and unlock their last few moves, the different X-Men don’t feel all that different from each other, so it’s not until late in the game that combat starts to get exciting.

Between missions, you explore the X-Man mansion and talk to people. The dialogue chooses are nothing more than asking for more information, and it’s an odd choice for a game built so much around multiplayer to force all but one player to sit around.

Fine

All in all it’s very enjoyable. As an RPG it’s basic, but as an X-Men experience, it’s fantastic. It has the characters, the mayhem and, more importantly, the faithfulness that fans have deserved for so, so long. Definitely recommended…
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #100

Remake or remaster?

A remastered collection would be good.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get X-Men Legends.