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The game storyline itself is a bit different. The first game focused (sort of) on the character of Magma and her introduction to the X-World. The first ally you controlled was Wolverine, trying to rescue Magma, and as the story advanced you met up wit the other team members and they became playable. Eventually you could have Magma on your team (or not), but the main off-mission storyline was usually dictated by following her around. I thought that was a neat approach, and a good way to introduce each character to the audience, even though they (sort of) cheaped out by picking one of the more obscure younger mutants. Magma really should’ve been Kitty Pryde, but I guess she’d be a lot harder to realize and control in a video game.
In this game, the story functions differently. The X-Men have already been introduced, so they’re already functioning as a full team. Your very first real mission lets you choose from a nearly full roster. I do think that is cool, although it takes a little of the mystery out of who is going to show up to help out. Plus, there are additional characters available from the Brotherhood – Magneto, Juggernaut (since when is Juggs a mutant?), Scarlet Witch, and Toad. The Brotherhood choices are interesting, since they are all original old-school Brotherhood members, and while “newer” members like Sabretooth, Mystique and Pyro make an appearance, they aren’t playable (at least not on the console version of the game). And isn’t Scarlet Witch most well-known as an Avenger?
But the story is fairly confusing. Ok, I know from the name of the game that Apocalypse is the villain. But the story starts out kind of in the middle of the action, with no real introduction – in the opening cinematic, the X-Men and the Brotherhood suddenly appear together on a rescue mission to save Xavier. Everyone seems fully aware that Apocalypse is responsible, since he’s also recently attacked and destroyed Magneto’s refuge of Genosha.
This represents a big plot gap that I find a bit frustrating. Now, granted, I never finished the original Legends – I got to Master Mold with too few health containers, and probably at too low level. But somehow between that battle and the start of the second game, not only did Apocalypse somehow become known, but also Magneto – last seen plummeting towards New York City in a giant asteroid – established the nation of Genosha (which I can only assume was never a mutant-slave-driven society as it originally was in the comics). Fortunately I’m a comics fan so I can surmise all of the in-between details, but I liked how they carefully set up the storyline details in the first game. I wish they’d kept that up.
And what happened with some of the characters? Bishop was last seen as a child in New York City, and now here he is on the team like he’d been there all along. And Sunfire too – where did he come from? What happened to Emma and Psylocke? And Jubilee? Of course, I’ve really only just begun the game. These characters could all show up at some point. Heck, Angel popped up already and he wasn’t around at all in the first game.
My only other major hurdle has to do with power control. The characters have more powers and abilities, and the game plays basically the same way, except that the number of powers means there’s a system for assigning abilities to controller buttons. But the system is confusing to me (and not explained very well in the manual). Sometimes you can pick a button to assign a power, and sometimes it’s automatically assigned and will replace what you had on that button already. I have yet to figure out why it works that way, but it’s a minor annoyance.
Overall playing the game feels a lot more fun right out of the box, probably because there’s no real learning curve this time. The difficulty of enemies is tough, though, and I haven’t really found a reason yet to switch from the basic team configuration (Magneto, Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine) except for one instance where I needed Jean particularly. I do like the way they’ve handled extraction points – now you can port yourself to any extraction point to another once you’ve found them. This is great news for me since I like being able to return to older areas of a game to pick up items I might have missed. I doubt the old enemies will respawn once they’ve been cleared out, but you can’t have everything.
Another thing I love is the skin feature. In the first game, the character costumes were more or less based on their look from the “Ultimate” comic line. I guess there’s an unlockable skins feature after you finish the game, but I like that the new game lets you pick new costumes from the get-go. To me, Wolverine needs his cowl. Storm needs her cape. Iceman needs his nudity.
As far as the characters they’ve chosen, I have mixed feelings. I think it’s cool to see Sunfire in the lineup. I’m not all that sad to see Beast go since I never really thought he was that useful – same with Emma and Psylocke. The usual gang is along – Cyclops, Wolverine, Iceman, Storm, Rogue, Colossus, Jean, and Nightcrawler. I think they’re all pretty much essential. To be honest, I don’t care much for the Brotherhood characters and would probably have just as much fun without them, but I like that they’ve gone for something different.
I’ve also read that there are some interesting unlockable characters – Deadpool for one, and the baffling inclusion of Iron Man. Iron Man? I guess that’s cool, but it doesn’t really make any sense to me. We’re sticking random guest Avengers in the lineup now? I find that odd especially considering they still haven’t included many of the classic X-Men, most notably Shadowcat, Banshee (one that seems glaringly obvious to me), and Havok. I’d love to play as Quicksilver. And whether you love Cable or hate him, why is he missing from a game about Apocalypse?
All in all it’s a thumbs up game though. I hope they keep making more, and include more and more playable characters. Maybe a spin-off series with some of the younger characters like Cannonball and Sunspot? Maybe an X-Factor game where you can use Multiple Man. Wouldn’t that be rad? Every time you’re hit, you might lose health, but you get another AI character to bust some heads with.
