X Men Legends II Rise of Apocalypse Preview

Marvel’s X-Men series has got a big fan following be it games, movies or books. Last year X-Men legends was launched on consoles and like most of the other X-Men games it was very successful. This year Activision and Raven software are coming up with its sequel for PC, Xbox and the PSP platforms with more mutants joining in the adventure.

The first X-Men Legends only had the Mansion to explore and fight through; however, in the sequel you get to go over at various places across the world to continue on.

More Inhuman

The mutants from X- Men Legends are back with some more known and unknown mutants in the sequel. Alongwith the Cyclops, jean and the gang, this time we have Magneto, Colossus, Wolverine, Juggernaut, Cyclops, Bishop, Ice-Man, Storm, Jubilee, Nightcrawler, Rogue and Bishop. These are some of the additions there are more mutants added up also which are to be discovered by the players themselves.

All the characters have special powers, which are useful in need; the mutants who weren’t much of use in the first game have been upgraded to be much stronger.

You can choose your favorite character and his costume. The game features a unique feature of costume combination. As there are a vast number of characters and costumes, certain combinations of them will provide benefits for the team if they fulfill certain conditions such as all of the characters being X-men or they exist together are the same time. The benefits gained include, health bonus, damage bonus etc

New Environments

As mentioned earlier, unlike X-Men legends, legends 2 takes you around the world to go through various new levels having different environments. Each of the environments is fully intractable such as when you go through an Egyptian pyramid, you will be attacked by scarabs and mummies. Similarly each environment will have you fighting different enemies, such as animals, humans, other mutants etc. The levels include Egyptian temples, forests, secret military bases and laboratories.

The environments of the game are filled with traps, surprises, and interactivity, which provides for a very interesting gameplay. Either fighting out or using stealth to move ahead depending upon the player can complete each level.

Multiplayer Mayhem

Activision have announced that X-Men Legends 2 will feature online play for all the platforms it’s released, with wireless multiplayer feature for the PSP with support for upto four players. The multiplayer will ship with features such as on-the-fly ability switch, which enables the players to decide the skills for their characters without having to bring up a menu screen and pressing minimum buttons. The game automatically builds up your level without any menu interactions, which enables smooth gameplay. The online mode has a new automatic leveling system, which can be used to speed up gameplay if the players feel the need to do so. It is incorporated so that among the four-player party, players won’t have to wait for their teammates who prefer to work slowly, choosing to update their characters or are newbie to the game.

Look and Sound

X Men Legends II Rise of Apocalypse features voice by Patrick Stewart as Professor X and Lou Diamond Phillips as Forge. The vocals are done very nicely with Rogue speaking in her southern accent and Colossus’ with a pinch of Russian in his English. The characters callout witty sayings indulge in sly remarks for specific characters during the battle, but this does not affect your characters or the enemy’s stats or fighting abilities.

The PC version of the game seems better in terms of graphics than the console versions making the visual effects for the mutant powers seem pretty decent and kind of realistic. Although no minimum specifications have been announced as yet for the game, according to Activision the game will run on a pc with modest specs with ease, as the graphics aren’t cell shaded. Hence the action-RPG will still give a decent FPS, despite the increase in various fields of the game.

Other than all this the roster of items available with the vendors has also been widened. The vendors’ lists will be randomly updated in the game so there is a good chance that if you leave a particular item you want, you may not get to see it again for sometime, so it would be better to buy what you want as you locate it.

X-Men Legends II hits stores for consoles and the PC version by October and the PSP version comes out a month after that. With a big fan following, added attractions and the online feature, the game may just be the next big thing.

Karan IceFusion Bajaj