by BrianC - November 21, 2005

X-Men Legends brought back childhood feelings of awe and keep you wishing you too were a mutant with the power to fly, conjure up the weather, or even shoot super neat lasers from your eyes. Activision and Raven Software have teamed up once again to produce another great X-Men game. X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse is that game.

There will be no war, today, X-Men. Today, we are all brothers.

X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse is almost identical to its predecessor when it comes down to most aspects of the game. Gameplay, though, is a slight exception from what we have seen in X-Men Legends. The gameplay still follows the age old hack n� slash dungeon crawler that we have all come to know at some point in our gaming experience, but with a few things added and changed that were missed in X-Men Legends.

The character selection in Rise of Apocalypse is amazing now that the Brotherhood of Evil has joined up with the X-Men in an attempt at thwarting Apocalypse�s plans of world domination. Some of the X-Men characters include Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Bishop, Colossus and Gambit. Now you have the option of playing as some members of the Brotherhood such as Magneto, Juggernaut, and Toad. This combo of characters makes for an exciting and new experience because let�s face it�playing as the bad guys is always good times.

The game starts out as a very easy bash-your-way-through-it kind of action-RPG, in which your characters are powerful far beyond their level and those of whatever enemy is nearby. As the game progress though, hordes of NPC�s begin to swarm you and pack a little extra punch making it slightly more challenging. All the while you are unlocking cool attacks and other skills which make for cool looking fights. There are also some items that you can pick up which add to some of your stats like defense and attack ratings. No matter how beastly you become there is always the need for some handy dandy health and energy potions. Another thing that makes the game more interesting is that as the characters begin to level up and gain more and more skills the challenge of grouping the right combination of people for your party increases. If you do happen to find the perfect combo of people for your party then the game becomes perfectly simple once again. Though one thing that makes powerful parties cool is the combination attacks you can perform with the AI controlled party members. Some of these combos pack quite a punch.

Graphics your time has come!

Unlike X-Men Legends, Rise of Apocalypse takes you through a variety of areas that include Egypt, jungle and Avalon in the Savage Lands in Antarctica. Each of which provides you with different eye candy from enemies to landscapes (most of which you can destroy). The style presented graphically in Rise of Apocalypse is the same as it was in X-Men Legends. The characters are delivered through a variation of cell shading making the game look as if you are playing right out of a comic book. While the character design is surprisingly simple the background images are that of detailed environments.

"Got any beer?", "This is a school"...."So that's a no?"

As far as the voice actors are concerned, they have delivered exactly as requested. The background music is an orchestra arrangement that fits decently in with the action and picks up pace as the action picks up in battle. Other than the voice actors and background music the sound effects sit in a far distant third place. Throughout the game the exact same sound effects can be heard in every environment from barrels breaking to foots steps on different terrain to Wolverine�s claws hacking through different objects including the different enemies�.but you don�t buy a game like X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse to listen to music, you buy it to beat the living daylights out of stuff as mutants.

Let naught stand before my might!

As most of you probably know, one of the best ways to play a game is with friends. X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse offers a co-op multiplayer mode as well as an online mode. These multiplayer modes can handle up to four players at one time, letting your friends join in on the mutant hacking and slashing. One of the down sides to co-op is the camera angles. The camera zooms out as you get farther away from your party and that can cause some problems if you are trying to see all of the action that is going on. The online feature is one of the biggest changes from its prequel X-Men Legends. Through the online mode there are two features story mode and skirmish.

The skirmish mode is available for those higher level characters (16 or up) to engage in battle with each other. The story mode follows the single player story line and players can come and go without interrupting the flow of the game too much. In the heat of battle though, lag seemed to sneak its way into the action in the form of enemies suddenly appearing or disappearing. Besides that though, the online action was not at all bad.

You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different.

While this game has a few bugs the overall effect that it produces is amazing. The enormous zones provide for hours of wandering around searching for hidden comic books and other items that unlock art and arena stages. The replay value of Rise of Apocalypse is furthered by the online co-op modes. As a sequel Raven and Activision did what was needed and as a stand alone game, X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse holds its own among action-RPG�s. As a fan of X-Men and of video games in general, this game most definitely satisfied most of my needs and left me with the feeling of just beating a game that was worth the 30+ hours of my life lost on it. So for all of you X-Men fans, X-Men Legends fans, and well video game fans, I recommend that you go out and pick up this title and see for yourself just how much fun it can be.