X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse

Genre: Action/Adventure RPG
Console: PC

Lots of promise behind this game that takes place in the world of X-Men. This time around, you are teamed up with your rivals in the Brotherhood to stop Apocalypse from *drumroll* taking over the world. You get your choice of 15 (i believe) characters (plus 3 you can unlock later on) from the X-Men, the Brotherhood, and a surprise or two...Each character is fairly unique, though minimal variations in dialogue and lax player controls draw drastically from the unique characteristics of each hero. You are quickly pushed into the action of the game as 4 recognizable characters, Cyclops, Magneto, Storm, and of course, Wolverine. In this first tour of duty, you will pick up in good detail, the basic controls, however, once you venture outside of basic player controls into the dynamic character-specific superpowers, the controls often become bothersome. As you level up, you will receive attribute points used for powering up your character's defense, attack, etc..You will also receive skill points that enhance special moves your character has. While the ability to customize your character is nice, it quickly becomes a hassle and points become randomly distributed. You also find new equipment while roaming around the stages of the game. Equipment is much more helpful for boosting your character's stats than the skill and attribute points will ever be, so choosing equipment wisely is important. However, you can only attach three pieces of equipment to a character (footwear, armwear, bodywear) and the space for items in your inventory becomes limited quite quickly. One of the seemingly nice features with equipment is the auto-equip feature. This forces the computer to assign the "best" equipment to the members in your party. However, the computer seems to be on a good amount of illegal substances and it often considers poor combinations to be optimal settings. You can of course change the equipment set to your character even when auto-equip is on, but each time you find a new piece of equipment (if it can even fit in your inventory!!!) the computer will reassign every piece of equipment to members of your party, which is quite the annoyance. You also seem to find equipment that most of the time has a level requirement that noone in your party is at, again, quite the annoyance. You get the option to replay the game with all your characters at the level they were at when you finished the game, you also get to keep your equipment and skills. This would be a fantastic feature, except that the enemies in the game do not level up, so every enemy, including some bosses, are pretty much one-hit KO's. The game has online compatibility, however, very few people seem to play online, and with good reason. The online mode of the game consists of a co-op mode (singleplayer...with multiple players) which is just a hassle to play, especially if lag starts to kick in. A good online mode would have saved the game, however, without it, the game seems to lack the fundamental replay value that many games nowadays have.

Graphics - 7.0
The designers of this game clearly wanted to make the game appear as if it came out of a comic book. They did a fairly good job achieving that, the game does look retro, as if it came out of a comic book. However, every character (playable and non-playable) has a very annoying and ugly outline around it, I'm not sure why they did this, but it ruins the graphics of the game, there is also no way to turn these outlines off. The effects of the game are nice, however, very one-faceted, many special moves use the same effects, and explosions and lighting are very weak. The game doesn't have much of a graphical settings section in the options menu, it is designed to run fairly well on near every system, however, a bit of choice with graphics quality could've saved the rating here. The very nice CGI videos in the game are the only thing that saved it from a lower score.

Sound - 6.5

If you are going to have as much dialogue (and monologue...*sigh*) as XML2 has, you better have some good voice acting, however, XML2 does not. The voice acting is appauling at times, and the unrelentless taunts that your characters and NPCs deliver are unbearable. The sound effects on the other hand are nice and crisp, though do not give any illusion of a 3d world. The game also lacks a compelling soundtrack.

Controls - 8.0

This is the high point of XML2 (sadly). The controls are very crisp and laid out nicely (most of the time). You have a good sense of control over your character and you can adjust the camera to get a nice view of the environment. However, the controls to get to be a bit confusing when you start to deal with special powers in combat. Also, running at weird angles is sometimes difficult to do with the keyboard, you can however, select any point on the map with the mouse, and have your character move there by clicking. The worst part of the controls though are flight, mainly because you don't get a good sense of height, sometimes flying (certain characters have this ability) under doorways is near impossible due to this.

Replay Value - 2.0

The WORST part of XML2. As I stated before, you can replay the game, but the enemies are all pushovers. The game provides about 20+ hours (I completed it in about 24 hours, while earning all of the secret characters) of good gameplay, but without a decent multiplayer, you won't find yourself coming back to the game just to complete the boring "Danger Room" special courses (basically lame challenges of button mashing).

Overall - 6.0

While this game provides some good fun, it is simply inferior to many other games that provide good RPG gameplay, with an even better multiplayer. Multiple costumes, a decent amount of items, and boring challenges wont cause you to play this game again after beating it. You will only get angry when you realize how easily they could've made this game so much better.

Verdict: Borrow from a friend, otherwise, don't play, or wait until its in the bargain bin.

hey this is a great idea! it's too bad i don't have any games to review. i recently got X3 Reunion, and before that it was GuildWars around sometime in august.

I would review if I currently possessed the time to buy and play a new game to review, but I don't. I'm just telling you one word: sticky

Your wish is my command Stickied the thread...Thanks for the interest Also, if you want to review a game, it doesn't necessarily have to be a new game, just a game you have an opinion on that you think is important to share the only reason I chose XML2 is because I was staring at it on my shelf in disgust and thought...I must warn thy public of this tragedy!!!

Deus Ex

Genre: Action/Adventure/Stealth RPG/FPS
Console: PC (Apparently Xbox as well?)

Disclaimers: I may include spoilers to the game, including some MAJOR ones, so dont flame me for that!

Deus ex, Literal latin translation 'God from' (Interesting little tibit here: 'Deus ex Machina' from Matrix Revolutions literally means 'God from/of the Machines' or, to take a slighly more logical translation, The Machine God ), released by Eidos Interactive in 2000, it remains one of the benchmark titles among computer games.

Set in 2052, You take on the role of JC Denton, an antiterrorist agent who has been augmented with nanotechnology and granted some superhuman abilities (I quote from the game: 'They say this guy can just dissapear when he wants to'). An agent of the UN Antiterrorist Coalition, your job is to defend the United states from terrorist action. That is before it goes horribly wrong. Running from your former employers, you are chased by assassins, soldiers, and ever (bizzarely) the director of FEMA, even running onto an ancient order in your travels.

The freedom of gameplay in the game is incredible, you can go rambo, killing everything in sight to get at your objective, or you could go the stealth way, killing only when neccesary, knocking out or stunning most of your opponents (I even took the very nerdy approach of calling my character 'Solid Snake' from MGS fame). I have also been told that it is possible to finish the game by only harming 3 people.

Graphics - 7.5
Although impressive for it's time, Dues Ex's Graphics have long been superceeded, mostly dues to the game neinge being based sumewhat on unreal . The explosions look a bit corny and geometric (Not to mention frame lag when you detonate about 10 grenades at once). Its not really a downside, however, the lighting does the job, and you hardly ever notice the textruing, considering you're working at night in near-pitch-black conditions anyway.
And for those who really want to see screwy in a video game, i say only these words:
There is no spoon

Sound - 7.5
SOMEWHAT realistic, although the taunts fromenemies can be somewhat repetitive, the voice acting does its job. Especially the Mib's (VERY creepy mechanical voices). Monolouges can get slightly boring, and dialouge could have been streamlined slightly, but otherwise fine.

Controls 6
Can get very confusing at times (Move, lean left, lean right, scope, laser, inventory, 10 different augmentations, each with thier own key, activate/deactivate all augs, use, swtich ammo, innumerable other ones that i never use), and considering that you will most likely be using aumentations heavily, it can be very difficult to get used to. The addition of an inventory further complicates things (not to mention the size restriction, i can have all three heavy weapons in the game, but NOTHING ELSE!) to the point of going postal (not a completely bad thing on this game).

Replay Value - 10
Replay value? are you kidding? the storyline alone on this game is enough to warrant playing it just to kill time. The Sotryling will BLOW YOUR MIND, there are plots, subplots, and even metaplots, all finely interwoven until you think half of it is ACTUALLY HAPPENING. ive played it about 4 times and still havent found everything. Although this complexity can sometimes be a downside, it makes up for it with incredibly depth (and aformetioned metaplot)

Overall - 9
DEFINETLY worth getting. Although some level cam be rather difficult (Hmm, enemy, shoot him, he sees me, he shoots me, gets a headshot, i go down, start again from last quicksave, which is, FOUR HOURS AGO???), that and the conspicuous lack of autosaves can make it rather frustrating.

Verdict: Get it. its probably in the bargain bin by now and has been re-released so its cheap as chips. you will enjoy it to no end, not to mention the modding and cheat capacity (The absolute pawnage you will wreak on your enemies will full agmentations, skills, and fully upgraded weapons as almost unmatched)

edit- formatting error

Edited by - Arania - PFY on 2/23/2006 1:35:57 AM

Great review Arania. How does this game match up with its sequel, Invisible War ? I've got DE:IW but my crappy computer refuses to get a good FPS rate with it Due most likely to its awesome lighting effects.

The sequel is pretty damn average Para. The whole game was "dumbed down" for the console crowd, which means no skill progression, limited inventory space, and a more simplistic GUI. The plot is alright, but it cannot compare to the original.

Bleh...*Random curses* Typical game designers Oh well...I guess I should be happy considering the damn thing wouldn't run smoothly anyway!

Aye, it is a very resource-hungry engine unfortunately, and slows to a crawl when AA or AF is enabled. It is a poor console port in my opinion.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PC)

Graphics: 9

The graphics still aren't very good, but when compared to the PS2 and Xbox versions, this game just destroys the other two. On my PC (because my graphics card is only a 128 MB.) I have to keep the graphics on the lowest setting, and it's still remarkably better than the PS2 and Xbox. Another great feature is the ability to scale the draw distance. I keep the graphics on the lowest setting so the game will run smoothly on my machine, but the draw distance is all the way up. I can be in front of The Johnson House on Grove Street in Ganton or Idlewood (or where ever the hell it is) in Los Santos, look north and see the tallest building in the game.

Sound: 8

The PC verson has some MAJOR sound problems. I fixed these by turning my sound accelerator down to one notch. I've been sound bug free for a week now. I was a little dissapointed in the radio stations. I don't really like rap, but when I'm in the projects of Los Santos I'll put it on the rap station to give it the more ghetto feel. (Especally because I love just going there to hunt down Front Yard Ballas.) Radio X is the rock station, and they play some really good music. Other radio stations play country, oldies, old rock, new rock (well, new in 1992 when the game takes place), and rap. But the defining sound feature that the PC has and the PS2 doesn't is the User Track Player. It works just like a standard radio station except you have the ability to skip tracks and you can upload your own music. I love just crusing around and listening to Rammstein or System of a Down.

Control: 6 (this is mostly because of a personal issue I had)

The mouse and keyboard controls are pretty good. You lose the auto target feature when playing with the M/K, but it's actually a lot easier to get one shot kills with headshots. The only problem I have with the M/K is that the defalt flight controls are absolutly horrific. I purchased a gamepad, and the issue I'm having is probably the gamepad's software and not the game's fault. It's just hard to configure my gamepad to work like a PS2 controller in this game. (it's so screwed up that I have to use the start button to jump, press the right analog stick to retract landing gear when in an airplane, etc.)

Replay Value: 9

There is so much to do in this game that it's insane. As you can tell from my XFire signature, I've already logged in almost 90 hours on the game. I still have not finished the story misions (but I'm on about the fifth one in Las Venturas so I'm close to finishing.) There are trucking missions (which are actually fun), all kinds of sub-missions (firefighter, burglary, vigilante, paramedic, pimping, etc.) The story isn't exactly replayable, but there is enough other stuff in this game to keep you busy for a while.

Overall: 9.5

This is a superb game that no matter what system you have (except for the poor little Nintendo Gamecube) should not be missed. While you can tell that the game was made for the PS2, it translates nicely to the PC and Xbox. (However the main problem I had with the Xbox was the controls. They were playable, but things such as shooting while driving and flying airplanes with the rudder just felt awkward.) If you have an Xbox or a good PC, pick this game up. I guarentee you won't regret it.






w00t! All your oil are belong to U.S.

Edited by - Killa on 3/4/2006 8:09:08 AM

Edited by - Killa on 3/4/2006 8:10:07 AM

some of my favs age of empires,age of mythology no 1 with the age of the titans expansion, warcraft and warcraft 3 but all that changed when freelancer came around.

I need to ridicule someone, quick, do an oblivion one

The Knights Of The Old Republic games are a must for any Star Wars Fan!


"Look At These D'oh With Attitudes"

Anybody tried fable yet? It's a first person RPG with a decent plotline. Now That's Rare.

Graphics-9.5 if your card can handle it. I'm using an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB PCI card with 1Gb of RAM, a 2.5GHz P4, and that's DDR by the way. Yes, I upgraded. Finally.

Sound-8 When you've got EAX and a 5.1 speaker system it's hard not to excel so thos may be off for others.

Controls-10 Simple, easy to use, intuitive. 'nuff said.
Replay Value-10 Read the top line of this post.

Overall-9.5 Fun, easy to learn and get into, and a good plotline with great graphics and cutscenes.

Verdict-Buy Buy Buy. Do I sound a little pushy? Sorry, but it's worth the $30 I spent at Wal-Mart.

The SpaceNuts always return.