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PRE-GAME

The Brotherhood of Mutants has just kidnapped a young mutant in New York City. It's up to you and the X-men to get her back. Take to the streets as 15 of your favorite X-men as you fight your way through more bad guy's then you can shake an adamantium claw at.

EYE-SPY

THE HOOK:  The X-Men have had a number of games over the years, ranging from decent to horrible, so I wasn't expecting much from this. Still, when I heard that it was made by the people responsible for Star Wars: Jedi Outcast (a game I enjoyed  greatly), and that it had multiplayer for up to four people, I 
decided to check it out, and I'm glad I did.

HOW IT LOOKS AND FEELS:  With a unique blending of cel shading and 3D gives this game a feel like no other. It work's extremely in capturing the feel of the comics. The character's special attacks all look spectacular. Some problems can be found with the camera getting stuck behind terrain, but they are few and far between.  

This game plays well on a Gamecube controller. A and B are your basic attack buttons, and you can perform combo's by mixing the two together. Y is jump, and X is the action button. Special attacks are performed by holding R and then hitting either A, B, Y, or X. Each one corresponds to a particular attack, and these can't be changed. While it sounds annoying in theory, once you  get playing you'll find it comes easily.

HOW IT SOUNDS:  The music starts with a slow and suspenseful orchestral tune, but it picks up with a more Rock N' Roll sounding theme when you enter battle. The music adjust automatically, with one tune fading out as the fades in to replace it. The voice acting is well done, with Patrick Stewart voicing Professor Xavier the best (naturaly).  There are several voice actors who should be familiar to anime and game fans.

EXTRAS:  The extra's in this game include comic book covers and production art you find scattered through levels, as well as character bio's of all the character's you encounter. There are also alternate costumes for the characters. You can also rewatch all the cinema's in the game. However, the best extra by far is the flashback missions. There are only 3 in the game, but they let you play through some of the X-Men's classic battles from the comic books. All of these things can be accessed form the Mansion.

CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE:  The games cut scenes are very well done. The action in them looks like something out of the X-Men movies.  The character's all look good, like they've been pulled straight from the comics. All in all they did a great job on the cut scenes in this game.

BEST PLAYER:  Well, seeing as how your team is almost always made up of four characters, you have the freedom to choose your favorite character as well as a good character in general. I'd say the best character in the game is Storm. Her special attacks are deadly, and she can back them up with great melee skills too.
Also, she can fly and carry another character with her, so I always made sure she was on my team. My personal favorite to play as was Gambit though, mostly cause I have always liked the Cajun.

CHEAT CODE YOU NEED:  Xtreme Costumes - Enter the following at the main menu: Up, Up, Right, Left, Down, Down, Start This is the only cheat code available for the game as far as I know. It unlocks additional costumes for most of the characters.  These are the only extra costumes you can use during your first play through the game.

CHEAT CODE YOU WANT:  Not so much a cheat code really, but the ability to play through the game a second time with your characters and items the same as they were when you finished the game the first time. Think New Game + from Chrono Cross. It would have been great to go back through and continue leveling up my characters, as well as being able to use all of them from the beginning of the game. Seeing as how some of the characters aren't even available till near the end of the game, this would have greatly furthered the experience, and its at the top of my list of things I'd like to see in a sequel.

OH MAN! MOMENT: The first time a large group of Sentinels drops out of the sky and lay waste to your characters. That's when you realize that this truly is the best X-Men game ever.

GLITCH ITCH: The only glitch I encounter was when Nightcrawler's Flashback mission would start, if I let the cinema play through the game would freeze at the loading screen. It happened twice, but afterwards I skipped the cinema and it loaded just fine.

FAN SERVICE:  Well, all the female characters in this game wear skin tight costumes, some more revealing than others. Aside from that there's a few comic book covers, load screens and production art that's nice to look at.

END GAME:

This game is the best X-Men game I've ever played. It's also a highly enjoyable action rpg game. Add in the multiplayer and you've got yourself a winner. Still no game is perfect, and this one has it's share of blemishes.

One thing that bugged me is that there was a loading screen when you went to the character menu. It was only second or two, but it still slowed down the game play a bit. Still, the character screen was pretty impressive graphically, so I can understand the need for the load time.

As I've mentioned before the multiplayer was one of the major selling factors on this game for me. It works great in game during the missions. The game allows for another person to join in at any point. Just plug in another controller and your all set. The players share control of the character's depending on how many people are playing. Anyone can switch to a computer controlled character at the touch of a button, as long as there's one available. However, the multiplayer has its problems. One major thing is that you wont always have four character's for people to use. Between missions your in the mansion in control of only a single character. These interludes can last awhile, depending on what your required to do before the next mission. So if you have three friends over ready to get going on the action, this can be an annoying problem. Also, not being able to revive fallen characters on the fly can leave some people just sitting if there aren't enough characters available. 

Aside from the main game there was a multiplayer fighting mode added where you can use any of the characters from the game, including villains and bosses. Still, aside from the X-Men themselves, most of the characters to play as are pretty generic or overpowered, and all in all this mode isn't balanced enough to make it more than just a distraction.

Still, the Pros far outweigh the Cons in this game. This game has an awesome plot that will keep you guessing right up till then end. This game takes from both the classic X-Men comics series as well as the popular Ultimate X-Men series, and blends them together into a fantastic X-Men adventure. This game rocks in multiplayer, but it's still great when your going solo. If your a fan of the X-Men, looking for a great multiplayer game, or really get a kick out of action rpg's, then this game is totally worth a purchase.

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