X-Men Legends might be the most basic, buy the books X-Men game there's ever been.
It's a team brawler game in where you fight the Brotherhood of mutants, Sentinels and a few other gropes that pop up in the X-Men universe.
The mechanics are incredibly simple. Select your approved X-Men and then use a variety of light and heavy attacks by mashing two buttons.
Sometimes you can use speciality moves if you have enough energy and if you know what you're doing, you can line up your moves with a team member and create combo moves.
That's all there really is to the mechanics.
Otherwise the games an Incredibly straightforward brawl fighter.
You select whatever X-Men you want and go on your way. Every here and there they'll be some weird speciality event where you'll need a particular X-Men's power that can be utilised to fix a problem. Rather that be a hole in the side of a ship that needs to be sealed up or creating an artificial bridge.
That's all there really is to the game play. It's very easy to pick up it's relatively enjoyable in short bursts.
The easy accessibility makes it ideal to play with friends. All you have to do is find someone else who's his geeky about X-Men as you are and you're set.
And speaking of geeky X-Men fun. That's where this game really shines.
The story is a cookie-cutter event of Magneto trying to conquer the planet so that he can either destroy all the humans or conquer all the humans in some misguided view of mutant superiority.
Pretty basic story for Magneto pretty on the ball politics too.
But that's where all the other fun comes into play.
As you have to fight all the Brotherhood of Evil mutants who keep popping up and then deal with secondary problems usually caused by the Brotherhood stupidity*. Or there's the secondary story of militaristic humans wanting to use the mutants as an excuse to either grab power or to wipe out all the mutants.
Essentially you're fighting groups of highly insecure genocide all Psychopaths.
At some point you'll come across the third antagonist to the game. The incredibly awkward and strange Shadow King. An interdimensional being who lives in a realm of psychic energy. For some reason he a major beef with Charles Xavier.
At the centre of all of this is a young girl who has the power to create volcanic activity and control rocks**. (I think she's just a rip-off of Tarra from the Teen Titan comic. But I'm not sure.)
The Brotherhood of Mutants wants her as a backup to control a giant asteroid floating above the atmosphere of the Earth where Magneto lives. (Yes Magneto lives on an asteroid, what of it.)
And the X-Men are there to stop them. For that is all the X-Men scene to do. They are maintainers of the status quo if somebody gets uppity they get involved and bring them back to and already pre-existing state. Usually after a crap ton of collateral damage.
Anyways the actual plot of the story is quite fun. Magneto and his Brotherhood decide they're going to wrap everything up to 11. So they start attacking various places, kidnapping certain mutant and broadcasting threats on the national television. Before deciding to literally cover the entire Earth and asteroids as the hold the entire world hostage until Magneto is given what he wants. Now his initial commands consist of:
Eliminating military rent anti-mutant programs, acquiring a piece of territory in the Indian Ocean and handing over one American General who Magneto sees as the main problem. Honestly they sound like pretty simple commands to me. Especially given that he's literally holding the world Ransom by denying them the freaking Sun.
Why Magneto didn't eliminate this man originally, we'll never know. It seems to be the biggest enemy of Magneto is in fact himself. Usually his ego will get the better of him then anyone trying to take him down.
Speaking of which that was a bit of a let-down in this game. Half the game has a massive buildup for when you're about to encounter Magneto.
He's the guy that's on the box, he's the main villain of the X-Men and he's been building up all this power to try and literally take over the earth.
I was expecting a big giant tough fight.
But instead you end up wiping the floor with him in a matter of minutes and the main enemy turns out to be that military General you saw it earlier.
Decked out in the giant Sentinel. Which admittedly was a pain in the butt to beat up.
Though that might only be the case because he sent these freaking spider robots in swarms earlier to attack you and you end up using up all your resources fighting those darn things. Those mechanized spider Sentinels are hands-down the worst enemy in the game.
You do fight the Shadow King at some point in this game as well. His story feels a little tact on but it's kind of important then he's there cuz otherwise you just have Charles Xavier finding out how to beat Magneto with diplomacy or just using his mind powers in the end when things get too hectic. That's kind of the Ace in the Hole for the X-Men is that they have the all powerful telepath at their back who can usually solve most problems if he just puts his literal mind to it.
Overall it's a really fun game. The basic mechanics are engaging without being needlessly complicated. The environments are good enough to keep you from getting bored. With the exception of some of the sewer levels where you fight these Morlock people.
That part got a little over used.
But otherwise I thought it turned out okay.
Stories fun, the environments are fun, there's tons of little references to other X-Men Adventures scattered throughout and it's just one of the very few games you can play where you can actually experience the everyday life of an X-Men.
The parts where you play as Magma running around the X mansion are little annoying at times. As you'll feel like you're just wasting your time running around looking for objectives, but that's a minor problem.
*You see the Brotherhood is kind of like an upside-down pyramid. If Magneto's not there, the whole thing tips over.
He is the one foundational structures of this organisation and without him the Brotherhood is nothing more than a group of delinquent half-wits and glorified thugs.
Well with the exception of Mystique.
She's also competent enough in her own rights, but a lot of the times if Magneto's not around, she won't bother sticking with the Brotherhood either.
**The voice actress for the girl Magma is the same person that played Susie on the Rugrats. I only bring that up here because she uses the exact same voice. Which kind of takes you out of the game every time you hear it. Then again Magneto's played by the same guy that does the voice of Megabyte. That's the exact same mannerism in every single way.
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