Who would have thought that would all change in the same week?
Well, pinch yourselves. "X-Men Legends" and "Star Wars: Battlefront" were released this past week across several consoles, amidst well-deserved hype and fanfare. Each game not only faithfully carries its franchise name with honor, but also provides a great gameplay experience.
The X-Men have not only been one of the most popular comic book brands in history (almost single-handedly responsible for resurrecting the comic book industry in the early 90s), they have also spawned a pair of fantastic films and two extremely popular animated series. However, aside from some minor blips on the radar, the 'children of the atom' have never been able to cross over into the video game market successfully. In fact, their most recent foray into the console realm--"Wolverine's Revenge" was downright terrible. "X-Men Legends" plans to change all that, thankfully. The new game is best classified as an action/rpg/beat-em-up that allows players to control 4 mutants at a time, from a pool of 15 available heroes. The game does a good job of balancing leveling up/gaining experience/picking your team with kicking the crap out of bad guys. In addition, the game's story and presentation were handled by real fans of the comic books, so you can expect faithful representations of your favorite mutants, and a story that's actually worthy of the X-Men name. One of the coolest features by far has to be the ability to let other players join and exit on the fly, so your freinds can slice, freeze, burn and levitate Sentinels together for the ultimate bonding experience. In short, we can finally say there is actually a GOOD X-Men game. It's about time.
As opposed to the X-Men, Star Wars has had a fair degree of success on the console scene. However, since the "Super Star Wars" series on the SNES system, only the "Starfighter" games can be considered "memorable." Many have said that that there hasn't been a "true fan's" Star Wars game released for a console in recent memory. While not perfect, a true fan could ask for nothing more than "Star Wars: Battlefront." Battlefront is a third person/first-person shooter that literally plunges the player into the famous battlefields of the Star Wars films. Players can choose any side they like, and choose from several "types" of combatants to play as. For example: Want to play for the Empire as a sniper and pick off Ewoks? Go for it. Feel like being a spinning Droideka for the droid army and gunning down Jar Jar Binks? You got it. Like the ad says, this game basically has anything you'd ever want fly, drive or shoot in the Star Wars universe. But by far the best aspect of the game is the real effort the designers made to make you FEEL like you're in a battle. The action seems crowded and frenetic, yet if you work together with your fellow soldiers, victory can be yours. The game comes packed with dozens of single-player maps and three single-player modes, but the meat of the fun is when you hop online with 16 or so others and team up to blast away at each other. It's the closest thing to actually running into battle alongside the feet of an AT-AT.
Both "X-Men Legends" and "Star Wars: Battlefront" are available now for most major consoles--and if you look to the left, you'll see both titles stormed the top 10 sales of the week. So why the hell are you still reading this? Go out and BUY THEM.
