First Impressions: Not a surprise that a sequel is on the way.
The X-Men have a very colorful (pun intended) history with hundreds of characters, both good and evil, that each add their own flavor to the mythology. Fortunately for us videogame players, Raven Software finally helped the X-Men find their interactive voice with last year's long-awaited X-Men Legends. Equal parts action-platformer and role-playing-game, Legends focused on the team-dynamic that has made the comic book a hit for decades, including such fan favorite moves as the Fastball Special. It makes sense that Raven's efforts, after paying off so well, would be rewarded with a sequel. X-Men Legends: Rise of Apocalypse will pick up the action where the original left off when it comes out this fall.
A lot of what worked for the original X-Men Legends is making a return for Rise of Apocalypse. Most importantly, we will see more of the multiplayer mayhem that made the original stand head and shoulders above its peers. It all started with the brilliant-in-it's-simplicity inclusion of four X-Men taking on the Brotherhood at one time. Sure, the single player game let you switch between the four characters at will but grabbing three of your friends and getting the four-player action going sparked an exponential increase in fun. Another huge factor that made the original X-Men Legends successful was the wide variety of characters available for play and the upgradable mutant powers that each one sported. Again, Rise of Apocalypse will continue to work this successful angle, this time with a little twist...
X-Men Legends: Rise of Apocalypse pits the X-Men against a threat even greater than Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants, the first mutant, Apocalypse. In fact, this new threat is so dangerous that the X-Men will be forced to team-up with Magneto and his band of merry men to save the world. With each team being separately attacked by Apocalypse, they are left with no other choice. So, the combined forces of good and (apparently only kind of) evil will travel to Apocalypse's homeland, Egypt, the mutant island of Genosha, the south pole (maybe the Savage Land?), and the Weapon X facility in Canada.
Obviously, one huge addition to X-Men Legends: Rise of Apocalypse is the ability to add members of the Brotherhood to your four-mutant team, but what else does the sequel hold in store for fans? One thing is that the game is going to allow you to customize your characters to match your playing style a little bit more. In the original X-Men Legends, each character's mutant powers were just about maxed out by the end of the game. In essence, the choices that you made throughout the game really didn't make any difference to where your character ended up. This time around, you will be able to focus on different aspects of each character's abilities. For instance, one path of development will focus on the characters mutant powers while the other might develop their use of weapons. In the end, each character will be able to develop somewhere around 10 mutant powers and four of them will be available to use at any one time.
The mutant power tree isn't the only part of the original game to get an overhaul for Rise of Apocalypse. You can also expect to see environments that are even more destructible than before and, if multiplayer action isn't enough for you PS2 and Xbox fans, you will be able to take the cooperative game online for some long distance four-player mayhem. You will also have the option to go it alone, without the assistance of your AI companions, even though the improved AI will up their value.
