Always jaded by the MCU, but never really sure why. Took this game and the level where you explore a giant Sentinel factory for me to realize the sauce that was missing. As you explore higher and higher to the robot’s head, the ever present Sentinel feels ominous even though it wasn’t functioning, only for you to finally reach the top and the only way into the machine and destroy it is through its open mouth. Details like that, the color scheme, and character designs felt Jack Kirby AF, and just like that I remembered, “THIS is the Marvel I have been missing.”
An absolute beast. The best X-men game ever made, it's almost a perfect experience and clearly one of the brightest gems of the 16bit era.
It's alright.
An overrated game that looks fine and sounds decent but does not play as well as it looks. Some say this is one of the best on the system, all I can do is laugh at that judgement.
The first game where they really nailed it! Good music, cool visuals, good representations of the superpowers, and NO TIME LIMIT ON USING THEM!
Great co-op game with a variety of X-Men characters to play as. Wolverine is broken in some of the later levels though.
At around the 2/3 point of this game (which is when the difficulty started to really ratchet up) I didn't have a good impression of this; my chief gripe was its seemingly poor balancing and difficulty. It was all over the place; I'd lost so many lives on the 3rd level boss but beat the 4th level boss without trying, and there were so many instances of breezing through long stretches only to hit a brick wall that seemed more a function of poor balancing than an intentional difficulty spike. But after playing a bit more, I had my 'Eureka' moment and realized that this was actually a feature of one of the game's strengths.
There are seven playable mutants (up from four in the previous game), all with different movesets, strengths and weaknesses. Most sections that are difficult with one character can be trivialized by another, and the game encourages you to find the optimal character for each section by letting you change characters at every checkpoint (and whenever you lose a life). In other words, this is a game rewards your familiarity with the characters' capabilities by making you feel like a badass when you pick Magneto and can just levitate over the projectiles that were absolute hell to dodge as Beast.
Where it stumbles is in the finer points of execution. The game feels weird, and for lack of a better word, a little 'off'. The hit detection is a bit strange and I could never get the hang of the timing of the mercy invincibility. I frequently walked off platforms while trying to jump off the edge (something that rarely ever happens to me). The game also seems to suffer from the occasional dropped input during the more frantic segments, with Cyclops' optic blast a common culprit; I charge it up, release the 'A' button and then nothing happens. The levels also feel rather bland; while I didn't find anything particularly egregious in their design (except Savage Land - that can lick my armpit), they weren't that interesting and dragged on for way too long. The final level in particular is a marathon and the placement of hazards and enemies at the edge of the slowly-scrolling screen seems deliberately structured to slow you to a crawl.
I wish the game were more interesting; they didn't need to overcomplicate the arcade feel of the game when they already had a ready-made way to add flavor in the form of the large cast. If they went all-in on this and created obstacles that had to be traversed differently by different characters, or even some branching paths, it would have added a ton of replayability and made it feel like less of a chore at times. As it is, it's already one of the better superhero games on the Genesis but could have been even more!
There are seven playable mutants (up from four in the previous game), all with different movesets, strengths and weaknesses. Most sections that are difficult with one character can be trivialized by another, and the game encourages you to find the optimal character for each section by letting you change characters at every checkpoint (and whenever you lose a life). In other words, this is a game rewards your familiarity with the characters' capabilities by making you feel like a badass when you pick Magneto and can just levitate over the projectiles that were absolute hell to dodge as Beast.
Where it stumbles is in the finer points of execution. The game feels weird, and for lack of a better word, a little 'off'. The hit detection is a bit strange and I could never get the hang of the timing of the mercy invincibility. I frequently walked off platforms while trying to jump off the edge (something that rarely ever happens to me). The game also seems to suffer from the occasional dropped input during the more frantic segments, with Cyclops' optic blast a common culprit; I charge it up, release the 'A' button and then nothing happens. The levels also feel rather bland; while I didn't find anything particularly egregious in their design (except Savage Land - that can lick my armpit), they weren't that interesting and dragged on for way too long. The final level in particular is a marathon and the placement of hazards and enemies at the edge of the slowly-scrolling screen seems deliberately structured to slow you to a crawl.
I wish the game were more interesting; they didn't need to overcomplicate the arcade feel of the game when they already had a ready-made way to add flavor in the form of the large cast. If they went all-in on this and created obstacles that had to be traversed differently by different characters, or even some branching paths, it would have added a ton of replayability and made it feel like less of a chore at times. As it is, it's already one of the better superhero games on the Genesis but could have been even more!
A little unforgiving and having limited continues makes matter worse, but the game is really tight.
When you jump from the corner of a platform you get a weird half-jump and it’s no bueno.
X-Men 2: Clone Wars (1995): A nivel técnico uno de los juegos más potentes de Mega Drive, pero un gameplay justito. Más plataformas laberíntico que Metroidvania, a cada nivel se va desinflando un poco más hasta la mediocridad. Aún así, su buen comienzo y sus geniales y variados personajes lo compensan (6,60)
Everything that pt. 1 didn't do or get right truly a forgotten gem and one of the best marvel games of all time
I feel like part of my expectations for bold stylistic decisions in action games is rooted in here. It's been almost three decades and I still remember clear as day the cold open of this game taking my breath away. A perfectly functional action game about team-building with an amazing amount of style and confidence. Undersung.
Magneto was right
Looks phenomenal, first of all. Big, colorful, very well-animated sprites for the (seven!) playable characters and many of the enemies and bosses. Lots of personality in both them and the highly detailed backgrounds. Thankfully the game doesn't suffer too too much for the big, good graphics like many other platformers that have them do. Controlling each X-Man (and they do each play quite differently, which is cool) takes a bit of getting used to because of some slightly unusual physics, a touch of occasional jank, etc., but it's fine with some practice, and the levels are designed smartly enough to not let the fidelity cause real issues.
Levels are pretty varied and kind of have a "right" way to play them which boils down to which character to use. This is cool in theory because it makes you learn each character's moveset and quirks and makes them all feel special and truly like their comic counterparts, but can lead to some frustration while you burn lives experimenting with who's going to work best, and of course, it means that you can't just play as your favorite character for the whole game. Well, you COULD, but some levels would be really hard, so.
The weak points are the somewhat unexciting story/villains and some pretty bad-Genesis-y sound and music, which is always a disappointment. But quite good, overall. Maybe the best X-Men game up through, I don't know, X-MEN LEGENDS? I'm probably forgetting some.
(Also, has there ever been another game that has a legit pre-credits sequence? Seriously, you press the power button and you're instantly just standing there in level 1 as a random character with zero fanfare. And then when you beat it, you finally see the SEGA logo and things start proper. That's frickin cool!)
Levels are pretty varied and kind of have a "right" way to play them which boils down to which character to use. This is cool in theory because it makes you learn each character's moveset and quirks and makes them all feel special and truly like their comic counterparts, but can lead to some frustration while you burn lives experimenting with who's going to work best, and of course, it means that you can't just play as your favorite character for the whole game. Well, you COULD, but some levels would be really hard, so.
The weak points are the somewhat unexciting story/villains and some pretty bad-Genesis-y sound and music, which is always a disappointment. But quite good, overall. Maybe the best X-Men game up through, I don't know, X-MEN LEGENDS? I'm probably forgetting some.
(Also, has there ever been another game that has a legit pre-credits sequence? Seriously, you press the power button and you're instantly just standing there in level 1 as a random character with zero fanfare. And then when you beat it, you finally see the SEGA logo and things start proper. That's frickin cool!)
I rented this one a bunch. I liked how it instantly put you into the games first level as a random character. Not only after beating it did the the games logo and shit appear. Didn't get a character you wanna play as, spam that reset button and it would load in a sec with a different one. Such a cool gimmick. Plus when you unlock Magneto he was really fun. Great game.