All My X-es

I meant to discuss this last column, but I got tired of writing, and tired writing is bad writing. As it is, it left me with another column to write, so it's not all bad.

I've had over a week currently with X-Men Legends (the copy of which I procured for my Game Cube), and my reactions to it are quite pleasant. Comic-to-Game adaptions are often hit or miss, as most anyone will tell you. For every decent game (mostly Capcom developed games), we get utter shit (most any Spawn, Crow, or Hellboy game, as an example). I wasn't originally planning on buying X-Men Legends. I miss a lot of games every year just due to a lack of time for them, but having heard friends' reactions to it, I had to get it.

After my initial elation with the game (the fun of running around being a mutant and killing shit with adamantium claws), I was able to look at it critically, and I have these things to say about it:

For starters, while the play system is fun, and the character customization level allowed with leveling up is great, the game is rather shallow. See, the game is an RPG, but unlike most RPGs, you don't have an open world to explore. Legends sets you on missions and only missions. Once you complete a mission, it's on to the next mission. The closest you get to exploring any world is wandering the mansion once in a while. It leaves the game feeling very linear.

I mean, seriously, the X-Men have a freaking jet. Where is the down time between specific missions where I can take it for a spin and find non-plot-related things to do? I'm not saying all RPGs are fully free roaming like GTAs, but shit, a little something outside the missions would be nice.

The game is very linear, and most of the time you're in "dungeons" basically. So the game play boils down to a dungeon crawl. Go into a dungeon, find an item, destroy something, repeat. Sometimes you have to use telekinetics to activate something, or fuse something with heat or optics, or build bridges with ice or mind powers. These aren't often, and it's always one of those three things. So, once you've played a couple of hours in, you've played it all except for leveling up all the way and seeing where the plot goes.

That's the bad of the game. Of course, it took me 20 hours of game play to get anywhere near bored with the game at all. Mostly I'm burned out after a 8-straight-hour gaming session on it and need a couple of days to recover. The game is engaging, and with multiple players, it quite fun. It's got the potential for great party sessions.

What I want to see them do with a sequel, if there is one, is make the world open, have side quests and missions, and not make the game so linear. They have so much potential, with such an enticing play system. Next game just needs to flesh that out.