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X-Men Legends is one of those titles that is just too easy to overlook. The screenshots aren’t the most awe-inspiring, and the mutant team has had very few bright spots in their video-game history. However, fans should be aware that Legends is not only one of the best X-Men games ever produced, it also brings the characters into a strong action-RPG structure that fits the team perfectly.

The story follows a series of events that begins with Mystique’s kidnapping of a young mutant named Alison Crestmere, who has the ability to manipulate magma. Like any good comic, the story seems simple until you try to go back and piece it all together again. The story’s strength is found in its characters and how all these seemingly separate situations eventually tie themselves together. A wide range of villains make appearances, including the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the Sentinels, the Morlocks, Weapon X laboratories, and Shadow King on the Astral Plane. A large number of the X-Men who are added to your group are worked in believably in the context of events in the game.

The gameplay is somewhat similar to other top-down hack-and-slash RPGs. You control a team of four X-Men, which you can switch among instantly with the cross pad, and work your way through massive levels, tearing through dozens upon dozens of enemies, objects, and walls as you go. The control scheme is really quite ingenious, essentially doubling the functions of the face buttons. You can use quick strikes and power attacks with the A and B buttons, pressing them in various sequences to perform combos. The X button allows you to pick up and throw items or characters, and you can jump and/or fly with Y. However, if you hold down the R button, the buttons all switch to each character’s unique mutant powers which are represented by icons next to your character’s life bar. While each mutant has different powers, all of them generally have two offensive moves, a defensive stat-change power, and an Extreme power that damages all the enemies currently on the screen. The game also rewards you for using multiple characters’ mutant abilities simultaneously for combos that not only put out greater damage, but reward you with extra experience points as well.

Related to their powers, the X-Men also have differing strengths and attributes. Wolverine and Colossus are powerhouses of physical strength, while characters like Jubilee and Cyclops use energy attacks, and Psylocke and Jean Grey have mental powers. It pays to balance your team for a variety of situations, in and out of combat. Enemies are often resistant to particular attributes, and mutant powers can also be used to smash through walls, weld holes in a sinking ship, or make bridges to cross gaps. Thankfully, if you don’t have the right X-Man for the job, the levels’ extraction points are placed evenly, allowing you to switch your team members, visit the Danger Room challenges, save the game, or purchase items.

With all the beatings going on, it might be hard to see how this is can be classified as an RPG, but there definitely is a firm backbone for gaining stats that is both rewarding and completely user-defined. Similar to games like Knights of the Old Republic, at every level-up, you’ll gain a set number of points to spend on stat bonuses and mutant abilities. You can use them to unlock new mutant powers, expand current powers, and add various effects related to each mutant’s specific powers and attributes. Upgrading powers isn’t as transparent as simply making them quicker or stronger either. Gambit’s card throw will go up from three to five to seven cards. Nightcrawler’s Teleport Kick goes from a measly three attacks to an astounding eight. Storm’s lightning bolt eventually becomes chain lightning, connecting to enemies across the screen, and Colossus’s Might attribute will allow him to pick up and toss items as large as cars when it’s maxed-out. You won’t be able to max-out all of a character’s moves and attributes by the end of the game, so you have to make careful choices about what powers you want to focus on for each character. However, since the results are so tangible, I found myself heading to the Danger Room for hours to gain experience even after finishing the game. But, if you just feel like wreaking havoc and don’t care for hard choices, you can have the game automatically distribute points as well.

The Danger Room, found in the Mansion’s Sub-basement, is basically a training simulator / challenge mode, and because it’s featured prominently in the comics, it fits perfectly in the game setting. At first the lessons just walk you through combat basics, but as you find discs throughout each level (along with comic covers and concept art), you’ll encounter ever-greater challenges, including character-specific challenges that reward you with unique items that significantly boost that person’s mutant abilities.

Speaking of the X-Mansion (or the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, if you prefer), you’ll venture back to base frequently between action stages, taking on Alison’s role as she joins the school and learns to grapple with her own frightening abilities. The focus on Alison allows a larger portion of the game to feature voice acting, which is very good if you don’t concern yourself with the typically corny quips during battles. Patrick Stewart reprises his role as Professor X, and other notable voice talents include Ed Asner as the Morlock Healer and Lou Diamond Phillips as Forge. The majority of time you’ll spend in the Mansion will be taken up speaking to other X-Men, reading their histories, and exploring their dorm rooms, as well as checking out comic covers and concept art that you find during the game. Again, it’s this focus on the characters that really connects fans to the game, reminding you of familiar storylines and treating you to glimpses of characters that you might not know as much about. I found myself pulling old trading cards and comic books out of the closet and wondering if I should hunt down the old Fox cartoon that aired on Saturday mornings back in the 90’s.

During a few (too few) points in the game, talking to an X-Man in the mansion will trigger a flashback sequence that pulls you to a classic situation from the comics, like Juggernaut’s destructive assault on the Mansion or Wolverine’s escape from the Weapon X labs. It’s a brilliant idea that draws on fans’ nostalgia and desire to experience these moments first-hand, but there are only three flashbacks in the entire game. Hopefully we’ll see more in the sequel.

X-Men Legends is also a fairly strong multiplayer title since other players (up to three, plus you) can just jump in and press start at any point in an action stage. What’s more, in what can almost be considered a fluke in the hardware design, the GameCube version has the exclusive feature of being able to jump out at any time without accessing the menu, simply by disconnecting the controller plug, returning the character to AI control. I really didn’t get to spend as much time with multiplayer as I would have liked, but the AI proved to be quite capable of holding its own most of the time.

As incredible as the game is in most respects, it is lacking in polish in several key areas, including graphics and sound. I mentioned my distaste for the graphics in detail in my impressions of a preview build, but it basically comes down to a somewhat bland art design and blurry textures that are okay in gameplay, but look terrible in cut-scenes. The video sequences also suffer from compression artifacts in the GC version, which is a little disheartening considering that other Activision games like THUG 2 make good use of the GameCube DivX compression.

On the sound side, while the voice acting is great and sound effects are adequate, the music is almost non-existent. There aren’t any memorable themes, and the music throughout the game alternates between rather generic ambient music when exploring and equally unexciting techno-rock during battle. On top of that, the music cuts off when you pull up the menu, jolting you out of the game, and someone had the audacity to run the end credits with – get this – absolute silence. There’s no music during the credits at all. Talk about anti-climactic.

Aside from the presentation, I did come across two persistent flaws in the levels that became very frustrating. For one, if you have an enemy right up against a wall, there’s a fair chance your hits won’t register any damage. This is especially noticeable on the Arbiter level, where Sentinels come up through elevator shafts, and you need to avoid attacking them before they move out to the center of the room. (They have no trouble hitting you, of course.) The other problem is also related to walls, in that objects will just go right through them. It can be disappointing to lose a needed health power-up, but it becomes a real issue when a keycard essential to progressing is stuck five feet inside the wall with a giant red arrow pointing at it, taunting you, forcing you to smash everything nearby in futility, when the only real solution is to reset to your last save point.

Despite its lackluster presentation, my frustrations are really a reflection of how much I do like this game and wish that these little things could have been polished up. X-Men Legends should not be overlooked, especially not by X-Men fans. This is probably the first time that an X-Men game has come out with a strong gameplay structure matched by an equally strong story, and I’ll be watching for more news on the sequel.