A X-men brawler that does what it does best while keeping the difficulty fairer than most games from this era
Compared to last week I’m revisiting a game that I remember fondly. Unsure if I ever finished it till today. This time we are following Capcom and their solid track record of pretty good licensed games that they made on the NES and SNES. No Spider-Man this time but the X-Men are here to take down evildoers.
The reviled mutant Apocalypse has taken over the island of Genosha. From there he plans on ruling over the world. Yet Professor Xavier and his band of X-men show up to stop him. Each of the X-men need to go to different areas to disable all of the island defenses. A tough task that seems nearly impossible.
So once again we have a cast of 5 playable characters. This time they all share a base move-set although some are faster or slow & powerful. But at its core it is a 2D side scrolling brawler. The goal of each level is to wipe out all the enemies and defeat whatever foe that waits at the end. In a lot of cases it is some kind of machine like a Sentinel or a generic looking mech. But you do face notable characters like Red X and Juggernaut later on.
Each character has their own set of moves that only they can do. Via different motions that usually just end up being a fireball motion. Like Wolverine can perform an uppercut that ended up vital for me to actually beat the game. The final boss has dumb amount of invincibility making it real hard to beat him without the classic invincible dragon punch. Gambit seemed pretty key for most levels too since he has more reach and his card throw was very useful. The first set of levels are unique per character yet the 5? In the middle are all the same with the last five being unique again. Gives a bit of variety since you might not even see all the levels. Although the way the final section is laid out it expects you to have to beat them all to succeed. Because the final boss doesn’t regain his health it does look designed to force the player to use up all their different X-men to achieve victory. A very unusual way to end a game.
Yet honestly most of the game is fairly easy. Once you notice the easy pattern of every boss it just comes down to exploiting their moment of weakness. Or just using the one character that feels built for the job. Like I mentioned earlier with Wolverine. The enemies will still kill you quickly if you give them a chance to. Yet thanks to a password system it’s easy enough to pick up where you left off. Made it much more bearable and fun to play through in a few hours. But if you are looking for a real challenge I don’t think that is what you’ll find here.
Overall this was a much more enjoyable adventure. Smashing my way through foes and seeing the different settings each character was set in was cool. It has just enough enemy variety to mix it up as you go along even if they are extremely predictable. If you looking for a good X-Men game on the SNES, this is the one to pick up