All These Superheroes And Not A Single Comic!
By Yummylee 6 Comments
As far as superhero comics go, ala Marvel and DC, however, I've never even held one in my hands... my COLD, DEAD HANDS! But even with my distinct inactivity concerning comics I still find myself to be quite enveloped in everything to do with the franchises that the comics have created. For the past couple of years in fact, I've learn a fair bit about many of the comics greatest through games, movies and/or just scrolling through never ending wikipedia pages.
As such I just figured I'd blog up some my more recent endeavours (or my familiarising with most on my list) involving all of this comic book nonsense!
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for the 360:
I've always been a fan of the MUA/Legends series, yet I didn't decide to get MUA2 till mid this year. I don't know what took me so long; maybe I just wasn't up in the craze at that point, but in any case I did eventually get in my grasps and it no doubt is what set me off on my Marvel binge soon after!
MUA2 could well the weakest of the series, but it's greatly improved combat was able to counter against the watered down RPG mechanics from past games, shorter story length, the story being much more serious and less goofy at that, lame simulation side missions, three alternate costumes dropped to one and it's overall roster while large still didn't match against what the original MUA gave you. Plus Iron Man was terrible in this game and far too underpowered =(
Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the 360:
The predecessor off the game above, MUA was the first of the series that I played back in 2006 on the PS2 and it had me hooked throughout around eight playthroughs. I particularly liked The Thing with all his crowd clearing awesomness! <3 It was made up of complete fan service with an astonishing variety of heroes, villains and heroic/villainous environments. It was pure cheese poured over a solid stack of corn, but I still loved it all, and it give me a fair share of knowledge within the insanely expansive Marvel Universe.
I recently bought it for my 360 just to get back into it again, and figured I might aswell get me a current-gen copy for the additions of Colossus and Moon Knight. Unfortunately while this was one the apex of the series for me it's also the one that has aged the worst of them all. Slippery combat, awkward graphics and animations that long lost their charm without all the cell-shading from the Legends games had me push a long tedious uphill battle to the finish.
Playing as a Nolan North voiced Colossus was still pretty sweet, though.
X-Men Legends 2 for the PS2:
Despite me remembering the original MUA game being the height of the series, that place now definitely lies with X-Men Legends 2! It hasn't aged nearly as bad and playing through with more gaming experience behind me it's now placed as the best the series has to offer. The character roster is obviously not as large or expansive but it's still significantly large that can last you along many playthroughs. It's even what helped build up Deadpool's popularity with him appearing as a cameo as a brainwashed boss, and then eventually unlocked after the completion of the game.
Everything to do with Legends 2 just feels more refined, more fun, over MUA. The cell shading graphics makes the game still look pretty decent even after all this time, and the cutscene graphics definitely impress when considering how old it is. The nifty quirk of also building teams of both X-men and their arch nemesis' is a cool one, but suffers from the actual lack of Brotherhood characters. Out of the overall 18 or so characters available, only four are members of the Brotherhood! There's plenty of them amidst the story but they the majority act as NPCs. Magneto, Toad and Juggernaut are worthy picks, but why the hell did we need Scarlet Witch? We're left without Pyro, Blob, Sabretooth and Mystique, yet Magneto's daughter was an A-OK? Not to mention.... Sunfire??? Again if they wanted a fire specialist character, what was wrong with that Australian asswipe, Pyro?? T.T
X-Men Legends for the PS2:
Pretty weird why I decided to go through the series backwards, but that's how it happens..
X-Men Legends is also still a really great game, but didn't obviously had a little polish to test curses of time as much as its sequel. It does still have a pretty good story with a hella lot of famous voice actors than I recalled, after playing through it again. This is where Steve Blum first stuck his own claws in the character of Wolverine, there's Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Professor X from the movies, Cree Summers plays the lead character Alison Crestmere, famed english VO Robert Atkin Downes provided the vocal chords for Cyclops while the incredibly baritone voice of Tony Jay fitted Magneto perfectly.
Even still, the gameplay was a little iffy with you suffering from a number of cheap deaths at the beginning with it eventually becoming a complete cakewalk as the game went on--The backwards mentality isn't as uncommon as I thought it seems =P
X-Men Origins Wolverine for the 360:
Next Blog I'll carry on my superhero gamage with Justice League Heroes for the PS2!.. just need to wait till the fucking thing arrives -_-
I also plan to touch on the comic book adapted movies and cartoons I've been watching. And as if ya'll weren't excited enough already!!!