X-Men XBLA Review

I have some vague memories of playing X-Men in the arcades years ago. There were not many arcades around, and I barely ever went but I remember being invited to a friends birthday party at one and among the many games we played I'm pretty sure X-Men was one of them. At the time there seemed nothing to the game except to mash the buttons, and playing it again now it seems like I wasn't that far off all those years ago.

Overview

X-Men was originally a 4 or 6 player Beat 'em Up arcade game. You could play as either Colossus, Cyclops, Dazzler, Nightcrawler, Storm or Wolverine as you work your way through a number of Marvel super villains, foiling their dastardly plans until you reach Magneto and put an end to all this tom foolery for good. Each character can beat the many enemies into submission with a range of hand to hand attacks and a unique and powerful special move.

Rational
I'm a decent fan of Marvel's characters and Beat 'em Ups, with TMNT 1989 and Streets of Rage being my favourites, but X-Men just didn't do anything for me. X-Men just seemed like there was no apparent strategy or techniques for working your way through the game. Games were designed to suck quarters out of you back then but this is ridiculous. In TMNT 1989 (another Beat 'em Up available on XBLA) you can learn the levels and develop tactics for the wide range of enemies you'd encounter and even eventually maybe beat the game on one quarter. No such luck here, the sheer amount of enemies they throw at you in a single encounter makes dodging and moving around without getting hit nearly impossible.

This lack of strategy just turns the game into a shallow button masher, and without the impetus to do good (because your dollar isn't on the line anymore) you just button bash and continue your way through the game. When played this way X-Men is quite boring and short. All the challenge is pretty much removed by respawning then using all your supers and doing as much damage as possible before dying and repeating the process. It's when you look back on a game like this that you can really see how cheap the design really was.

Summary
X-Men only offers something to those that hold some sort of nostalgia for it. The game by itself is plain, offers little variety or strategy and is over in less than an hour. The only other way X-Men might interest you is if you are a major Marvel fan looking to mindlessly press a couple of buttons for a while. There's no story or gameplay hook to keep you coming back for more. X-Men's one redeeming feature may be that it has an easy 200 points if you have a friend with the game, so if you're way into achievements you might give it a look.