Amazon.com: X-Men Legends II Rise of the Apocalypse: Playstation 2: Video Games

39 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

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3.5 out of 5 stars (39 customer reviews)

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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun Game, Bad Glitch. Here's how to fix the freezing glitch!, October 14, 2005

By	The Matrix Fan "Video Gamer since 1979." - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

This game is absolutely excellent. There's not much that I can add that hasn't already been said - but there is the major problem of the freezing glitch that can cause SERIOUS aggravation. I was up to level 4 and the freezing got to such a bad point, the game wouldn't load anymore and I had to restart from scratch.

From checking online, and trying it myself with a new save file, it is possible to get through the entire game without a single freezing glitch. There is a "Hero" chest where you can store items that are not in use (armor, gloves, belts, etc....)

Do _not_ fill up this chest and have your active characters carrying 20 items at the same time. Apparently this is what causes the freezing. I kept my items in the hero chest below 30 and the next time through the game, there was no freezing whatsoever.

The symptoms appear to be when you attack a glowing character, or try to pick up an item from a weapons cache, these are the most common points that the freezing occurs.

If this is the case, reboot the game and try cleaning out your hero chest items to below 30, and drop about 10 items out of your active party. That should clear up the problem.

I'd rate the game higher, but this is a glitch that definitely should have been caught during quality control.

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66 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sadly, major flaws mar an otherwise exceptional game., September 30, 2005

By	D. Mok (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

This was indeed a saddening experience. The first X-Men Legends was pretty flawed, but this one was really a blast to play for the most part. I was smelling a five-star rating until the last third of the game, when serious problems crop up to make this game sometimes frustrating, sometimes infuriating...and at this point, unplayable (more to follow).

Pros:
- Most of my criticisms of the previous games have been acknowledged. Character abilities are much more diverse, so they feel much more like unique personalities now. And who wouldn't like playing with Magneto, Toad, or Juggernaut?
- Character training has been improved. In the previous game, the biggest problem was that you get so few ability points that you don't get to play around with some of the less useful, more exotic character skills. Here, characters can be customized to an impressive extent.
- Bishop was always one of my favourite X-Men, not to mention one of the few genuinely black characters (instead of a white character with brown skin, like Storm) in the comics. Great to see him in this game.
- The new "Blink Portal" feature allows you to call up a save point in most places every five minutes. This is an excellent balance between not letting the player save for 20 minutes straight (a major problem in X-Men Legends) and so many saves that the challenge goes right out the window.
- The fighting system has been tweaked, all for the better. Enemies are smarter, and sometimes it's frustrating to fight them, but in this game, it's a good kind of frustrating -- challenging instead of annoying. Whereas I couldn't wait to get the fights over with in X-Men Legends, here they flow seamlessly into the rhythm of the puzzle-solving, exploration, character training, and story.
- Maps are much, much clearer. The Automap feature is absolutely indispensable. And probably in response to accusations that X-Men Legends was too short, they have increased the maps drastically in size. But thanks to the new save system, it's not a laborious bore to explore the world.
- Item collection is more accessible this time around. It's much easier to discover things as you run/fly around the map.

Cons:
- This is the biggest one. I beat the game once and was delighted to see an option I clamored for in the first X-Men: The ability to replay the game using the characters you've been using, retaining your hard-earned abilities and items. But as I played on after beating Apocalypse, the game acquired this incredible tendency to crash. I'm not talking every hour -- I'm talking about loading a game, walking two paces to get to Zealot, and having the game freeze up the minute I defeat him. The game crashed at least 20 times (not an exaggeration) in one morning. Basically, it's unplayable. I don't care what the cause is or what game this happens to; it's unacceptable.
- Some of the Danger Room missions are well nigh undoable. In one Defend mission, you're supposed to protect Havok from harm. He's standing on the other side of the screen and it takes about five seconds to get to him. For the first dozen times I tried this course, Havok died within three seconds of starting the mission, before I even had time to switch characters to activate a healing ability. Did they actually test this?
- They actually put too many items into the game. Variety and flavour are good, but at a certain point, it became too much of a strain to try to distribute equipment over and over.
- Lots of the voice work and cinematics are poorly paced. I don't need eight seconds of the camera panning to the electric trap I just disarmed, thank you very much. They should have allowed us to skip some of these with the Start button.

Overall, I had a very good time playing this game. So it was very frustrating to see that the massive crashing problem suddenly emerge, rendering the game pretty much unplayable for me. X-Men Legends had the same kind of crashes, just not as frequently, and none of my other games has this problem, using this exact same console with the same memory cards, which leads me to believe there's something wrong with the way the game was programmed. Activision really needs to solve this, because no one will ever have the patience to play a game that crashes every three minutes. What a dismaying development to what is otherwise a very fun, well-balanced game.

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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent sequel, some very minor problems, October 18, 2005

By	Review Lover "ReviewLover" (At a place...) - See all my reviews

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

X-Men Legends was a breath of new life for those of us sick and tired of waiting for a decent adventure game starring everyone's favourite cast of mutants. It was fast, fun, big and challenging, and contained more in-references and playable characters than you could shake a stick at.

X-Men Legends 2: ROA takes that formula and tweaks it somewhat, meaning that this is a sequel that essentially delivers more of the same addictive gameplay, bucketloads more of the same straight-from-the-comic-book atmosphere, and a few minor improvements and disimprovements over the original.

The plot is expansive and kind of perfunctory: Apocalypse is back and now the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (the baddies from the original game) must now side with the X-Men to remove the threat of immediate worldwide annihilation. This cunning stunt allows you to have a cast of sixteen selectable muties from the get-go, and this is a pretty even blend of both X-Men and BOEM characters alike. Some are strong from the beginning and only get more powerful as they level up (the ubiquitous Wolverine, Jean Grey, Colossus), some of the new characters are excellent too (Scarlet Witch, Bishop, Juggernaut and Sunfire), and some of the characters from the first game that you might not have used as much because of their clunkiness have been improved out of all order - for me, this was Rogue and Gambit, now (thanks to some serious design improvements) a formidable team.

There are still some dud characters, though, and these come in the shape of Magneto and Toad. Shame, but what can you do? You don't *have to* use them, so it's not all bad.

The only drawback about all of this is the fact that a huge, huge portion of the Marvel cast roster (and even that from the first game, which was by no means exhaustive!) is missing, and while newbies like the really excellent Scarlet Witch and Sunfire more than hold their own, you can't help but miss the presence of the more usable chatacters from X-Men Legends, such as Beast, Psylocke and Magma.

A nice touch, though, is if you assemble a team of heroes with matching secondary costumes (e.g. Age of Apocalypse), you automatically get a stat increase. Similarly, it's now much easier to distribute the stat points, with an Auto option that does the calculation for you, allowing you to focus in on the gameplay. Another HUGE improvement is the economic system of the game, Tech Bits are now in far more plentiful supply and items are relatively cheaper.

There are some drawbacks: The items system is still as rotten as ever, if you pick up too many things it's back to the Base to unload some in the Hero stash boxes (think Biohazard). But since this box is not bottomless, you need to sell the weaker items to Forge, too. This doesn't sound so bad in theory but it does break up the action pretty badly, and since the rare items are so very useful you do need to keep a close eye on what you're selling, equipping and moving about.

Basic gameplay remains pretty much the same, if overall a little easier than in X-Men Legends. It's fast, fun and very satisfying, and while there are some glitches here and there, the plentiful amount of Save points throughout means you never really spend too much time backtracking.

Maps are a pain; there's no way of viewing one overall map without loading up a Map sub-screen, so you do get lost sometimes. Similarly, loading times (as before) remain a second or so too long mid-mission, making leveling up and shuffling things about a bit more of a chore than it needs to be.

Graphics are much improved, though, with more detailed and colourful powers, costumes, enemies and stunning backdrops than before.

All in all, a sequel very worthy of its great predecessor, X-Men Legends 2 deserves a place on the shelf of all action-adventure game fans. Recommended.