#6 - X-Men: The Arcade Game

Emma Frost and Scott Summers, lovers for the ages.

I remember playing this game a handful of times on an arcade machine, but I figured for 3 bucks, it was worth downloading and playing on my phone. The game is modeled in the old school style beat 'em ups. It's cool and fun, even if it is really cheesy at times. If you haven't played it, you have a set amount of life and two attacks: a punch, and whatever character you pick to play has a different mutant ability. These special attacks take a bit of your life to use unless you have some blue floating orb thingy below your life meter. I decided I'd run through with Nightcrawler for my test run, but I played for like 2 minutes with him before there was something I didn't like about him and switched. 

Doesn't he look a little rapey? I want no part in that Nightcrawler.... 

So I shuffled through the rest of the characters. Wolverine? Nah, I'm a fucking hipster gamer, I can't pick the most popular character on the first go. Dazzler? No thanks. That's hipster bullshit. Storm? For some reason they put Storm in every X-Men video game (even the ones that don't make sense to put her in, like the X-men fighting games and shit), and I've never cared for her. Colossus? I was pretty close here. Colossus is almost the best character, but then I use his special ability, and what happens? He turns his power off (or at least his sprites don't look metallic), then he turns it back on and it sends a shockwave out... wtf? What is he scaring everyone to death with that speedo that he wears? So I settled on Cyclops. A lot of people think Cyclops is lame, I think he's a fucking boss.

So I'm playing through the game, and all is well. Punching guys, blowing shit up with my eye beams. Get to the first boss, Pyro, and he's just tough enough to be fun, but not cheap in the way some bosses were back in the day. Second Level: Doing the same thing, and then the second boss is Blob, and he uses a mace. Didn't think anything of this at first, because it was kind of whatever. Third Level is some jungle place, and then some half man - half raptor guys come out, and they're cheap as shit. Then out of nowhere some plants come to life that look like the flowers in Alice in Wonderland. Creepy? Definitely. An integral part of X-men lore? not really. Then the bosses are, in order, Wendigo, Nimrod, The White Queen (I couldn't help but laugh when I kicked the shit out of her with Cyclops.) Then I get to Juggernaut, and he's got what looked to me at first like a battering ram. I thought "That's kind of dumb, but whatever.", but then during the fight he knelt down, and fired the damn thing and a huge missile came out! What the shit?! Why is Juggernaut using a rocket launcher!? Also, during one level, the boss at the end was 3 different Egyptian statues that come to life, and wield scythes... Who the hell made this game, and what do they know about the X-Men? It's like they just grabbed some random characters, and some random villains and then just made the rest like a crazy off the wall beat 'em up.

My favorite level is the one right before the final level, where during the last stretch you have to fight all the bosses (except those fucking statues) again on your final run towards Magneto. Mystique is the boss of this level, so maybe this is supposed to be her changing into tall the previous bosses. If that's the case developers, don't put two on the screen at once. It was cool though! And this is a criticism of the genre more so than the actual game, but wouldn't a better X-Men game be one where you pull out the random bad guys for the most part, and just throw lots of mini-bosses in? That way you could have more cameos and references to the books, and also have varied gameplay, so you're not just punching the same guys over and over again... What evs though I guess.

Juggernaut... you're unstoppable bro. You don't really need a Rocket Launcher. 

The game is fun. I can't deny that, even if some bits are kind of lame. It's cool to pass the time, if you've got a few minutes to kill, and I'm hoping to get a friend or two to buy it as well so we can play local Co-Op. Sometimes the AI is cheap and does shit that you can't avoid. At one point I tried to jump over a laser beam and didn't quite make it. When I hit that laser beam, it threw me forward into the next, that I fell underneath. So every time my character tried to get up, he just kept getting knocked down. Also, the D-Pad is on the screen, so if you're moving (which is always) sometimes you might not see enemies on the screen because your left thumb will be covering them (i'm aware that this is a gripe with only the handheld version, but we've got to find a better way to do that shit for mobile games, because it's kind of lame). All of this is really inconsequential though, because since you're not playing on an arcade machine, and no quarters are required, you can click continue every time you die. This leads to using your powers way more often that you would normally be able to, and playing like a boss in general. Infinite lives bitches!!!