X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse landed in September 2005 for GameCube, Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, a sequel to 2004’s X-Men Legends from Raven Software and publisher Activision. It is the rare superhero game that takes its own premise seriously: the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, enemies for decades of comics, have to fight side by side. Apocalypse does not care who wins their feud. He intends to end both of them.
Trailer, via NeoGamer – The Video Game Archive.
Apocalypse Forces an Unlikely Alliance
The campaign opens at a military prison outpost in Greenland, where Cyclops, Storm and Wolverine meet Magneto, Mystique and Sabretooth. Professor X has been taken, along with Polaris. Magneto reveals that his son Quicksilver was captured too. The teams free Xavier, then move to Genosha, the mutant haven Apocalypse’s forces have already wrecked in a battle with Magneto’s airships.
The developers built the story around that forced cooperation, and it gives the game a scale the first one lacked. Blur Studio handled the cinematics. Apocalypse is watching from the start, and the game never lets the alliance feel safe.
Four Characters, One Controller, Real Reasons to Switch
X-Men Legends II is an action role-playing game. Players pick four characters from a roster that grows as the story moves, controlling one directly and switching on the fly. Four players can share one machine, joining or leaving at any time. Online play for up to four players was a first for the series.
Switching is not just a combat trick. Some tasks demand a specific mutant. Iceman puts out fire. Magneto raises a metal bridge across a gap. Enemies drop random loot this time, unlike the first game, and characters level up, gain powers and equip items to grow stronger. Two or more players can punch the same enemy at once for a combo, or stack special abilities into a Super Combo.
The Horsemen Structure the Back Half
| Character | Team | Role in the campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Magneto | Brotherhood | Opens the Greenland rescue, reveals Quicksilver’s capture |
| Wolverine | X-Men | Part of the opening prison team |
| Iceman | X-Men | Puts out fire, a puzzle ability |
| Abyss | Apocalypse’s Horsemen | First Horseman defeated on Genosha |
Abyss falls on Genosha. Mikhail Rasputin falls in the Savage Land, a prehistoric preserve in Antarctica, after Garokk, Sauron and Omega Red. Holocaust is the third Horseman. Angel is taken and returns as Archangel, the final one. The teams also sabotage Apocalypse’s cloning facility and power plant in New York City before that.
The Voice Acting and the Grind
The cast size and the added powers are the improvement over X-Men Legends. So is online play, while it lasted. Multiplayer on Xbox Live ran until April 15, 2010, and the game is playable online again on the replacement servers called Insignia.
The voice acting is the weak spot. So is the combat loop, which leans on the same fights and the same loot runs for hours. A central hub between missions offers cinematics, comic covers, character biographies and a trivia game, and it is a welcome pause. It does not fix the repetition.
What This Sequel Gets Right
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse earns its 7.8 of 10. The alliance premise, the four-player co-op and the puzzle-driven character switching make it a better game than its predecessor. The repetitive combat and thin voice work keep it from being more than that. It is the sequel the first game deserved, and the blueprint Marvel’s later team games quietly followed.
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