X-Men Mutant Academy 2, Another Xmen Fighter For The Playstation!

Written By Joel Perry

     X-Men: Mutant Academy 2is one of the last great Playstation games to ever make it into existence, a game capable of truly showing us the power and capabilities of the Playstation. Yet it makes us wonder why it did not make it to the PS2. The graphics out shine most PS2 first and even some second gen PS2 games. The music is perfect in my opinion, it isn't so loud on the default setting that you can't hear anything else, but just loud enough that you notice it. X-Men: Mutant Academy 2also has a very strong arcade feel to it, as every time the game loads a new match it shows the fighters from that round and some of their super moves that can be activated when one of the three power meters from the bottom fill up. The energy from each of these meters can be transferred to any other (of course when moving from a weaker super to a stronger it yields less total energy).

With 16 stages to fight in, 16 characters to choose from, and 4 unlockable characters, there is more than enough fighting goodness to go around for everyone. New to this version are Havok, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Forge, and Psylock, Prof. X, Juggernaut, and Spiderman, as hidden characters. Each of the various stages include visual elements from various issues of the comic book or scenes from the TV series.

Beyond the standard Arcade and VS. modes, X-Men 2 includes Academy mode, where Prof X will teach you how to control any one of the mutants at your disposal, Survival mode, which has become a standard mode for any fighting game these days, and finally Cerebro mode, where you can check out each of the characters you have available to you and what you have unlocked for each of them.

As would be expected each mutant can invoke their various mutant abilities during the course of combat. Additionally aerial combat has been significantly improved over the previous version allowing for multiple devastating combinations that will bring your opponent down, quickly. Some characters can even fly, allowing for even more aerial mayhem, including Rogue, Storm, and Magneto.

Having 3d characters in a non-interactive 2d environment gives a little bit of let down to the player, but after seeing the graphical level of the game, I am still thoroughly impressed by what Paradox was able to do with the Playstation one. Also, having seen a final beta copy of the game I can also understand why there were no other options like those in true 3d games as X-men: MA2 takes up 598 megs of space on a 650 meg disc. To those who complained about not being able to sidestep or interact with their environments, I ask you this… Would the sacrifice in graphical content for those abilities really have made you any happier? Game play is smooth and simple, ease of execution is the name of the game. However, for those not used to the controls from the first one, I would recommend you give the academy a try before starting the game, since many moves require specific motions on the control, or else you will die while trying to do that one cool move. Even on the easy setting the game is not so easy…

By using the easy game setting you can, for the most part, keep the CPU from using large combination attacks against you and from breaking every one of your combos. However; when setting the game to the hard setting, you need to have a great deal of control over your actions and the timing of the moves you wish to execute, as the computer will be better at anticipating your attacks and countering them as needed, along with gaining the ability to launch itself into ultra-mega-mega-combos killing you immediately. Of course if you are good enough to counter this, then you will do just fine.

So far as I have noticed there has been no loss of frame rate during game play. The matrix style camera slow downs do add a very cool effect. All of the characters are based upon the comic and/or TV series versions of themselves. Nightcrawler does his teleportation's, Rogue steals other's abilities, Storm controls the weather, and so on. Each character's attack methods "sound" how that character would sound and quotes come directly from the animated series, or from the actors who voiced those characters in the animated series.

Overall X-Men: Mutant Academy 2is a very intense game with great graphics, plenty of things to unlock, and a good game for those who like tight controls (which tends to keep little kids from beating your butt, unlike most fighting games). With Matrix style slow down moves, excellent musical compositions, and a large list of unique characters, X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 is definitely a game for the serious gamer.

Publisher   Activision   Developer   Paradox    Platform   Playstation   Two Players   Fighting

Buy It Below!