The X-Men had a, how shall we say, “Rough start” when it came to video games. Their NES outing is one of the worst games of all time. I’ve reviewed Deadly Towers, Mega Man X7, and other awful games and still actively avoiding that one. That’s how bad it is. Spider-Man and the X-Men seemed like it could have been a good game (or maybe that was my wishful thinking) but in reality is anything but. Their Genesis debut from Sega initially seems like the title we all dreamed of. But a host of niggling flaws bring down what could have been an excellent adventure.
Magneto has released a virus into the Danger Room, removing its safety controls and causing it to create random scenarios. A small X-Men team must brave each environment while Professor X works to behind the scenes to release them from the now deadly training environment.
X-Men keeps its main cast small. Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit, and Nightcrawler are the playable characters and each has small differences. The mutant power bar governs how long you can use your powers and slowly regenerates. Cyclops definitely comes up short in this regard; his small optic blast is easily avoided. Gambit has the same problem but his staff makes up for it. Wolverine is the most interesting. Let’s ignore that his claws are treated as a mutant power. His mutant power regens faster than everyone but more importantly he regains health too! Very slowly. But every little bit helps in this masochistic game.
The real all-star though is Nightcrawler. While he isn’t the most agile or strongest character his teleportation is game breaking. Moving through walls allows you to bypass large sections of each level. I almost believe the game was designed for you to exploit it. It can be wonky to use sometimes but is more than worth it. Other X-Men make cameos as one time use power-ups; Archangel, Storm and Rogue deal massive damage, Iceman creates bridges, and Jean Grey will carry you out of pits.
The screwy Danger Room gives the game an excuse to revisit the most popular locations in X-Men lore. You’ll visit the Savage Land, Excalibur’s lighthouse in England, the Shiar Empire, and even the future. Each stage is absolutely massive, with multiple paths and secrets abounds. Some might even say they are too large as it is easy to wander around with no direction. The bosses are a who’s who of the X-Men rogues gallery. Juggernaut, Mojo, Sabertooth, Apocalypse, and even Death Bird make an appearance.
While X-Men certainly looks like a winner there are aspects of it that are off. The game has massive hit detection issues. It really is disheartening to see punches pass through enemies repeatedly. This is especially bad in boss battles. Were it not for the secondary X-Men power-ups these would be near impossible. Bad enemy and trap placement abounds with seemingly no other goal than to annoy you. Limiting the number of times you can switch characters per level completely goes against that function. Can you imagine having to play through NES TMNT as Michaelangelo or Raphael? That is essentially what you have here.
Possibly the biggest detriment in X-Men is the incredibly high difficulty. You only have your four characters and that is it. There are no continues, passwords, or battery back-up. The game is incredibly stingy with health power-ups; you really need to search to find them. Switching between characters a la TMNT helps somewhat but that is limited. X-Men is riddled with unavoidable hits, bad collision and hit detection, and questionable level design. This isn’t a long game but it is still pretty soul crushing to start over after the frequent cheap deaths. But it has one more “feature” that makes it worse.
As if the insane difficulty weren’t bad enough X-Men has one of the worst “features” imaginable. In order to reach the last level you must reset the system when prompted by the game. Yes, you read that correctly. And not just a regular reset, but a soft reset. If you press the reset button too long you lose all progress and must start over. I’m sure someone thought it was clever, using the reset button to mimic resetting the computer. But I’m sure many like me were either confused or did it wrong. For as difficult as this game is losing all progress is cause to simply give up. There is a reason no game followed this example.
In Closing
Sega came close but this one needed a little more fine tuning. X-Men has its moments but they’re sandwiched between a lot of frustration.There are too many better action games to settle for an above average one at best.
