X-Men Arcade PSN/Live Review

 X-Men Arcade is now available but is it worth the purchase? Also that guy between cyclops and wolverine! That's a female.



X-men Arcade is a port of the original Arcade game back from 1993 with updated graphics and Online gameplay. This is the first time this game has been released on a home console and is available on Xbox Live and the PSN as of this writing with a price tag of $9.99 which is a bit steep for a game with only 8 levels.

Magneto is rampaging throughout the city with his army of sentinels and on his rampage kidnaps Professor X and Kitty. Your job as one of the many X-men characters is to battle through Magneto's army, save Professor X and defeat Magneto. I think the most entertaining fight of this game is when you fight Magneto. Not because he's a great challenge but because he narrates everything he is doing. For example if he were to kill you he would shout "You are dead." or when he's about to use his force field he would say "Force Field". I guess Magneto fits into the old school villain who tells the hero his plans for world domination and how he's going to do it.

There are a total of 8 levels in the game, there could have been more but I was dozing off while playing this game as it is very repetitive and at time annoying to play. Most of the time you will fight a smaller version of the sentinels and once you get to magneto's island, not a Gilligan's' Island affiliate, you will fight some lizard men who look straight out of the Star Trek universe with tights. Trust me this is not a pretty sight. There is a boss battle at the end of every stage which you must defeat to advance to the next stage. Getting cornered by a stage boss is guaranteed death as the minute you get up you will get hit and go back down.

As you fight your way though hoards of enemies you will have the option to use your special powers which take away you HP. Your special powers will stop working once you have 1 HP left or if you run out of bonus orbs which are collected at the end of every stage. It took me a while to figure out where my HP was until I saw the power bar go down every time I got hit. I guess this was a great way to get quarters out of the kids back in the day but I think the developers should have added a power meter and keep it separate with the HP meter. It's not as bad though as you do get unlimited continues if you die making this game kind of pointless to beat.

Online co-op is a new addition to the game if you don't have 6 friends to play with. You can jump into any game or create your own. If you join a game it does not matter what stage the host is in, they can be defeating Magneto and you can jump right into the match. There are also leaderboards which you can see how you stack up against the world.

All of the same sound effects and music remain untouched. You can tell by some of the text that has bad grammar and doesn't make any sense. Also playing single player doesn't change the voiceovers. Prof. Xavier will still say X-Men do this and do that even if you are just one.

Graphically the game is a huge improvement. All of the characters have their old customs from back in the day. For example Wolverine will have an brown with orange suit and storm will have an all grey outfit. However the transition to HD was nicely done as you can really see the difference if you played the arcade. I do wish they would have added new villains as a lizard with a spandex suit isn't really a great sight. Also some of the characters don't make sense for example Juggernaut has a rocket launcher and from the times I've seen X-Men I never really saw him use one on top of that he's been slimmed down for some apparent reason. I know this is more of an Arcade problem than it is for Konami as it was made back in the day but it wouldn't hurt to remake the game and put in a classic mode.

With 8 levels and unlimited continues you will get though the game in about 1 hour or so. The Japanese version is also included which has Japanese subtitles and it's easier than the American version. I don't really see how easy it is from the American version as you do get unlimited continues whether you're playing online or offline.

Closing Comments:
X-Men Arcade is a title that is only for the Hardcore X-Men fan or for people who used to play the Arcade game back in the day. It's really fun in the beginning but then it gets boring after a while. It is a nice co-op game which supports up to 6 players on the PS3 and up to 4 players on Xbox 360. There is really no strategy in this game with unlimited lives also regardless of how much you try, you're going to get hit regardless. For $9.99 I think this game should be skipped until there's a price drop or a sale. One game that I do hope Konami ports over is TNMT Arcade, now there's a game that will grow hair on your chest. I think it was available on the NES but we need a port with HD graphics and Online co-op. X-Men Arcade is a nice try but TMNT Arcade is where it's at.


GamePlay: Really repetitive and unlimited continues really take what little challenge there is away. 4/10


Graphics: While it is a port the graphics have been redone to support HD which is nicely done. Although Reptilians wearing tights is not a pretty sight. 9/10


Sound: All the sound effects remain the same which at times will sound lame but it doesn't suffer from distorted sound like other ports and it does sound great: 8/10


Performance: Story is kind of lame and the animation should have been redone. 6/10


LifeSpan: Single Player lasts about 1 hour and so does multiplayer and besides trophies there is really nothing to go back to. 3/10


Total Score: 60/100