X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse for the GBA

X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse is an uninspired side scrolling fighting game along the lines of Double Dragon, but nowhere near as fun. It is too slow moving and ultimately boring to live up to the X-Men name, though I’ve found most of the X-Men games have been pretty lame. This is for die-hard fans only.

The story is at least original. Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, and Storm return back to Professor Xavier’s mansion to find it in shambles and Cyclops dead on the floor. Only that doesn’t make sense because Cyclops is right there with you. The group quickly finds out that they have entered some kind of parallel dimension like what is used to describe alternate realities and is one basis for the theory of time travel. Naturally, the only way to remedy the situation is for the group to fight their way out and fend off countless goons when not facing challenging bosses.

This game is played using the stop, fight, and go technique used in so many other games. You fight a half dozen or more bad guys who put up very little challenge, then you walk about five steps and fight more bad guys. The enemies don’t get any more difficult and the AI is pretty dumb, so the only hard thing about it is sheer numbers. You will face 16 different bosses, which makes up for the lameness of the ‘getting there’ part of it, but I found myself very quickly getting bored. I do like these kinds of games, but they’ve been done so many times before I want something fresh and new.

I did think the graphics were pretty cool in how they had a comic book look to them. Everything is very colorful and looks hand-drawn, almost like the developers scanned in some drawings for the backdrops. In between the fights you will be treated to some cutscenes with dialogue and it looks sort of like a comic book page. When fighting, the characters are pretty big on screen so there is a lot of color and detail give to them. I just wish they put up more of a fight and there was more variation to the gameplay. The sound and music is okay, I suppose. It is pretty standard fare for this type of game.

I was very happy to see this game has a built-in save system. I hate it when a game makes me write down stupid passcodes in between levels. How come better games make me write passcodes when ones like this have a battery backup? I think battery saves should be standard practice for GBA games. Seriously, people. I have to keep Post-It notes and a pen handy when I’m playing certain games, and that sucks.

All in all, X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse is okay. Just plain okay. It isn’t a bad game and I’ve surely played a lot worse, but it is nothing new. Change the graphics and you’ve played this one a million times before on the NES, Sega Genesis, or Super Nintendo. They say the gaming industry as a whole is slowly falling due to lack of originality, and rehashed games like this aren’t helping the situation.