Reviews: X-men Legends 2 and Thief

In addition to my regular Games of our Lives column, I’ve got a review in The Onion AV Club this week.

Games of our lives looks back at Thief:

You robbed the bank. That’s good! But you dropped the money all over
the known universe. That’s bad. But you have a spiffy car to drive
around and pick it up. That’s good! There are cops everywhere. That’s
bad. But you can occasionally blow them up for big points! That’s good!
You want to play Pac-Man, but you can only find a cheap imitation! That’s Thief!

Gameplay: Using a joystick, you drive your little car around
the ugliest maze in the world. Your goal is to pick up all the dollar
bills so you can advance to the next level. Opposing you are four
little police cars. They don’t have names, but you could safely call
them something like, oh… let’s randomly say Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and
Clyde. If they touch you, you’ll blow up in a magnificent fireworks
display. However, if you pick up one of the dollar signs scattered
around the maze, a siren will sound and your enemies will become ghost
cars that you can run into for bonus points.

[. . .]

It’s a little embarrassing to watch Thief try to be as cool as Pac-Man,
but it’s still a really fun game that works extra-hard to keep players
happy. The game plays a super-cool police-scanner soundtrack right out
of a ’40s movie, and when you’re down to your final life, Thief helpfully says "This is your last chance!" Can you remember the last time Pac-Man said as much as "Hello" to you? Didn’t think so.

And I reviewed X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse:

Whether to get out of homework, exact revenge on a bully, or just
impress a potential date, every kid wants to be a superhero. But the
Earth’s yellow sun gives its native population sunburns instead of
superpowers, and radiation is likely to make you a cancer patient
rather than a mutant. So what’s a wannabe to do? Retreat to the
basement with X-Men Legends II, of course! In this follow-up to 2004’s X-Men Legends,
Apocalypse threatens to destroy Earth. In the face of this mighty
adversary, the X-Men team up with their arch-rivals from Magneto’s
Brotherhood to defeat him, presumably so they can get back to fighting
each other.

Final judgment: X-Men Legends II is more of an
action-based button-masher than a sandbox RPG, but there’s nothing
wrong with that. The few limitations are easily offset by just how
enjoyable it is to play this game.

I realyl liked both of these games. In fact, Legends 2 is so much fun to play, I got a copy of it for PSP so I could play it when I wasn’t at home . . . which brought to mind an interesting idea: wouldn’t it be cool if you could have some sort of online place to save your games, so you could play them on different platforms and keep your progress in synch?

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7 thoughts on “Reviews: X-men Legends 2 and Thief”

  1. Games like Thief used to scare me as a kid, I was always paranoid when the games started talking to me. Admittedly, I WAS a weird kid and would often have video game nightmares (do you ever get those)?
    Anyway, I digress.. yes, good idea Wil, about saving games online. Maybe you should start this idea up on your own! I don’t know that much about gaming news but I wouldn’t be surprised if pretty much all games in the future operated on a pay-to-play basis. Kind of like pay-per-view, only for games. I mean, I’m sure owning a certain disc or cartridge for a game will continue to be an option but I wouldn’t be surprised if most people would “buy” or simply “rent” games online, even non-PC game (as in, choosing from several hundred games directly through their X-Box or PlayStation).

  3. hey wil, my name is actually wesley (no star trek reference).
    i loooved the first Xmen legends, is it worth shelling out another 50 for this one or should i wait for a discount? it looks sweet.
    if you are up for a music recomendation check out foxhole (www.myspace.com/foxhole) good friends of mine from kentucky. one of the dudes in mars volta listed their cd as one of the best of 2004 in law of inirtia magazine.

  4. Actually, Guild Wars is great for that!
    Not only does it not have any monthly fees (yey!), but it’s a great game that you can access from pretty much anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection and can download a small file. The good thing is, it’s zipped, and only unzips the things you need as you get there. Ie, if you go into another zone/territory. And the good news is, it doesn’t take forever to load!!!
    Last but not least, I use Yahoo games a lot. It’s not the big big games you wanna play… but they’re fun games. And some of them have downloadable versions (free!) so you can play when you have no internet connection. They’re great for trips! 🙂

  5. I’ve wanted a good superhero game for a long time. Either an RPG (in the fallout model) or a game like X-com would suit me quite nice. Button Mashers, however don’t.

  6. Nice homage to beloved children’s book That’s Good, That’s Bad in the opening of your GooL review of Thief. It’s one of my 4-year-old’s favorites, so I’ve read it something on the order of 1,000 times.
    (Not that I’m bitter about that or anything.)

  7. My roomate has been playing XMen Legends 2 for about a month straight now. If I have to hear about how cool Juggernaut is one more time, I’m hiding that game. :oP

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