X-Men: Mutant Academy

Review

by Joe Ottoson

How many out there can claim they took the X-Men to school? If you're a fighting game fan, probably never -- until now. Thanks to X-Men: Mutant Academy, your fighting pretext now fully involves the bald professor's training of his elite mutant fighting squad.

Sparse stories aside, how the fighting breaks down is more important, and while Paradox put fourth a valiant effort, the fighting falls short. If you're buying this game expecting something as refined and polished as one of Capcom's fighting games, you're going to be disappointed. Others looking for something new will be disappointed as well. X-Men: Mutant Academy controls like a looser variation of a Capcom fighter with some troublesome balance issues and an abusable air juggle system. (As long as they don't hit the ground, your opponents are pretty much helpless.)

There are some flashes of potential here however. The game is fun to play when you're not bobbing though the air at the hands of a malevolent Wolverine. Even if it's not as rewarding as a fighter that had more time for play testing, it's still fun. The three part super meter is an interesting play on the ubiquitous system. Each segment of the meter can be charged separately and you don't need one to activate the other. It lets you whip out some devastating attacks in rapid succession; you can also space them out to keep your opponent off balance. The programmers also threw in a counter system for good measure. The ability to stuff any attack at will is a good way to shift momentum back in your favor, which can spice things up nicely.

The most impressive aspect of this game is the graphics. The character models and the polygonal stages are all very well done and accurate to the source material. There are some nice environmental lighting effects like lights highlighting the fighters as a subway passes by (train not pictured) and some moves like Cyclops' hyper optic blast light up the surroundings convincingly. There are other touches of style like movie costumes for some of the characters and fancy Matrix inspired effects such as Wolverine's throw where he launches himself up into the air behind the opponent and readies a kick to the neck. The action freezes, and the camera pans around him briefly before the kick's delivered. It's a nice touch, and it wows people the first time they see it delivered.

However, the animation doesn't fare as well. It's generally on the choppy side, which is strange for a polygonal fighting game as they use motion capture most of the time. X-Men: Mutant Academy looks as though it relies on hand animation for almost all the moves, and that's enough to change the animation rate from a smooth rate to a look that most two dimensional fighters surpassed back in 1995.

With two characters boasting animal keen senses, the sound has to be top notch as well. They largely accomplish this with sound bites that sound like they've been borrowed from the animated series, which lends it some good continuity. There are some odd variations however. Instead of Wolverine growling "rookie!" at a beaten opponent, he yells "amateur!" and he opens with "Gonna bleed 'ya!" -- this seems more in character with Sabretooth. The fighting action is very rarely supported by music and when it is the music is so much in the background that you really have to strain to notice it. Instead, they relied on ambient stage sounds to score the game. While Gambit has crickets chirping and owls hooting among other night noises playing in his stage, Storm is mainly supported by the thundering of the unseen train for example.

If you're looking for a slightly different fighter with some flash and game play that's familiar, but not quite the same as games you've been playing for a while now, you'll be set with your copy of X-Men: Mutant Academy.