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Lots of strengths, lots of weaknesses.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 27 / 30
Date: July 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is a game that invokes my most extreme love/hate impulses.

On one hand:

a) Excellent representation of the comic-book characters, both in terms of image and personality. It's a huge attraction to me because I used to read the comics, and I think fellow readers (or ex-readers) would also enjoy this aspect.

b) Lots of innovative touches, such as dressing Player 2 characters in the movie's costumes, even if they're much inferior to the comic-book costumes, and offering up great cover art for X-Men past issues during the (pretty long) loading times.

c) Including the movie trailer, even if I think the characters' image created for the X-Men movie is laughable, Cyclops, Magneto and Jean Grey being especially dorky-looking.

d) The inclusion of Phoenix/Jean Grey, one of X-Men comics' most complex characters (and my personal favourite), but rarely used in X-Men-related games.

e) Beautiful graphics overall.

f) Innovative "multiple-level" super-move system.

g) Great backgrounds.

Countering these strengths:

i) Sluggish response. It's hard to take advantage of an opponent's mistakes because of this. Also, the "hard" attacks become nearly useless because they take forever to come out.

ii) Imbalance. Mystique's gun is overwhelmingly powerful, and Beast can pull off a barrage of nearly-zero-recovery attacks with little risk to himself, but Storm and Gambit are too weak.

iii) Too little push-away for ordinary attacks. The chain-combo system leaves plenty to be desired.

iv) Some computer characters are pretty cheap -- Toad will toss you three times in a row if you don't retaliate, and that is made difficult by the slow response.

v) Terrible, terrible manual. Not only does it not give you a list of moves, but it's rift with typos and mistakes. To get *most* of the moves you have to go through the "Academy" mode, which is too slow and also doesn't teach you everything. I've already found one super move for Phoenix that isn't taught to you, and nowhere does it say how to pull off Counters, which the computer uses liberally (and fairly cheaply) against you.

vi) Too few characters. In the beginning, in fact, you can only choose from six X-Men. After beating the game four times you can select Toad, Mystique, Sabretooth and Magneto, but even that only brings the tally to 10, pretty flimsy for a modern fighting game.

vii) Bad endings. The developer should look at Tekken 3's beautiful, story-rich endings. X-Men: Mutant Academy's Arcade endings are very skimpy -- even the Academy mode's endings are better. Mystique's Arcade ending is especially bad.

Even if it's riddled with flaws, damned if I don't keep playing this game. The Capcom "Vs." titles, though pretty good, didn't offer up the more offbeat X-Men characters (Phoenix, Beast, Toad). If the mechanics of this game were better, it could really give Capcom a run for its money.

The Hottest X-Men Game Yet!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: July 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is a very good game! I bought it right after I saw X-Men the movie and it was an excellent adaptation to the remarkable screen play. The characters even have the outfits that they had on in the movie. So if you like the X-Men you should love this game!

X-men's Facelift

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 17, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Finally, the X-men have moved beyond the old 2D Marvel look and have entered the new millenium with amazizing graphics! The eye-boggling effects just add on to the all ready great game and made it even better.

X MANIA!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: July 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is one of the greatest games I have played this year. It brings fighting games to a new level. The fact that you are X men Characters are even better. I saw the midnight showing and was outside of Toys R us the next morning waiting to buy this game and it was well worth it. A must to any X Men fan. Can't wait for the Sequels and Prequels.

Awesome!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: July 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I went out and bought this title and I was quite surprised when I started playing it. First of all, the graphics are pretty impressive considering PlayStation being a 32 bit system. The character textures are very well done but the fighting backgrounds lack some detail. You can choose from 10 X-Men characters, 6 of them are the good guys, 4 of them are bad guys (and gals). I was a little bummed that there were only 10 playable characters but I didn't get bored using all of them. Second, the sound is excellent. The voiceovers were well done. It sounded like the voices from the X-Men animated series. The Academy option isn't that good, you just learn how to pull off different moves. The Cerebro option is cool because you can watch the movie trailer and view quite a few comic book pics and some pics from the movie. You can also unlock some character movies and some extra costumes. All in all, I think this game is worth buying and it is pretty entertaining.

Xcellent but not Perfect...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This has to be one of the better X-Men games that I've played. The 3-D graphics are beautiful (I especially like the movie and 3rd costume features) and having some of the sounds and voices from carried over from the animated series was a plus. The only serious gripe I had was the control. I came into the game being used to the sharp responsiveness and crispness of Capcom fighting games but was a bit disappointed to see that some special moves don't work unless you do them slowly. Kinda tough in a heated battle. Not terribly awful but it takes a bit of getting used to.

The academy mode is great to get to know the moves and earn secret bonuses but it's highly advisable to turn the sound down unless you want to hear the cheesy adaptation of Professor X saying "Excellent!" seven billion times.

The cerebro function was a great addition to the game. Being able to see the endings without having to waste the time of going thru the game every time you want to see it is a plus. Having to earn the specials in the game keeps the reply value pretty high and because there aren't a ton of special moves to learn, versus is good for the beginner or the advanced gamer.

If you're an X-Fan and would like to mix it up with some of the best known mutants around, look no further! You'll be glad you did.

Great X-men Game...OK fighting game!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 29, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I was really excited to get this game because I love both the X-men movie and 3D fighting games. There are a lot of features and extras to unlock in the "Cerebro" mode, but for the work you have to do in order to earn some of them, it can be rather disappointing. You can unlock scans from the comic books by beating 10 rounds in survival mode using one of their costumes. But in order to unlock pictures from the movie you have to beat 20 rounds with a character in their movie costume. This gets very frustrating because 1. they give you no indication of how many rounds you have beaten until your game is done, and 2. the pictures you unlock are awkward and some are just cheesy cut-out and paste pictures, not high quality pictures you would see in a magazine review or at the x-men movie website. In fact I think the only worthwhile unlockable secret in the game is after you have beaten the arcade with all 10 characters you receive a "story style" FMV. Basically it links the FMVs you see at the end of the arcade mode together in a pretty cool way (but it doesn't actually tell a story). So basically if you are looking for a great way to play and fight as your favorite comic book heroes I recommend this game. But if you are only looking for a good fighting game to play for several hours and unlock tons of cool extras I think you should try another game. P.S.: I do recommend getting the strategy guide or downloading one of the 'net, because the manual is pretty terrible at describing your moves.

X-Men are taking over!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: July 31, 2000
Author: Amazon User

X-Men smash into your home in this flashy, and entertaining fighting game. The graphics are well above average, almost perfect, sleek, well detaild, interractive backgrounds, make it enoyable just to watch. character voice overs from the cast of the cartoon series, and easy to learn moves for the most part make it a must have. The only thing about the game i was not impressed with though is definately the very limited selection of mutant heros and villians to choose from. you can only pick from 6 to begin and have to unlock the other four evil mutants. I havn't played long enough to see if there are more characters but so far there's not many. but even with the small number of playable characters this game will surely be one of the hottest titles this summer and beyond.

Finally a Good X-men Game for the playstation

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 31, 2000
Author: Amazon User

In X-Men Mutant Academy there are so many different ways to play:Survival Mode, Arcade Mode, Academy Mode, and Two Players. There are also hundreds of FMV's and screenshots to unlock. The graphics are pretty good. The sound however is X-MenMA's weakest point. Although the music is good you can hardly hear it while your playing. The difficulty is hard, even on easy it's surprisingly challenging. If you want to unlock all the FMV's and screenshots from the comicbook and the movie it will take you a few months if not longer. If you want a challenging fighter with tons of extras check it out.

Too Bad

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 10, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I was completely looking forward to this game coming out and went to get it as soon as it did. When I popped it into my playstation it was exciting to see the X-men in 3d. However, after a day of playing it, I was bored of it. The game's graphics were a little too boxey for my taste. The characters are not nearly as smooth as Tekken's are. Reverting back to a limit of 10 characters, it's hard to keep alot of interest in this game when most other fighting games are now into the 50's. It's very difficult to keep interest in a game with so few characters. There's nothing ground breaking or different in this game then from fighting games from 5 years ago. With games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Tekken Tag, why would you want this game. It's definitely worth a rental though. Like I said, it's cool to see the X-men in 3d. I got really into it when I started playing, but after a while you begin to realize it's nothing more then an mere "classic" fighting game. To add to all of this, many of moves are really difficult to pull off in the middle of a fight. So, in general, If you're used to games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, you will not like this game. It's hard to adjust to so few characters. It's too bad, I'm a huge X fan and wished this could've been more then it was.

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