X-Men 2: Clone Wars
Sega Genesis
Nostalgia Factor:
I once rented this game as a kid, and I can remember being absolutely obsessed with it for an entire weekend. I didn’t eat. I barely slept. That weekend I lived and breathed X-Men 2. I had a good reason for playing it for so long, too. The game is freaking hard! The first couple levels aren’t necessarily that bad (although I did die a few times getting a hang of things), but the later levels. My god. I must have spent hours and hours trying to get through them. Back then we didn’t have save states or anything like that. We had to beat the entire game in one sitting. So if I made it all the way to the end and had to turn the system off, I’d have to start from the beginning the next time I played it. And given how brutal this game is, that just wasn’t an option for me. So I played. And played. And played. And played. All freaking night long, for two nights in a row. But eventually I was successful in my mission. I was able to beat the game.
I remember renting this game as soon as it came out, which would have been in 1995. I haven’t come back to play this game since then. How would it hold up, 26 years later? Quite well, actually. Keep reading for the full details.
Story:
The X-Men go into battle against the Phalanx, an odd part mechanical/part alien species that’s looking to eradicate humanity. Things are looking so grim that Magneto is forced to join up with the X-Men after his hideout is attacked. The game takes you all over the X-Men universe, from a Sentinel manufacturing facility, to Asteroid M, to the Savage Lands, and even to Apocalypse’s hideout. After fighting off numerous Phalanx attacks, the X-Men take the fight to the Phalanx’s ship, where they are forced to battle clones of themselves – hence the name of the game: Clone Wars. Sorry to disappoint anyone expecting a Star Wars tie in.
Destroy the Phalanx clones, and you complete the game. Yay! Unfortunately things aren’t rosy for very long as Magneto departs and continues his war against humanity. It’s too bad we never got an X-Men 3 for the Genesis. I would have loved to see the book closed on this little story arc created for us in these two games.
Gameplay:
Right off the bat, you know this game is different. Why, you may ask? Because there’s no title screen. As soon as you power this game on, you’re immediately dropped into the action with a random X-Men character. There are three buttons you use (aside from the D-pad, of course). You can jump, you can use your melee attack, or you can use your mutant powers. Unlike the last X-Men for the Genesis, there is no limit to how many times you can use your mutant powers, which is awesome. Instead, the game actually encourages you to use your mutant powers. If you hold down the button, you can charge your mutant attack up and unleash a more powerful attack. Your attack also automatically becomes more powerful when your health bar is completely full (or one bar away from being full). But the game doesn’t start you out with a full health bar. At the beginning of each stage, you’re missing two bars and you have to look around for these little Mister DNA looking things that give you a bar of health.
For example, let’s say you’re playing as Gambit. The level begins. You’re missing two health bars. You use the mutant attack button to throw a supercharged card at your enemies. Okay, great. But if you hold down that button, your card attack becomes more powerful, AND you throw two cards, making it much easier to hit whatever it is you’re aiming at. If you grab some health items and fill up your health bar, your default card attack becomes the two-card, super powerful attack. When you hold down the button and charge up your powers once again, you launch three cards that are even powerful than they were before. Cool stuff. This works pretty much the same, in some variation, for every X-Men character you can play as.
Speaking of X-Men characters, you have quite the variety to pick from this time around. After the first stage ends, you finally get your title screen. But that’s not what is important here. What’s important is that you get to change your character! There are six of them to choose from: Wolverine, Cyclops, Beast, Gambit, Nightcrawler, and Psylocke. Later on in the game, Magneto joins your party, giving you a seventh character to select from. If you’re playing this for the first time, I’d suggest checking out each of the X-Men at least once and seeing which one fits your style the most. I tended to click with Gambit and Cyclops the most, as they have some effective long range attacks. Others, like Psylocke, are almost completely useless. I still don’t even know what her mutant attack is supposed to do! Characters like Beast and Nightcrawler can climb walls, which is helpful for skipping long, difficult parts of certain stages. This ability also helps you collect items like health power ups that you wouldn’t be able to reach with other X-Men characters.
As far as level progression goes, this game plays out like any other Genesis era 2D side scroller. Each level is broken up into shorter stages. At the end of the final stage for each level, you square off against a boss character. Pretty standard for the mid-90s. I think what sets this game apart is its difficulty level. Things get hard, fast. Enemy attacks take one bar off of your health gauge, and it doesn’t help that you start each stage with two bars missing from your health gauge. You can find yourself in trouble FAST in this game, because enemies are coming at you from all directions. They move pretty fast too, which can make their attacks very difficult to dodge. Luckily this game is generous with its health items. That’s good, because you are going to need them.
While I generally enjoy a stiff challenge when it comes to these kind of games, I do feel like I have a genuine complaint to make here. The enemies appear very abruptly on the edge of the screen, and often you’ll find them firing a projectile at you or launching into an attack before you even have a chance to react. This becomes a glaring issue in some of the later stages of the game. They are very, very difficult and I found myself constantly dying. I felt like the only thing I could do was creep along at a snail’s pace, firing ahead of me every half second in order to hit any enemies that might be located off-screen. You have to be SO cautious or you’re dead, simple as that. And to me, that’s no fun - having to creep along so slowly. What kind of way to play is that? It sucked all the fun out of some of the later stages for me, which is a shame because I really enjoyed the first three quarters of the game.
Graphics:
This is one good looking Genesis game. It may not be at the top of my list compared to games like Vectorman or Beyond Oasis, but it’s close. The colors are rich and vibrant. The X-Men are all faithful representations of their comic book counterparts. Seriously – this may be my favorite interpretation of the team in any video game iteration of the X-Men I’ve come across. They look so good! Levels are varied and well-designed. The backgrounds can be flat out gorgeous at times. I love the visual effects as well, like the snowfall in the very first stage of the game. I’ve got nothing bad to say about this game’s visual style.
Sound:
I didn’t walk away from this game humming any of its music, nor can I even really remember any of the music when I think back on the game. But that’s okay. I remember liking it, and it having that classic “Genesis” feel to it. It matched what was happening on screen perfectly. The sound effects again didn’t jump out, but they did their part. I guess I’ll give the game’s sound a pass here. If it was bad or anything, surely I would have remembered that.
Overall:
If I was only reviewing the first three quarters of this game, it would score in the A range for sure. It does so much right. The cold open. The graphics. The presentation. The big selection of characters to choose from, and the fact that all these characters are so unique and different. The story. Just the overall look and feel of the game is terrific. But then we move on to the end of the game and its steep difficulty curve. And when I say steep, I mean STEEP. Seriously, inching along at a snail’s pace while firing ahead of you is no way to play this game, but you have to do it if you want to stay alive. It’s like the enemies get tougher and the health items suddenly get stingier at the end of the game. And did I even mention the final stage yet?
You start out the stage battling a giant, crawling boss character. The screen scrolls as you run with him. The fight is hard enough as it is, but when you defeat him, that’s not the end of the game. No, no. Not even close. You then have to fight clone versions of all six of the X-Men before you can beat the game. It’s like a boss rush at the end of a Mega Man game. It’s freaking brutal and it takes forever. And if you happen to die? There are no checkpoints in this stage, so if you die you have to start at the beginning of the stage again – against the crawling boss creature. My jaw almost hit the floor the first time that happened to me. SERIOUSLY??? I have to give my 13-year old self props for being able to beat this game back in 1995. No save states, nothing. That was some real dedication on my behalf.
One of the many determining factors for my final review score is if I would recommend the game to anyone else. And honestly, I’m not sure if I can do that with X-Men 2. I think in today’s day and age, 99% of the people who pick this game up probably don’t end up completing it. I think most people don’t even make it through the first level – the Sentinel factory. But can I really worry about what other people think of the game? That doesn’t seem fair. This is MY review, and I liked this game. In fact, if it wasn’t for the final quarter of the game, I might have even ended up saying that I love it. It definitely went out of its way to address the criticisms that people had for the first X-Men game for the Genesis. And it came so close, so close to perfecting that formula.
Final Score:
B
Note:
If you look at my review score for the other X-Men game for Genesis, you'll see that it scored higher than this game - even though I said this game improved upon the original. How could that be, you may ask? To me, the original didn't have as many frustrating moments as this game does. The whole final quarter of this game is just no fun to play and it drags the whole game down and makes me think negatively of it. In the original X-Men, there is no section of the game that drags the whole game down. The whole thing flows pretty smoothly, flaws and all. While it is true that Clone Wars improved upon the original in many ways and is probably technically the better game, it carries many negative connotations of it in my head for several different reasons. I just simply enjoy the other one better.
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