''X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse'' is a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

for the

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, ...

featuring the

X-Men The X-Men are a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, first appearing in ''The X-Men'' #1 by artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby and writer/editor Stan Lee in 1963. Although initially cancelled in 1970 due to lo ...

comic book characters. It was designed by

Digital Eclipse Digital Eclipse is an American video game developer based in Emeryville, California. Founded by Andrew Ayre in 1992, the company found success developing commercial emulations of arcade games for Game Boy Color. In 2003, the company merged ...

and released by

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...

in 2001.

Plot

Story

Returning from their journey in the Mojoverse, the X-Men return to the destroyed remains of their home, the

X-Mansion The X-Mansion or Xavier Institute is the common name for a mansion and research institute appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The mansion is depicted as the private estate of Charles Francis Xavier, a character in X ...

. They soon discover that they are in an alternate universe under the control of the evil mutant, Apocalypse. The X-Men must battle their way through Apocalypse's army of Sentinels and

Mutants In biology, and especially in genetics, a mutant is an organism or a new genetic character arising or resulting from an instance of mutation, which is generally an alteration of the DNA sequence of the genome or chromosome of an organism. It ...

in order to return to their universe.

Setting

The setting takes place in an alternate universe controlled by Apocalypse, with backgrounds that stay true to the ''X-Men'' comics. The X-Mansion, the Blackbird,

Genosha Genosha ( or ) is a fictional country appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. It is an island nation that exists in Marvel's main shared universe, known as "Earth 616" in the Marvel Universe and a prominent place in the X-M ...

and other familiar locations are present in the game.

Characters

The playable X-Men roster consists of

Wolverine The wolverine (), (''Gulo gulo''; ''Gulo'' is Latin for " glutton"), also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, or quickhatch (from East Cree, ''kwiihkwahaacheew''), is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is a muscul ...

, Cyclops,

Storm A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an astronomical body. It may be marked by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning (a thunderstorm), ...

, and Rogue. Each character has a different super power that gives them a unique playstyle. Boss enemies include classic villains from the comics such as

Blob Blob may refer to: Science Computing * Binary blob, in open source software, a non-free object file loaded into the kernel * Binary large object (BLOB), in computer database systems * A storage mechanism in the cloud computing platform M ...

and

Magneto A magneto is an electrical generator that uses permanent magnets to produce periodic pulses of alternating current. Unlike a dynamo, a magneto does not contain a commutator to produce direct current. It is categorized as a form of alternator, ...

. Other X-Men from the 616 Marvel Universe, such as Colossus and Nightcrawler, are allies of Apocalypse in this alternate universe and must be defeated.

Gameplay

''X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse'' is a side-scrolling action beat 'em up with 12 distinct levels. Each level has waves of enemies plus a mutant boss who all must be defeated to progress to the next stage. Players must defeat enemies to earn points which can be spent at the end of each stage to improve the character's strength, vitality, or mutant power. All playable characters share the same basic attacks, but each one has a unique special ability: Wolverine has claws that excel in close-range combat, Rogue has a charge ability, Storm controls tornado projectiles, and Cyclops has long-range optic blasts.

Multiplayer

Up to two players can play cooperatively in campaign mode, or play against each other in a competitive mode to pit two of the playable characters in battle.

Reception

''X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse'' received mixed reviews upon release. Aggregate review websites

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

and GameRankings scored the game 61 out of 100 and 59.34%, respectively. The reviewer at

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

recommended the portable game to X-Men and beat 'em up game fanatics, but was disappointed by the simplistic gameplay and ending. Nintendojo concluded that it was "a fun game that ends much too quickly".

References

External links

X-Men video games on Marvel.com
* {{X-Men media 2001 video games Activision beat 'em ups Cooperative video games Game Boy Advance games Game Boy Advance-only games Video games based on X-Men Video games featuring female protagonists Superhero video games Video games set in Africa Video games set in Antarctica Video games set in Canada Video games set in New York City Video games set in New York (state) Video games set in San Francisco Video games set in Paris Video games set on the Moon Digital Eclipse games Multiplayer and single-player video games Video games developed in the United States