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By Contributing Writer Jimmy Payne Rating: Average If X-Men: Mutant Academy had been released six months ago, a lot of people wouldn't have given it a second glance. But wait a minute, it was released in the same week as the box-office smash X-Men movie. Cha-Ching! In all seriousness, I tried to keep an objective mind while playing this game and not think about the kick-ass X-Men movie. As a result, I realized that X-Men: Mutant Academy is just another mediocre fighting game. Besides the obvious attraction of the X-Men characters, the biggest draw of Mutant Academy is its graphics. The fighting takes place on a 2D plane, but the characters are polygonal are fairly good-looking. The characters do suffer from low polygon counts, but this isn't as noticeable as it is in some other polygonal fighting games on the PlayStation. The selection of X-Men characters isn't as big as it should be, but at least the characters that are here look nice. The super moves and combos are fun to watch because not only do they supply the obligatory fireworks, but the camera also makes them stand out by slightly rotating rather than staying in one place at all times. More than anything else, it's the subtle camera work that really prevents the game from becoming visually boring. X-Men: Mutant Academy will undoubtedly draw in the crowds with its characters and graphics, but hardcore fighting game fans will be turned off by its overly-simplistic gameplay. The developers "borrowed" a lot from Capcom's Vs. series, and the moves themselves are just your basic light and hard punches and kicks with some combos thrown in for good measure. The game also caters to button-mashers by making it way too easy to string together combos and execute super moves. No matter how much you've practiced with a particular character, any small child who knows how to button-mash can easily put you to shame. I don't know why, but X-Men games always seem to have really bad music in them, and Mutant Academy is no exception. None of the music ties into the X-Men theme and tone; it's just some upbeat tunes that seem to have been hastily thrown together. Also, I'm not going to say that the voice-overs should be exactly the same as the movie's or the cartoon's, but it would be nice if they were at least close to something I've heard in the past. The training mode is probably the most useless training mode in any fighting game I've ever played. If you're not smart enough to figure out how to play this simple game from the get-go, you probably shouldn't be playing it at all. The training mode fails to help you improve your skills in any way, and the majority of it consists of teaching you how to perform basic punches and kicks. No matter how much you may think you need X-Men: Mutant Academy because you think the movie rocks, be strong and don't give into temptation. If you really need a game with X-Men characters in it, you'll have a lot more fun with Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Send your thoughts on this review to jimmy@mastergamer.com
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