Review #456: X-Men - Mutant Academy(Playstation)

 It features costumes from the movie, in case you didn't read the overexcited note on the game's cover.

 X-men - Mutant Academy came out of the left field when the X-Men movie came out, as sort-of a tie-in game. Sort of, because despite featuring costumes from the movie, sorta, it has nothing to do with it, and it's a 2-D fighting game of all things!

 The game offers a few different modes: Arcade, Survival, Training and Versus Player, which are all self-explanatory, as well as a 'Academy Mode' that teaches you every move your character has. And you might as well go through it, since there's no in-game movelist and the booklet is no help in this regard. There's 10 characters in all, Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Phoenix, Gambit, Beast, Magneto, Mystique, Sabertooth and Toad, each character featuring their comic book costume, an unlockable alternate costume as well as a costume based on their looks from the movie, Gambit and Beast gaining entirely original outfits, since they didn't appear in the movie. By the by, finishing the game rewards you with a 15 second long CG movie... which are used in the opening movie, so it's a bit of a waste. The Outros for clearing the Academy Mode with every character are very short and unrewarding too.

 The game runs on the very popular 6 button set-up, with three punches and three kicks of varying speed and strength that can be used to string combos together. Characters can also block, by holding back on the joystick, perform throws and use counters, although you only get three per round. The combo system works well enough, but each character only gets about 3 special moves and 3 super moves, which is very lacking. I also felt like the controls, when it came to inputting special and super moves, sometimes were a bit unresponsive.

 The game has a very original set-up in how Super moves work. By dealing damage you build energy on a three-tiered gauge each tiered tied to a different super move. Each tier requires more energy than the next, the weakest super being a simple super move, the second tier being a 'Stringed super move', which lets you boost its damage by pressing the appropriate directions on the D-Pad and lasty, the Xtreme Move, which is the strongest super and... is just another simple super, but one that deals major damage, most of the time anyways. You can transfer energy between tiers, which is brilliant, but in order to perform the Xtreme move... first you have to mash the X button to form an X on the gauge. Seriously. It's pretty idiotic considering that the X is a weak kick, so they expect you to mash X as you press other buttons? When the enemy lies down? What's the point of this mechanic? It's the only blemish on an otherwise great idea.

 And that's Mutant Academy in a nutshell, a good but unremarkable game. It adds some fantastic ideas to the fighting game genre, specifically how you can manage the energy gauge, but it's a bit lacking in other areas. Characters could've used more moves, the fighting could've used some more oomph behind it... and then there's the fact that Mutant Academy 2 makes it completely obsolete.
 6.0 out of 10