These are good days for fans of Marvel comics. Not only are Stan Lee's boys and girls getting the treatment and respect they deserve on the silver screen, they're finally getting it on the small screen. Games based on comics used to be a way to suck the dough out of fanboys by throwing their fave caped good guy into a crappy and generic side-scroller. Not only aren't the latest batch of Marvel licensed games crappy; they're not generic. Treyarch's Spiderman games actually let you feel what it's like to web-sling your way through the city, while Radical Entertainment's Hulk offerings have let you experience the primal rage of the green one. And last year's X-Men Legends showed the importance of teamwork and cooperation. Raven Software is back with a new take on Professor X's band of mutants in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse. And this time, you even have to place nice with your sworn enemies.

I thought the first Legends was a strong game -- but not without its problems. It was quite linear. Constantly having to upgrade your characters took away from the action part of the action/RPG. And on the flip side, the action often devolved into simple button-mashing which took away from the strategies that make RPG battles so fun and challenging. And there was no online multiplay. Well, it's like Raven Software brought in Jean Grey, herself, to read my mind. Legends II addresses all of those problems. And while still not perfect, it improves on its predecessor in almost every conceivable way.

If you're a fan on the comics -- or the movies -- you'll be sucked in from the first frame of the visually stunning opening clip. Magneto leads a trio of evil mutants through -- and I mean literally through -- a high-security military compound in Greenland. Midway through their carnage, they run into Wolverine, Cyclops, and Storm. A three-on-three brawl? Nope, they go off as a team to look for the imprisoned Professor Xavier. Apparently, the threat at hand -- posed by Apocalypse -- is so great that the two warring factions -- the X-Men and the Brotherhood -- must join forces in order to save mankind. It's mutants fighting side by side with other mutants against more mutants.


Like the original game, you do the bulk your fighting and exploring as a four-person team. In the single-player game, you can control one character at a time, but can switch between your characters with a tap of the D-pad. The game's A.I. is generally solid -- more so than in the first Legends -- when it comes to your teammates helping you out. They'll either take out whatever enemies are closest to them or they can be called over to help with a pull of the left shoulder button.

The game's improved A.I. can also be used for those who want to stress the action and don't want to be bothered with the micromanagement of spending skill points. There's an "automatic" option for upgrading that will take care of all that for you. Of course, that takes a chunk of the fun out of things. Do you want your Nightcrawler to elusive and hard to hit? Bump up his reflexes and teleportation skills. Want him to be a lethal weapon? Crank up his sword skills. All told, you get to tweak away the abilities of 16 of your favorite -- or most-hated -- mutants (16 out of the box and three that can be unlocked).