While moviegoers are being distracted with the release of X-Men first class this weekend, iPad users have something else to get excited about. At least iPad users who remember the 1990’s will have something to get excited about as Konami has ported over the popular arcade game to the Apple tablet in what appears to be all of its former glory. X-Men in the arcade was a fairly simple game with very simple graphics. You merely chose which hero you wanted to be and then attempted to stop Magneto’s army of Sentinels as well various other assailants as you simply walk a straight line through several sets of enemies, punching, kicking or powering your way through the enemy hordes.
In the newest iPad version, released on June 2nd, the X-Men app has the look and feel of the arcade game down to the most minute detail. The graphics are not amped up or brought into the future, they are exactly as they appeared in the first game. That doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun to play. Throwback games have always had a special niche on the iOS devices and this one is no different. There isn’t any need for shiny new uniforms or 3D like effects in order to make the game incredibly addictive. The story line is still the same, which makes it fairly easy to skip past the opening explanation and jump right into the action.
The first step when booting up the game is to select whether you want to play a solo game or a “local multiplayer” game. While the ability to play with or against someone else who owns an iPad is a nice bonus, there is no way to play online versus someone across the country. If the game wants to gain huge popularity it’s going to need to add some sort of multiplayer function like the one that Infinity Blade just added, using Gamecenter as the way to find an ally or opponent.
Not having any friends who have an iPad, I could only sample the solo game, but it was fun enough all by itself. Once you have chosen the game you want to play you select the difficulty, ranging from “easy” to “expert” and then you choose your champion. You can be Cyclops, Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Night Crawler or Dazzler and each hero you pick will have different strengths and weaknesses as well as different powers you can use on the enemy. Once you pick your first hero you jump into the game and starting fighting for your life.
The control are as simple as they were in the arcade, with a directional control area and “buttons” on the screen to push to punch, kick, jump and use your power. One very nice function that the app has added is that in the settings menus you can actually lay out exactly where on the screen you want the different controls to be if the default positioning doesn’t sit right with you.
The only area where the game has been brought into the 21st century is in its “social features.” When you open the game up you can choose both to connect to Open Feint’s servers in order to record your progress and you can connect to Facebook, allowing you to tell the world what evil mutant butt you just kicked.
In all, the game is fantastic old-school fun, but that fun could be lost on the “under 30” crowd unless they are simply hungering for any old X-Men action. At just $2.99 it is also affordable old-school fun.
App Store: $2.99
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i love this game, make me enjoy the movie of x men is really good