X-Men: Mutant Wars (Game Boy Color)

The story of the X-Men is often that of a tense relationship between humans and superpowered mutants. Professor Charles Xavier and his X-Men believe in a future of cooperation and coexistence, but Magneto and his allies believe mutants should rise up to replace humanity, and their ongoing battles over ideology fuel this conflict. When a group of cyborgs and robots start attacking people all over the world though, the X-Men aren’t quite sure how they fall into this dynamic, but believing the kind of trouble fits with Magneto’s usual machinations, they head off hoping to put an end to it regardless of who’s behind the unexpected attacks.

 

X-Men: Mutant Wars is a side-scrolling action game where you will find yourself primarily playing as the metal-clawed mutant Wolverine, and for good reason. While at any time you can press select and a direction on the D-Pad to swap in a different member of the X-Men to utilize in battle, all of the back-up members are fairly limited in what they’re able to do. Wolverine himself has a range of attacks, a decent selection comprised of things like regular slashes, fancy backflips, a rising uppercut, and a midair dive kick. Wolverine is appropriately flexible for the foes you’re facing, most every level packing in some standard cyborg soldiers running on the same road as you while littler robots fly overhead looking to pester you. Swap to another X-Man though, and their options are all going to be pretty similar. Cyclops fires beams from his visor, Ice Man shoots an ice shard forward, and Gambit hurls his explosive cards, only Storm really feeling quite different from the others since her little whirlwind covers more space than the simple forward-firing shots of the other mutants.

All the back-up X-Men can aim their projectiles high or low so they’re not helpless against flying foes, and they do all have a purpose since Wolverine can’t attack enemies from afar. In fact, sometimes calling in the back-up will completely invalidate the danger a boss presents while at other times like at the graveyard it’s just wise not to let the zombies get in close enough to grab you. Each character has their own health bar though so you might want to bench Wolverine for a bit to avoid him being worn down before you get to more demanding battles, but at the same time, enemies drop hearts for health refills so often it’s easier just to plug on ahead with Wolverine and pick up the replenishment so he’s not ailing. One reason not to whip out the other X-Men though comes in the form of the XP meter, all the projectile shots using up a bit of it and overuse will wear their reserves down and make them helpless until it slowly recovers. Wolverine does have some XP techniques but none that feel crucial to his success while his allies are sitting ducks without theirs, so again, the game feels like it’s not so subtly telling you the rest of the team is there mostly for special situations. If a teammate dies though they’re gone for the level, including Wolverine, but this nine level adventure has a password system and heals you between stages so it’s not too hard to press on even with some missing members for a stage.

 

The levels in X-Men: Mutant Wars are unfortunately quite basic. Most of them consist of one long stretch where you walk forward and hit a small group of designated baddies along the way. Some cyborgs are pushovers, but others like the axe-wielders will leap if you try to approach, the robots in the air drop annoying sparkles or swoop around, and levels like Washington D.C. even include some pesky Secret Service agents whose bullets are hard to avoid and you can only briefly stun them to boot. Problem is, most every enemy is easy enough to figure out and overcome, the danger more if they’re clustered and something like your rising uppercut didn’t quite hit every foe so you touch one on the way back down. The regular level play is rather unexciting as a result, especially with constant heart drops meaning you can be rather careless without much concern at times, but you can’t make your way to the stage boss until you explore some side paths. After hopping down or climbing up into a side area, you’ll be up against a different batch of enemies as you fight your way to an item at the end. A red key is necessary for making it possible to face the boss, but some side paths have things like health expansions or full refills on health or XP. Most areas aren’t too bad when it comes to danger so investigating these areas is usually worthwhile even if you end up not needing the refill, but it still feels rather tedious since the side areas often feature enemies already seen elsewhere or still don’t really push you to do much besides learn how to chain together Wolverine’s attacks to easily clear the path.

Bosses do sometimes provide a greater challenge, and while some can practically be beaten by standing in place and attacking, others are definitely going to require some experimentation to avoid taking heavy losses. X-Men: Mutant Wars features familiar X-Men enemies like Sabertooth and Magneto as well as new ones tied to the cyborg threat like Waraxe and Specter, but usually if one’s proving to be difficult it’s not for the best reasons. Magneto has an invisible attack you can’t avoid so you just have to hope he doesn’t get a chance to use it, and other bosses like the Sentinel can hit you once and keep knocking your body around with attacks after so that you can almost lose a team member to one mistake. Some like Specter at least have it where you can avoid those combos once you understand what makes him tick, and the game’s final boss is actually well designed to have clear tells where your timing on movement is vital. The boss rush mode where you must survive battle after battle with no heals for the team is not too appealing because of this mix of reasonable challenge, pushovers, and fights where one wrong move spells your doom, but the designs on show at least let characters like Storm have their day so the game doesn’t feel like it should just be called Wolverine: Cyborg Wars.

THE VERDICT: X-Men: Mutant Wars is a short action game that struggles to get you to shake up your approach because it offers you so little range in what you can do and what you’re up against. Wolverine is far too capable compared to his compatriots so they’re more tricks to pull out in special situations and the enemies you face feel built mostly to be opposed by Wolverine thanks to his greater maneuverability and more flexible attacks. They all fold a bit too easily to him as well and offer too many hearts so the threat level is low, but bosses can sometimes push you to think and use the whole team even though they’re inconsistently effective just like the X-Men team they’re up against.

 

And so, I give X-Men: Mutant Wars for Game Boy Color…

A BAD rating. Wolverine is undoubtedly the focus of the game’s action and that’s not a bad thing necessarily, his range of moves meaning you can handle the cyborg menace effectively rather than trying to get the limited attack range of the other four to work in your favor. They are best thought of as assistants, but some of the boss battles do show where they could have shined, the final boss in particular feeling like one of the few cases where Wolverine is absolutely outclassed by his allies. Whether it’s the back-up or Wolverine himself though, more often the enemies should have tried to draw out more from the player, many levels easy to run through and repeat the same uppercut or aerial kick to clear a path. Some moments have you jump over hazards but even if they hit you it’s too easy to get a health top-off from the nearby enemy, and the side paths are just more of the same so it hardly feels like you’re exploring a level so much as taking a detour to hunt for the red key. Here and there you can find ideas with promise, the earlier mentioned zombies in the graveyard ask you to make a choice on who to fight with, weighing the pros and cons of swapping in teammates since your projectile-firing friends can’t so easily handle the flying robots that bother you during that section. Elsewhere though it’s Wolverine’s show, and the boss battles that could have elevated the action some instead are too unsteady to really bring out the best in the action much of the time. Bosses like Magneto are just inexplicable in the choices made, but the rest of the game is so easy that it’s hard to get worked up over a boss fight you’ll eventually win once you’re able to interrupt him enough.

 

It probably was the right call to shower the player with recovery hearts so often, more from a business standpoint than an enjoyability one. This kind of simple straightforward game is riding the X-Men name and making sure the player has a high chance of survival means they can better ignore the flaws in the bland combat that really isn’t doing much to engage them. X-Men: Mutant Wars still squanders the characters it includes, but even when a boss is annoying, you’ve got five heroes to push through it with so you won’t likely dwell on that issue for too long. It’s still not going to be an entertaining adventure in the end, but you’ll at least likely be able to see this war between mutants and cyborgs swiftly come to an end so you can put it down and go find a better game to play.