N-GAGING X-MEN

HOW DID LEGENDS STACK UP ON NOKIA’S HANDHELD?

X-men Legends was such a popular hit on consoles it eventually received a

Nokia N-gage version just five months later. This

‘demake’ of sorts (and its sequel) was developed by

Texas-based studio Barking

Lizards, who specialised in making licensed videogames specifically for phone and handheld devices. Purists can rest easy knowing it retains all the basic gameplay elements introduced by its big brother, including the ability to swap between multiple mutants on command, fully destructible environments and in-depth stat upgrades. The N-gage version even manages to look somewhat like its console counterpart thanks to some beautiful pixel art, which helps keep each of the characters identifiable – even if they lack the same amount of detail.

Most of the console iteration’s levels are faithfully recreated here, too, as is the story. It was a bold move to try and compress X-men Legends’ various pre-rendered cutscenes down to such a small screen, but Barking Lizards just about got it working as long as you don’t mind some muffled audio. Where the N-gage translation does fall down a little, however, is in its combat. While each mutant hero still has a catalogue of special skills they can equip and deploy when enough focus energy is built up, the number of basic attacks is reduced from two to just one. Unfortunately, this results in enemy bouts becoming a bit button mashy.

An odd choice is in how music only accompanies you whenever you enter fights. As such, most of the time it’s just you and three other squad members roaming warehouses, city streets and of course the X-mansion in absolute silence. X-men Legends for N-gage stacks up well against the game that inspired it overall though despite this, even if Reign Of Apocalypse on the Game Boy Advance remains the superior portable take on the X-men.