X-Men: Children of the Atom - my humble opinion

As i said earlier, i have borrowed this game and played for some time, so here's what i think of the game.

For a start, I pretty much agree with everything J said. This game is indeed great, but bloody difficult! You can choose one from 8 or so difficulty levels, but even in the easiest setting I start to loose at the 2nd or 3rd stage (there's 8). Ok, I must admit that, although I like fighting games, I usually suck at them, mainly because I don't have the patience to memorize 50-button combos, but even as it is I think that starting to lose so early means something about the difficulty of the game.


After you beat the crap out the first 6 "regular" fighters, there comes Juggernaut, so make sure your character has a missile attack, otherwise you wont live long (I beat the fucker using the Sentinel with the missile attack). Finally comes the boss of bosses: Magneto! If you thought the game was hard to this point, well, it just gets harder!

The beginning of the fight is your chance to deal the most damage, cause after a while he creates a shield around him that prevents you from attacking, although he can still beat you up. Eventually the shield disappears, but don't rest just yet, for he's probably about to use his special attack, nothing less than a torrent of lasers that consume more than half of your energy bar. I'm usually dead by now...

To tell you the truth, I actually won one round, using Psylocke, I think, but I just won 1 of 2 rounds, and I never won again...


Talking more about the game now, you probably already know about the huge sprites, the fluid animations, the great gameplay and all that, but what I bet most of you never heard about is the interactive backgrounds! Oh yeah, when I read this off the cover I thought they were exaggerating, after all how can a 2D background be interactive?

Well, I guess it can! The thing is, if you smash the arena hard enough (don't ask exactly how you do that because I really don't now) you start to see the scenery breaking and after a while the floor collapses below your feet! Wow! The effect is different from arena to arena, but it usually goes like I described. Well, guess Dead or Alive 2 wasn't that original after all...


Well, I guess that's it, can't remember anything more to add. If you like beat'em ups, specially the 2D ones, be sure to track this game down and buy it when you have the chance. Just make sure it's the Saturn version, because the PS1 port is so inferior that it makes the little console cry. The Saturn is the king of 2D, no question about it, and that 6-button controller really makes the difference. I really can't imagine myself playing this with just 4 face buttons, and if you play this game in particular you'll understand why. And for those of you that didn't know, the Saturn port is considered 99% arcade perfect. :)