X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse

X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse is a cooperative action RPG from Raven Software, following on from the successful first installment released in 2004. The player assembles a four-member team from an extensive roster of mutants — Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Iceman, Storm, Gambit, Rogue, and many others — and progresses through a continuous real-time story that, for the first time in the series, pairs the X-Men with their longtime rival Magneto against a shared threat: the ancient mutant Apocalypse and his Four Horsemen. The gameplay is built on hack-and-slash combat, a classic RPG system of experience and skills for each character, and the ability to switch between team members at any time and combine their abilities into shared elemental combos — one of the main additions compared to the first game.

The game supports up to four-player cooperative play on a single screen and offers dozens of hours of content including side missions and collectible comic-book pages that unlock bonus material and artwork. The series also retains the Danger Room training mode, where players can try out characters and their abilities outside the main story, as well as gradually unlockable alternate comic-book costumes for individual heroes. Difficulty can be set from accessible to demanding, so both casual players and comic-book fans looking for a challenge in the story's progression can enjoy the game.

The PlayStation 2 version launched the same month as the Xbox, GameCube, and PC counterparts and offers essentially the same content and story — no characters or missions are missing. The difference is purely technical and stems from the console's weaker graphical performance: somewhat coarser textures, simpler environment models, and slightly longer loading times between levels compared to Xbox. For players who in 2005 owned a PlayStation 2 as their only console, however, this still meant full access to the complete game without any reduction in content or in the cooperative mode.

Why play it: For a cooperative action RPG with the full X-Men roster and the same story as on the other consoles — the PS2 version offers the complete content, just with coarser textures and longer loading.