Bruce Von Stiers

Then latest and greatest title in the X-Men franchise has hit the store shelves. This game is called X-Men: Next Dimension and is currently available on the PS2 and GameCube. The X-Box version will be released shortly. I got a chance to look at the PS2 version of the game. The game was developed by Paradox Development and released by Activision.

This is a 3D fighting game in the basic arcade tradition. The difference is that you can move from location to location within the game without having finished a match. There are also a whole slew of X-Men characters to choose from. The manual lists 20 characters, from Cyclops to Havok and on up through Magneto and the Prime Sentinel Female.

There are five modes to choose from when playing. There is the Practice mode, which lets you learn about specific moves that a character can do. This is real important when getting into a fight where you are severely outclassed. The Survival Mode is a one player game that has the player go up against a whole army of enemies. Try to win as many matches without completely draining the life bar. Each win will add extra health to the bar. Versus mode is a two player game for head to head combat with one of your friends. Arcade mode has ten matches that need to be won against the CPU in order to win. They get harder as you go along, making the game extremely hard to beat later on.

The last mode is Story Mode. You find out that the storyline has a humanoid named Bastion trying to destroy all of the mutants in the world. He has captured Forge and will try anything to make him talk. The rest of the X-Men force are going to have to rescue Forge before he is persuaded to give up secrets about the mutants. The X-Men will have to team up with Magneto and his band of mutant criminals to do this. What a tangled web this is. Oops, sorry. Spiderman isn’t in this one.

The cutscenes are pretty cool, giving you bits and pieces of the storyline in between matches. The voiceover work is pretty good, with Patrick Stewart giving a nice performance, along with veteran voice actors like Jenette Goldstein, Jennifer Hale and Luray Cooper.

While you are fighting during the match, your character can now leave the ground ala Matrix. The fighting can now be done, like my son says, “Matrix style.” Characters can remain suspended in the air for short periods of time and move in 3D and even perform an attack while in this state. As for the other fighting techniques, there aren’t really any new ones that haven’t been done before. Having said that, I’m sure somebody will point one out to me.

Players who are really into all things X-Men will get a blast out of this title. Others, who aren’t into the X-Men as much might still like the game, if only for the Matrix type of aerial fighting. The purists out there will complain about the clunkiness of the controls and lack of new and unusual fighting techniques. As for me, I thought it was just fine.

X-Men: Next Dimension is available at stores like Best Buy and Target. You can also get a copy through the Activision web site at www.activision.com.