X-Men Legends II

GameCore is CBSNews.com's gaming column written by William Vitka and Chad Chamberlain. This column was written by Alejandro K. Brown.

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X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse has me baffled. It's the second game in one year, the fighting mechanics are pretty much unchanged, the graphics, while improved are redundant, the load times are annoying (even on the Xbox), and I liked the user interface from the first game better than in this one.

So why is it that I just can't stop playing this game?

The reason is that despite the nitpicking of the opening paragraph, this game builds on and improves on last year's hit game and gives you more of exactly what you loved from last year's hit game: more attacks, more story, bigger (way bigger) villains, more customization options, more powers and more mutants.

The biggest change this time around is that the good guys, the X-Men and their longtime foes, the Brotherhood of Mutants, have to band together to stop the *really* bad guy, Apocalypse, and his army from taking over the world and reshaping it into his vision. With a name like Apocalypse, you're right in thinking his vision isn't the best one for mankind.

At the beginning of the game, you can choose from several of the usually malicious Brotherhood to fight alongside the X-Men, such as Toad, Juggernaut & the master of magnetism, Magneto himself. You can even assemble all four fighters to be from the Brotherhood if you're gotten sick and tired of playing the good guys. OK, so they are the good guys in this game, but having the ability to control Juggernaut and Magneto is awesome.

While I have had the pleasure of playing X-Men Legends II on the Playstation 2, Xbox and PSP (Playstation Portable) consoles, I'm going to focus on the version I think is the best: the PSP version.

While the PSP version takes a while to load new areas, character detail screens, the (ironically) pause menu screen, it seems generally darker than its brothers, the text could have been made a little larger and has the same nitpickings as the big boys that I mentioned earlier, it's still the best version for your money.

Now that the negatives are pretty much out of the way, let's chat about why you will love this game, shall we?

The PSP version brings to the table 4 new characters to add to the console's 3 unlockable characters, including 1 new playable character available from the beginning that won't be found on any other console. Add to this the new PSP exclusive missions and you have a version that actually has more than its big brothers. In addition, you have a faithful version of the game that plays almost identically to the big boys that you can take with you. Believe me, being stuck in the subway with its numerous delays is made much easier when you have mutant powers in your pocket at your total command.

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