Quake total conversion lacks depth
Like many of the id Software games, Quake uses an engine that allows virtually every aspect of the game to be altered with new graphics, sounds, weapons, and so on. X-Men, the Ravages of Apocalypse, is a total conversion, essentially using only Quake's engine to convert the once dark and dreary title into a new X-Men episode.
X-Men's plot is based around the idea that the X-Men have been cloned for the worse by the evil Apocalypse and it's up to you, as a member of the X-Men, to eradicate the threat this poses to humanity. Since your opposition is the X-Men you can naturally expect that they'll put up more of a fight than the ogres from Quake, and therein lies 
X-Men's primary flaw. Those of you who got a kick out of battling with a Shambler will be happy to learn that each X-Men character takes the same amount of time, or longer, to destroy. Gone from Quake are the easy (and fun) to destroy smaller characters that would attack in groups. In their place is a single X-Man who can take a fair bit of time to kill. There's nothing wrong with this mano a mano approach, if only it wasn't the only thing the add-on used. At times you'll have to face multiple X-Men, but each remains resistant to your weapons and it can be a frustrating experience as you attempt to dodge their attacks, using all your ammunition, and still not killing them.
The weapons in X-Men are also rather lackluster. A modified shotgun, chain gun, flame thrower, flame launcher, and rocket launcher round up the basic weapons, and there never seems to be enough ammunition lying around for them. An even more frustrating experience is changing weapons. Because your bionic arm "morphs" into the weapon, it takes over a second to change weapons, leaving you especially vulnerable during the transition. Dedicated Quakers know the importance of being able to quickly switch from rockets to a less devastating weapon and back to rockets as your target moves in and out of range. With X-Men, though, you must pick your weapon ahead of time and hope that you enough ammunition, or at least the time and space to run away and switch weapons.
X-Men represents another flawless port on the part of MacSoft, although their efforts seem to have gone to waste with this title. Network play is always enjoyable, but QuakeFinder turned up no X-Men supported servers. The graphics are nice, especially in the 3Dfx version, but I experienced numerous stability issues when loading it under Quake 3Dfx 1.09.
Die-hard Quake users who don't have a speedy enough connection to experience network play of regular Quake, or prefer single player games, may get some enjoyment out of X-Men, but otherwise you're better off sticking with the original.
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 SRP: $24.99 |