X-Men: Legends (XBW: 86%) was one of the surprise hits of 2004 as far as RPG's went. It managed to take a famous franchise and merge it seamlessly with the well-trodden style of hack'n'slash gameplay, resulting in a kickass game that pleased both hardcore X-Men fans and casual players alike. While successful, the announcement of an impending sequel mere minutes after most people finished the first came as quite a surprise, and no doubt many cynical gamers suspected EA might have taken control of the franchise. But thankfully, XML Fever 2k5 was not to be, instead, Raven returned for a second round to bring us an all new X-Men Legends x-perience, now with an added colon and the subtitle "Rise of Apocalypse"

For those of you not familiar with the X-Men canon, Apocalypse has nothing to do with biblical plagues of insectoid menace, red rivers and the end of the world. Well okay, there's a bit of all that stuff, but he's actually one of the most bad-ass mutants in the universe: an immortal demigod with superhuman powers, who takes "Survival of the Fittest" so literally that he beat Darwin to death just to prove the point. No really! And now that the bloodstains on his copy of "Origin of the Species" have dried, he has turned his prodigious attentions to the subjugation of all humanity, weeding out the weak so that he may lord over only the strongest of sycophants. I'm sure it makes more sense to him.

At any rate, only the X-Men have a hope in hell of resisting his might, but they can't do it alone, and in a hilarious twist worthy of a Martin Lawrence buddy-movie, they'll need to team up with their mortal enemies, the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by the villain of the last piece, Magneto. Let the culture-clash hijinks ensue! It's a fanboy's fantasy to be able to assemble your dream-team of mutants, and while Rise of Apocalypse is limited to 15 or so characters, there's still plenty of scope to go wild creating your awesome foursome. New additions include the likes of Toad, Sabertooth, Juggernaut and lesser-knowns like Sunfire and Scarlet Witch. Of course, the compromise is some favourites from the previous game are conspicuously absent, like Psylocke, Emma Frost, and the newbie of the group, Magma. Still, Rise of Apocalypse boasts an impressive roster, and there should be a mutant for everybody.

Rise of Apocalypse also boasts an impressive story-mode, weighing in at around 25-30 hours for a thorough play through. Nor does it have the non-combat interludes of its predecessor, which were a love/hate feature for a lot of gamers. You'll still have a chance to wander around whatever your headquarters are at the time, but make no mistake of it: this is a much more action-oriented experience. In what is surely a serendipitous coincidence, the game consists of five Acts, allowing players to battle all four of Apocalypse's Horsemen, as well as big-bad himself. Like the previous game, there's a host of mini-bosses and minions, ranging from Mr. Sinister to Lady Deathstrike. And while it feels like there's less baddies on-screen at any given time, they make up for the lack of quantity in terms of quality.

You see, rather than start from scratch with fairly weak characters who only advance 15-20 levels, Rise of Apocalypse has a level-cap of 99, allowing you to really unleash the full potential of your favourite mutants. Some of the higher-level skills are extremely powerful, and active characters gain a lot more XP than those on the bench, which encourages you to either mix it up regularly, or focus on just a few favourite characters and super-charge them. Either way, dormant do-gooders will still gain experience, but at a much slower rate; unlike the original, in Rise of Apocalypse the level gap is often 10+ between regularly used characters and heroes on hiatus. This gives you a good excuse to replay the game on one of the various difficulty settings and flex the spandex of characters you never used. Or if you're so inclined Rise of Apocalypse will let you load any existing saved data- as in character levels, items and abilities- into a new game, which is handy if you find your super-skills lacking.

So now you've got access to some *real* super-powers, Rise of Apocalypse ramps up the difficulty a little with tougher enemies, rather than just throwing heaps of cannon fodder at you like the original did in places. You may still be mobbed by ten or so baddies, but they tend to be tougher and less fragile. Apocalypse churns out super-soldiers by the platoon-load, and you'll face a host of mutants, monsters, and of course, sentinels. Level-ups will come frequently as a result of all the justice you'll be serving, and some may find it to be a little too frequent. Thankfully you can set the A.I. to automate its own advancement, which is a godsend if you don't want to micromanage your mutants. In fact, the A.I. is a good deal more flexible this time around: you can set when they'll use health and energy potions, what abilities they use, and how aggressive or defensive they'll be when push comes to punch.

The Artificial Intelligence does a better job of acting the part than Haley Joel Osment did, but it's no substitute for playing with a friend. To that end, four-player co-operative play is available, offline, and finally, on Xbox Live. It's great to finally have the option to go online, and games can be saved and resumed later. There's one glaring problem that isn't mentioned in the manual however: everybody has to be using the exact same screen setup. So you can't mix 16:9 widescreen with a standard aspect, or 720p with the default resolution, and so forth. It's not a massive problem, but it can be pretty annoying, especially for those with higher-end setups who don't want to stoop to such lowly things as interlaced 4:3 gameplay.

Still, the pros of online goodness easily outweigh the cons. Even with the occasional lag (which ranges from mild to mildly annoying), being able to play as your favourite X-Man online with mates is a hoot. It also makes executing the Xtreme powers and combo attacks a helluva lot easier than trying to time it with the A.I. when you're playing alone, which in turn adds a new layer to the gameplay as you unleash some truly epic damage on your foes. So while it isn't perfect by any means, the online aspect is a step in the right direction for the series.

Visually, Rise of Apocalypse boasts only a slight improvement over the original game. The characters look a little better (or maybe we've just gotten used to the style!), while the locations are probably a little less detailed this time around, at least in terms of the amount of breakables. For those of you so equipped, Rise of Apocalypse is one of the few games on the current generation Xbox capable of running in 720p, and it's obvious this is the way Raven designed the game to play. The first time you see it running in high-definition, the strange cel-shading decisions suddenly make sense. Of course, you'll need an imported or *ehem* otherwise enhanced console to make use of this. So for most people, the look of the game is pretty similar to the original X-Men Legends.

There's a nice variety of costumes available for your (anti-)heroes to wear, designed to reflect the various iterations of each character over the years. These become available automatically as your character advances in levels, and are a nice touch. As before, there are stacks of unlockables; comic covers, concept art, loading screens and more. Perhaps the best news is that there's a few unlockable characters- Professor X, Deadpool and Iron Man can all be obtained from playing the game. Sadly, exclusivity rears its ugly head, and the eight or so characters available to the PC and PSP version of the game are not available in the Xbox version.

Sadly, the Danger Room has been downsized since the first Legends adventure: there are no longer any historical missions or scenario-based rooms, which is a shame. A lot of the items have been recycled from the first one too, and thus lack the initial wow-factor or geeky coolness. There are however some unique items that you may or may not find as you battle through the game- it's completely random, so you may get none or you may get five or more. It's actually very reminiscent of games like Diablo in that way.

Rise of Apocalypse sounds good too, but like the visuals, not much has really changed. The sound effects are still meaty, the music suits the comic-book feel, and Patrick Stewart is back to sweet-talk to you as Professor X. In a lot of ways, this is a metaphor for the game as a whole: it's more evolutionary than it is revolutionary, fine-tuning various aspects and tightening up the whole experience. For example the camera handles a lot better- it gets stuck much less often, and can be adjusted on the fly. Potions are now automatically consumed when you're carrying the maximum and trying to pick up another, and all the characters skills have been tweaked enough that none feel quite the same. So it's nice that Activision saw fit to not charge full-price RRP for the title, instead pricing it like a slightly more expensive expansion pack.