Activision’s new fighter, X-Men: Mutant Academy couldn’t have been timed more perfectly, coming out at roughly the same time as the movie. It’s obvious the design team for this game worked closely with the movie designers; there are costumes for every character from the movie as well as film clips and movie stills. It really makes the license come alive, and even if X-Men had turned out to be a bad game, Activision would get props for attention to detail and creative use of a license.

The character animations are well done. Some of the little details I liked were the light-trails Wolverine and Sabretooth leave when slashing with their claws, the weird shimmery effect when Phoenix, Magneto, or the Professor use their telekinetic abilities, and the way electricity courses around Storm’s body, even when she’s not doing anything. My only beef with Activision in this department is that the CG movies you earn for victories seem like an afterthought. They’re not bad, but they’re short. The most discouraging ones are for the bad guys. After completing Academy Mode, all the heroes have some cool outro CG, but the bad guys have the same short movie with a different voice-over each time. Can you say, “No time for anymore cool CG? Ship it anyway!”

Fighting games aren’t necessarily known for their deep stories, but everyone and their dog should know what’s going on with the X-Men and why they want to kick Magneto’s butt. The game runs true to form, in that the heroes battle the villains, and Magneto is the top dog. Mystique, Toad, and Sabretooth make good minions, and they are represented by both their comic and movie costumes in X-Men: Mutant Academy. In fact, all the characters have three costume changes, but you have to earn one of them.

Earning respect is what most fighters are all about, and respect in the gaming world seems to express itself as CG movies and other little trinkets, plus a listing in the Records Screen. I found the rewards in Mutant Academy particularly fun, because by lasting ten rounds in Survival Mode, you earn a “flipbook” of images from the “X-Men” comic books. I’ve been reading “X-Men” for about 15 years, and Marvel gave Activision some really great images to use for the game. And for anyone who just went to see the movie and doesn’t even know about the comic, lots of movie images are there to be unlocked also.

With all the features to unlock, it’s surprising that there aren’t more modes in X-Men. Two-Player is much in effect, and is really the reason you’ll keep coming back after you’ve unlocked all the Single-Player features. Along with Versus Mode are Academy Mode, Cerebro Mode, Survival Mode, and Arcade Mode. Since Cerebro Mode is just a place to view what has been unlocked and what you need to do to unlock each feature, four modes is all you get. It would have been nice to see cooperative Two-Player or maybe an extra mode in single player, but you’ll be unlocking all the goodies for quite a while before you start complaining. Academy Mode is the standard training mode, with Professor Xavier walking you through everything from basic controls to special attacks and Super Moves. Earning a perfect score in training opens up a third costume for each character, and completing each course gives you a cool little CG movie where Xavier welcomes each character into the X-Men. Survival Mode gives you one shot at beating the opponent, refills your life meter a little if you manage a knockout, and lets you keep going until you’re beat. Arcade Mode goes through the standard round-based combat with every major character plus a “twin” of the character you’re playing, until you finally beat Magneto. Depending on the costume you choose in some modes, the reward will be different; success in one mode with the classic costumes will open up the comic pictures, while winning in the movie costume opens up movie pix.

X-Men: Mutant Academy is somewhat guilty of the button-mashing syndrome we all cringe at a little in fighting games. Part of the problem is that while each character has unique animations and signature moves, there are only about four to six unique combinations of moves for any single character. These tend to be the X-Treme or Super Moves, but even some of those are the same between characters. What this does is make it possible to learn one character well and then open up a can of you-know-what with just about anybody else. It’s somewhere between the very individual system in Tekken and the two-button system in something like Bloody Roar. I guess a case could be made that this limits how much actual depth there is in Mutant Academy and may turn off some hardcore fighter fans. Whatever opinion you end up with, I will say that the Super and X-Treme moves were wicked hard to learn. When you get up to the higher difficulty levels, the old “chop-kick-block” won’t be good enough anymore, and even hardcore gamers will be challenged to make the cut.

The controls are laid out with two buttons assigned to kick and two buttons assigned to punch, but the shoulder buttons get play, too. On the left side is a “throw” button and a button to counter big attacks. There are 3 counters possible in any one round, and the timing isn’t easy to master. The right shoulder buttons work as if you had pressed two buttons on the pad, and let you trigger Super Moves more easily. X-Men: Mutant Academy does some cool stuff with the power-ups and Super Moves. At the bottom of the game screen are three meters, and dealing damage to the opponent fills up each meter in turn. The first isn’t much, but the second and third relate to super attacks. What’s cool about the system that Activision cooked up for X-Men is that if you use an attack from the third meter and still have some juice in the second, it’s possible to move energy between meters with a button-press combination! This way, if you’re really in love with a Super Attack, you can build your meters all the way up, trigger the attack, and then exchange energy to trigger it again. The strategy this allows is great, especially because of the healing factor in the game.

Most X-Men fans know that Wolverine has accelerated healing powers due to the Adamantium grafted to his skeleton, but Activision chose to include healing for all the characters. The way it works is that when you get decked, your energy bar goes down and turns red. If you can manage not to get hit for a while, the red turns green as you “heal.” Wolverine is the fastest, but since all the characters heal to some degree, there’s never much room to play a defensive game. The old strategy of “Hit and Run” doesn’t work in X-Men: Mutant Academy, so you have to play a really aggressive style. The only exception is if you master the Super and X-Treme Moves for a character. These do so much fundamental damage that the healing thing doesn’t really help. It works for you and against you, especially with characters like Sabretooth; he’ll Suplex you every time you get within claws’ range!

It’s hard to say if X-Men: Mutant Academy would stand on its own feet without the X-Men license, but I do think Activision did a great job using the license to full advantage. The rewards for Single-Player victory are great in number but short in delivery; I wish there had been more meat on the CG plate. If you’re an “X-Men” fan like me, you’ll have a blast playing these characters, and there’s nothing wrong with the action or control. Some hardcore fighter fans may be a little turned-off by the control elements and lack of move variety, but Activision did themselves proud with Mutant Academy. And lightning will strike you down if you keep staring like that at Storm’s... uh, outfit!