X-Men is an action-RPG which lets you take on the role of fifteen different characters from the X-Men universe. These characters many of the well known favorites include Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Iceman, Nightcrawler, and Gambit. In the beginning your selection of characters will be limited, but as the story expands, so will your assortment of characters. At any given time, you can have up to a party of four characters which You can control any one of those characters and switch between them at will. Whoever you're not controlling will be left to the CPU AI. However, you have some control over how the CPU will control the rest of your party. You can select if they will be aggressive, defensive, or normal. Also, you can select if they automatically heal themselves, and if they do at what point in their health level they will do so. If your party gets seperated or you need their help, you can also call your party to come assist or follow you.

The action is pretty straight foward with two attack buttons which can be mixed up in different combination to pull of different chain attacks, including air juggling. On top of that, you will have up to four different mutant attacks that you can earn and power up as you level up your character. If you combine your attacks with one of your fellow X-Men team members, you will increase the amount of experience you earn. The actual combat is relatively straight forward and easy for anyone to pick up and get into.

While we're on the topic of anyone being able to pick up and get into, players can do just that. At any time in the game, you can go from single player up to four total players just by plugging in a controller. Just as easy as you can join in, you can easily switch back people to be controlled by the CPU. No need to quit out and start a different game. It's great that Raven Software has been able to increase the number of players from E3 at two players to its current status of four.

When it comes to the RPG aspect, the experience points that you earn from fighting will level up your character. Once you level up your character, you are given a points to upgrade one of four areas: attack, defense, mutant power, and health. You are also given points to upgrade your abilities. Some abilities will need that character to be at a certain level in order to obtain them. This is relatively straight forward with some good descriptions to aid you in what everything means. However, if you just want to stick to the pure combat, simply auto upgrade everything and move on.

In addition to the main storyline, there are additional modes such as a multiplayer skirmish, challenges in the danger room, and unlocking flashbacks. Flashbacks are recreation of classic comic book events in the X-Men universe in which you get to play out. A nice touch to these scenarios is that even the X-Men uniforms change to represent the era of the comic book.

For those of you with HDTV sets, bet ready to be extremely pleased or extremely disappointed. If you are an Xbox owner, then you will be quite pleased to hear that X-Men Legends supports 16:9 and 720p. If you're a GameCube or PlayStation 2 owner, you can expect to be disappointed that neither version will be progressive scan or widescreen.

X-Men Legends fills a gap that seems to have gone overlooked lately in console games these days. It seems while there are plenty of multiplayer games these days, especially with the expansion of console online games, that not many companies have created too many multiplayer co-op games. This gap seems to be filled quite nicely thanks to the efforts of Raven Software. We're pleasantly surprised from what we've played so far, can't wait to get our hands on the final. Be sure to check out our review coming in the next few weeks in time for it's September 24th release. Until then, take a peak at some of the latest screenshots.