Beat. I had to look up a guide to figure out what to do in the 1st stage. What, I have to collect the thingies in a predetermined order? Dumb. Spider Man was pretty good to play as but it felt odd that his attack was a projectile, as if I was playing Contra. Fairly simple shooting with crouching and jumping to avoid enemy shots. Plenty of platforming with wall climbing and web swinging, including having to adjust the length of the web to to make the swing properly. The main problems with him were: only able to shoot in a single direction in front of him, awkward controls for exiting wall climbing, and inability to shoot web swings while jumping or falling, which would have made the instant death falls in the 3rd level more manageable. The bosses were not bad, but I had to look up how to beat the Rhino since the game didn't teach that web swinging was an attack too. Spidey also fought the final boss, which was a fairly easy fight with the other characters on the side helping out with projectiles. Well maybe not Wolverine. Would have made more sense to fight as Wolverine while Spidey hung out at the edge shooting. Would have been cool if you could tag out each character as their health got low.

I enjoyed Wolverine's controls, finding it was easy to wreck enemies with his claws. The mechanic of regenerating only while his claws were retracted led to a fun playstyle of keeping them retracted between attacks. Unfortunately the regeneration seemed to be limited as it stopped working before I beat the stage. I took too much damage wandering around trying to figure out what to do until I tried the claw uppercut on weak walls. Oh so he can destroy the walls. Then I got stuck because there was a Jack in the box enemy with a bomb in front of it that was impossible to avoid, and I did not have enough hp to survive a bomb. Took a lot of scumming but I eventually figured out how to salvage that situation. I had to take a shot from the enemy just before triggering the bomb to get invincibility frames to bypass the bomb damage. I also found that killing the Jacks with bare fists caused them to drop health every time, whereas claws did not. So I guess that was a roundabout way of implementing the regeneration. The mini boss was hard until I realized he did not have a ranged attack, just longer melee range than me. His 2nd stage was terrible as you had to slowly whittle down the boss while not getting touched. A variation on the run from instant death type of platforming stage where the instant death is the boss. I had to keep hitting him to keep his movement slow, while hitting ropes to drop obstacles and avoid hazards. Then came the walls to cut through and the god damn enemies dropping bombs from above. Then walls AND bombs at the same time. That took some excessive save state scumming to get past; fucking ridiculous. I had to alternate between hitting the boss to keep him slow while hitting the walls in between bomb drops.

Cyclops felt the most shootery of the bunch, but had the worst mobility. Shooting was fun and he could shoot diagonally, but not straight up, which sometimes made it difficult to hit flying enemies. There was also the way he locked into position while crouching, which was good for shooting diagonally without moving but took him a couple seconds to stand back up. I did not like the platforming aspect of riding mine cars over instant death falls. The small sentinel mini boss was not difficult to figure out the pattern. The big one was the best boss fight in the game, with that cool sense of progression where blowing off pieces removed the attack from that part.

Storm's stages were not too difficult because with proper planning you had access to infinite healing, since her life bar was air instead of damage. Kinda makes her the toughest if she can gulp down a lungful of air to recover from harm. I liked her power up attacks and did not have trouble with the boss since there was air in the room. I did find it odd that she could not fly instead of having to flood the passageways to get higher. The last stage with her out of water was the best in the game, despite being short. She was definitely the best action platformer of the group because she can shoot horizontally, diagonally and jump very high. She can pretty much strafe carpet bomb the enemies.

Gambit's stages were a pain of poor design. An instant death thing to run from while facing awkwardly placed enemies and platforms, while using his limited ammo only mid range cards that shoot in a pronounced arc. I didn't realize he could shoot straight up until his 2nd stage, where I blew my specials to destroy blocks above me that would have crushed me; after I used both and was facing a 3rd set of blocks I was like, shit how do I hit something directly above me now? The 1st boss was very tough bullet hell style that took some scumming to beat. Maybe it would have been easier if I knew how to shoot up. I ran out of ammo during the 2nd boss, I guess because the boss had invincibility frames after taking a hit. I had to load a backup save state from the beginning of the fight. Stayed on the edges to destroy the arms, then tried to time my jumps so the fireballs would pass safely above me, but there was not much margin of error. Then I realised it was trivial to run under the boss and shoot up.

This was a fairly fun game mechanically but plagued by some bad level design. Needed more shooty bang bang enemies heads blown off, and less instant death platforming nonsense. Each character played differently enough that they each could have had their own game, and I would have liked to see that.

6.2/10