Review by: Brian Pipa
Published: December 5, 1997

X-men: Ravages of the Apocalypse joins the select few Quake total conversions (TCs) that have actually been released in stores. While Shrak and Malice brought a brand new storyline and new characters to Quake, X-men is the first commercial conversion to bring familiar characters. The X-men are one of the most popular comic book characters in recent memory and have an insanely huge following all over the world. Now you can jump into the world of the mutant superheroes in the familiar setting of Quake.

The storyline goes something like this: Apocalypse (a really bad bad-guy) has cloned the X-men and is going to use these clones to take over the world. Magneto (another bad-guy) has gotten wind of this and has decided to thwart Apocalypse’s plans with — guess who? — you. How are you, a mere mortal, going to defeat Apocalypse? Magneto has attached “infusions of cyber-metamorphic weaponry connected by nano-tech circuitry directly to your central nervous system.” In laymen’s terms, you now have morphing weapons instead of hands.

These weapons provide one of the coolest effects I’ve seen in Quake — morphing. When you change weapons, instead of putting one weapon away and holding another, now the weapons morph into each other. Of course, you have weapons on each hand, so if you change from a weapon on the left to a weapon on the right, they don’t morph. One of the advantages of having the weapons on your hands is that you always have all weapons available; you just have to gather ammo for them.

Some of the weapons are fairly mundane like the power fist, shotgun, chaingun, and plasma cannon, but some are interesting. The flamethrower shoots a steady stream of fire and will burn the skin right off an X-clone. The orb-launcher fires bouncing grenade-balls that bounce around like those bouncy balls you can get at the entrance to grocery stores. If it hits a clone, it will explode and if not, it will explode after a few seconds of bouncing. The dual-rocket launcher fires two enemy-sensing rockets. Fire these and they will automatically home in on the enemy and even avoid walls when possible. The final and most powerful weapon is the N.E.R.D. (Nuclear Energy Radiation Dispatcher). It fires a ball of energy whose power is dependent on how long you hold the fire button before firing — if you hold it too long, though, it will start taking health from you.

Your enemies are X-men clones (not the real X-men, of course). The game has 12 different X-men, from Archangel to Wolverine and each has his or her own distinctive mutant abilities we all know and love. For example, Cyclops attacks with ricocheting laser blasts, Iceman fires ice shards and a freeze blast that can temporarily disable you, and Storm can fly through the air, slinging lightning bolts and gale force winds. Each one looks unmistakably like the X-men character it is portraying and the developers did a great job capturing the feel of the X-men with Quake.

The levels run the gamut, from the X-men mansion to an Egyptian fortress, to a hidden base to a city street. Many new models (Quake scenery) have been added to enhance the levels. Couches, lamps, and bookcases are in the mansion; cars, desks, street signs, and a cash register can be found in the city level. Each of these models are very well constructed and fit into the maps very well.

Multiplayer is a bit different. You choose which X-man you want to play as and the server can either allow only mutant powers or mutant powers and weapons. Ever wanted to know who the greatest X-man is? Now you can find out. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try out the multiplayer for this review so I can’t say how it was, but it sounds like fun.