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!