When you take into account how painfully uninspiring their previous X-Men games had been, it's a wonder Activision decided to persevere and make a third fighting game based upon Marvel's mighty mutants. After two unsuccessful attempts, you could have forgiven them for giving up even trying to come out of the shadow of Capcom's supreme representation of the mutants in a fighter, X-Men: Children of the Atom. However, X2: X-Men United was about to hit cinemas, so it had to be expected that a game based upon the franchise would have to hit the shelves in time for it's release. Activision, in fairness to them, were actually quite smart, in that they released not only a direct movie-tie-in, Wolverine's Revenge, but also a comic-based X-Men title, in the form of X-Men: Next Dimension.

You will notice the title doesn't even reference the fact that the game is related to the Mutant Academy games, and given that they weren't exactly well recieved, it's little wonder why. Exactly where they pulled Next Dimension from I'm not sure. I suppose that while the two Mutant Academy games used 3D character models, they were firmly rooted in 2 Dimensions, whereas this game actually does take place in a 3D arena where sidestepping and such is possible, and even allows gamers to beat each other from one area to another, much like the system found in Tecmo's Dead or Alive 3.

Now, I have to admit that I didn't have all that high expectations going into the game. My initial doubts were caused by the fact that the game was pretty simple to find in the preowned bin for £15 a week after release, but hey, a whole lot of peons traded in Virtua Fighter 3tb, a quality fighting game, for the Dreamcast, so there can be no accounting for some people's tastes, especially when it comes to fighting games. It was only halfway home that I realised Capcom's game wasn't the last fighter I had played with the X-Men license, and my heart sank when I looked closer at the box and discovered it was from the same people as Mutant Academy 2. Still, for £15 surely it would be a laugh on multiplayer, right?

The game still plays much as it did before, special moves still predominantly achieved via your standard quarter-circle D-Pad motions accompanied by an attack button, and the Super Move system has been simplified a lot since the convuluted mess of the last game.

Everyone knows that a fighting game's quality is gauged not on it's plot, not on it's visuals or license, or even how many dimensions it's in: it's all about the engine. Possibly the most aggravating thing about Activision's prior X-Men titles was how dull and thrill-free they were, especially in comparison to Capcom's lightning paced masterpiece, and while Next Dimension barely warrants the honour of being mentioned in the same sentence as that masterpiece, it definitely takes some positive steps up from it's prequel.

For a start, the actual step into the third dimension helps the game out a little. As opposed to being a generic 2D-Playing, 3D-looking game like the first two, the game is at least in 3 dimensions, and the ability to knock opponents off cliffs and through doors and such helps add a cinematic quality to the battles. The game also slows down to 'bullet time' if you knock your opponent into the air, so you can leap up and perform combos on their limp, falling body. The basic collision detection is still fine, and the buttons all respond about as well as you could expect. There is a solid selection of X-Men and villains to choose from, some of which I don't know(I gave up on the comics a good few years ago), but most of them classic characters like Wolverine, Cyclops, Magneto, Juggernaut and Storm. My personal favourite, Nightcrawler, also crops up, but sadly my other fave, Colossus, is nixed in favour of the lame Toad.
However, as you would expect, things aren't all rosy, not even for the positive aspects of the game. The whole 'knocking fighters around arena' element is cool...but it isn't implemented very smoothly, and often you will find yourself getting knocked to another area when you were hit miles away from it, or worse still you thump your opponent into an open door and nothing happens. The bullet time effect is quite cool the first few times, but god does it get old very quickly. The stages, while offering interaction in the form of knocking fighters to different areas, only offers the bare miminum in terms of any other interaction, a few smashable pillars and so on. What makes this worse is the game's habit of getting your, or the opponent, stuck in scenery, a glitch that can ruin a gaming session in an incredible fashion. The game is also very easy to mash your way through, in fact, in many cases it's more advisable to just mash the buttons and waggle the stick, because a strategy doesn't always work, and as it turns out, he who mashes more often than not wins. The game is also rather slow. When I think of Marvel comics and superheroes duking it out, I can't help but think of their battles being conducted at a quick, exciting pace, although that could be to do with Capcom's games tackling the subject. Next Dimension sort of plods along at a rather tepid pace.

In the game's defence, it does have a nice selection of modes on offer. In addition to the expected Arcade, Versus and Survival modes, the game also offers a Story mode, where a story from the X-Men comics has it's battles made interactive. You don't actually choose a character, you are given a choice out of one or two before they fight the selected opponent that fits the story. The plot involves the evil sentinel Bastion's plans to destroy the X-Men, for which he forms an uneasy alliance with Magneto. It's up the X-Men to foil this nefarious plan.
While the plot wasn't one I was familiar with, and was a bit basic, I still enjoyed this mode, with it's cut-scenes inbetween fights, and even the roping in of Patrick Stewart to voice Professor Xavier(the character he plays in the movies) adds an air of authenticity. To be honest, more fighters should offer single player modes like this.

Controlling the game won't take all that long to master. 2 Punches and 2 Kicks, assigned to the face-buttons in traditional punches on top, kicks below, format, and a throw and counter assigned to the black and white buttons. Naturally implementing these in the heat of battle is slightly cumbersome, but in general, controlling the game isn't all that tough, and while the controls don't exactly respond with lightning speed, they do work to a fine degree, and I didn't have many complaints with them.

Single Player mode won't last you all that long to be honest. Play through Story mode, unlock stuff and that's it. Sadly, the game doesn't even really take off on multiplayer either. While some of the fights can get quite fun, if you are constantly batting each other from one area of the arena to another, but should the process of actually fighting for any solid stretch of time arise, the game will become very tiresome, and you will start to yearn for a faster and slicker fighter.

There are a total of 25 characters in the game, although more than half of them are not available to begin with, and must be unlocked. As I mentioned, it does feature some stinker characters, mainly just Toad though, but another gripe I have is that it wastes space with multiple versions of the same character. Dark Phoenix and Jean? Psylocke and Betsy? jesus, if you must steal some of Capcom's traits, at least try to make it the positive ones.
Each character also has 8 costumes to choose from. 8! take that Tecmo. While most of them are just colour variations, the game does offer some really nice touches, like allowing you to outfit Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit and Nightcrawler in their classic outfits, but why are some characters missing these? Pyro for one, Havok for 2. Most notably lacking in classic costumes is Storm. The character has undergone huge changes over the years, surely at least one of them deserved to appear? how could they resist the Mohawk look?

Speaking of the characters, some of the things Activision expects gamers to do in the name of unlocking them and their costumes is just plain banal. 'Win 30 fights in survival with Character X on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in September to unlock Psylocke's third outfit', ok so that may be a slight exaggeration, but not all that much. If you want to talk about replay value, if you actually try to unlock everything honestly, you are looking at about 3 years. Personally I love to know I unlocked everything myself, but this game just annoyed me to the point I had to get a code off the Internet to unlock everything.

Graphically, the game is very mixed, but it never aspires to even come close to using the full power of the Xbox, although that has to be expected of a multi-platform game. Many fans complain about the character models, and while there are much better, most of them look decent, and are animated well enough. There are exclusions, Nightcrawler's tail for example, looks abysmal, and the models certainly aren't near the top of the game.
Much, however, is made of the backgrounds, and while for the most part, they are admirable, they aren't flawless either. Any indoor stages are well represented, lovely lighting and textures. The minute you hit the jungle stage, with water, though, it all goes out of the window. The water effects could easily have been accomplished on a PS1, this is no joke. This does nothing but make the game seem amateurish.

The sound isn't much better. Stewart's voice lends a touch of class to what is an otherwise mute-able sounds department. Music is competant, if forgettable, and the other voices are passable at best. I suppose in the game's defence, nothing offends me about the sound.

When all is said and done, X-Men: Next Dimension isn't really all that bad. As I said, multiplayer fights can be moderately entertaining for a while, especially if you know a few X-Men fans, but in general, you get the feeling Activision knew they were fighting a losing battle trying to outdo Capcom's use of the license, something they seem to have accepted by making their next X-Men title, X-Men: Legends a different type of game. Next Dimension tries too hard to be both a Capcom's style fighter and a Tecmo style fighter at once, and never really achieves anywhere near the level of class either does on it's own. If it's going for a low price, fans of the comics could do so much worse in terms of a fighter for the Xbox, but at the same time, it's possible to do so much better.

Other X-Men Related Reviews
X-Men for Sega Genesis
X-Men 2: Clone Wars for Sega Genesis
X-Men: Children of the Atom for Sega Saturn
X-Men Mutant Academy 2 for PlayStation

Recommended: Yes