"Out of the Box" at Mania.com said it, I think Dragon magazine said it, and they were all right. This game is your standard X-Men comic, bust open your old Marvels, have we got a superhero system for you. Despite reports that White Wolf is belatedly trying to darken this 4 color universe, this one is a lot of fun. I spent a couple of hours in character creation trying to make up someone like the Fantastic Four, and it pretty much worked.
This is your standard White Wolf, fill in the circles SAT, type of system. It is revised and they've plugged some of the holes, but problems still remain…botches are still annoyingly easy to come by for skilled characters. The game is fast and loose and set for playing.
It starts with a story by George Alec Effinger, and this is followed by another 152 pages of background. This is very effective luminiscent stuff and is some of the finest design I've seen outside of anything by Pagan Publishing. This puts you right in the middle of a world, but as is standard with White Wolf it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Characters also join various psi orders, and you can see a bunch of sourcebooks coming from that design decision. However, if you are creative enough I feel that you can subsist on this one book and find a lot of gaming enjoyment.
The rules are okay. Basically you're creating a new kind of psionic superhero to protect other humans from Aberrants and other hostiles. Aberrants are your basic supervillain run amuck all slimy and disgusting…all infernal like. The character stuff is extraordinarily well-developed, and the systems and combat sections really benefit from the years that have gone into the Storyteller system. The tech stuff is mildly fascinating, but nowhere near as much fun as designing your own psionic superhero.
This is a wonderfully designed game, that is surprisingly complete, and its graphical design is stunning. You have never held a rpg in your hand like this one. I'm almost hesitant to grade this one, but it gets an "A."
Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
