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April 29, 2006 | 12:42 PM PST
by: John Thomas Perkowski
The mere mention of a movie-licensed game sends shudders down the spine of a gamer. For every Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay or The Warriors, there are about fifty games like Catwoman, Constantine, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We are not talking a few... We are talking literally THOUSANDS of bad games. All of these can be tossed on the heading 'quick cash-ins' and ignored, but lately game companies have been trying to get good licensed games out on the market. Take, for example, the Lord of the Rings games from EA or the last Matrix game from Shiny (and that's Path of Neo, not the Matrix Online). Still, Z-Axis is trying to buck the trend by making a decent X-Man game. Considering their last effort was the atrocious BMX: XXX, Z-Axis has to make this a great game or fade into obscurity forever.
However, unlike a lot of movie-based games, it looks like Z-Axis is actually TRYING to make a great game rather than simply cashing in. X-Men: The Official Game, is going to bridge the gap between the X-Men 2 and X-Men 3 movies, and follows the story of three different mutants: Wolverine, Iceman, and NightCrawler. Each character will have their own story and enemies to face, as well as being unique abilities to make use of.
Beginning with Wolverine, the game picks up on everyone's favorite Canadian as he duels Sabertooth on top the Statue of Liberty. Unlike the other two characters in the game, Wolverine has a fixed camera, rather than a freely roundtable one... It gives the game a God of War feel in the camera angles, though Wolverine is obviously no Kratos. Wolverine's healing factor is well represented in the game, but to activate it, he has to be standing still and not fighting. It’s balanced by the fact that Wolverine regenerates slowly, so don't expect to do a quick heal between thugs during a crowded fight. He fights much like you expect, with speedy claw-swipes and feral aggression being the order of the day.
We also got a chance to catch Wolverine fighting two bosses: Lady DeathStrike and Silver Samurai. Lady DeathStrike (who seems to have survived the events at the end of X-Men 2) has the same abilities as Wolverine, so the battle was filled with claw on claw action. This particular battle took place during a tornado, which made running around the arena trying to heal a challenge. The Silver Samurai wasn't nearly as active, but was far more powerful and instances in which Wolverine made a mistimed lunge for the throat resulted in Wolverine being sliced to ribbons by Samurai's giant No-Datchi. As such, the battle had a far more methodical feel to it, as players had to catch the Samurai out of position using Wolverine's quickness, and concentrate on quick hits rather than getting caught up in berserker combos.
Iceman looks and plays VERY differently. First off, he almost never touches the ground. Instead, he slides around on a path of ice, much like the Iceman of the comics. His stages can almost be considered an on rail shooter, but instead of bullets he uses ice beams. Iceman tends to control like a surfer, but we've seen more than our share of fancy air maneuvers to balance that. He did a quick 180 to avoid being shot, sped up to dodge laser blasts, and adjust his height in mid air to change the way he was fighting his enemy, a Giant Sentinel. His stages should be a fun departure from Wolverine's, but not as much fun as our last mutant.
NightCrawler rounds out the cast of heroes, and we are happy to report playing as him looks great. Much like Wolverine, he does a lot of his combat on close range. Unlike Wolverine, he lacks metal claws, so his fighting style relies more heavily on agility to be effective. NightCrawler's main power is teleportation, and this adds unique combat options not available to Wolverine or Iceman.
For example, if he is surrounded by bad guys, he can simply teleport behind one guy and attack him from behind. The sad part is that NightCrawler cannot simply teleport wherever he wishes. Instead, the teleport locals are viewable as he walks around, and with the press of a button he can teleport to the next one. There are a lot of teleport places in each stage, so it ALMOST looks like he can teleport anywhere at will. Considering that NightCrawler will not be in the third X-Men movie, we can only hope this game explains his absence.
To add to the credibility of this game, each of the X-Men in the game will be voiced by the same people who played them in the movie. That means the Wolverine will be voiced by Hugh Jackman, Iceman will be voiced by Shawn Ashmore, and NightCrawler will be voice by Alan Cumming. This stellar cast includes Patrick Stewart, who will be reprising his role as Professor Xavier.
So its looks like another attempt to make a good movie licensed game. We'll have more on X-Men: The Official Game when it hits stores this May.
However, unlike a lot of movie-based games, it looks like Z-Axis is actually TRYING to make a great game rather than simply cashing in. X-Men: The Official Game, is going to bridge the gap between the X-Men 2 and X-Men 3 movies, and follows the story of three different mutants: Wolverine, Iceman, and NightCrawler. Each character will have their own story and enemies to face, as well as being unique abilities to make use of.
Beginning with Wolverine, the game picks up on everyone's favorite Canadian as he duels Sabertooth on top the Statue of Liberty. Unlike the other two characters in the game, Wolverine has a fixed camera, rather than a freely roundtable one... It gives the game a God of War feel in the camera angles, though Wolverine is obviously no Kratos. Wolverine's healing factor is well represented in the game, but to activate it, he has to be standing still and not fighting. It’s balanced by the fact that Wolverine regenerates slowly, so don't expect to do a quick heal between thugs during a crowded fight. He fights much like you expect, with speedy claw-swipes and feral aggression being the order of the day.
We also got a chance to catch Wolverine fighting two bosses: Lady DeathStrike and Silver Samurai. Lady DeathStrike (who seems to have survived the events at the end of X-Men 2) has the same abilities as Wolverine, so the battle was filled with claw on claw action. This particular battle took place during a tornado, which made running around the arena trying to heal a challenge. The Silver Samurai wasn't nearly as active, but was far more powerful and instances in which Wolverine made a mistimed lunge for the throat resulted in Wolverine being sliced to ribbons by Samurai's giant No-Datchi. As such, the battle had a far more methodical feel to it, as players had to catch the Samurai out of position using Wolverine's quickness, and concentrate on quick hits rather than getting caught up in berserker combos.
Iceman looks and plays VERY differently. First off, he almost never touches the ground. Instead, he slides around on a path of ice, much like the Iceman of the comics. His stages can almost be considered an on rail shooter, but instead of bullets he uses ice beams. Iceman tends to control like a surfer, but we've seen more than our share of fancy air maneuvers to balance that. He did a quick 180 to avoid being shot, sped up to dodge laser blasts, and adjust his height in mid air to change the way he was fighting his enemy, a Giant Sentinel. His stages should be a fun departure from Wolverine's, but not as much fun as our last mutant.
NightCrawler rounds out the cast of heroes, and we are happy to report playing as him looks great. Much like Wolverine, he does a lot of his combat on close range. Unlike Wolverine, he lacks metal claws, so his fighting style relies more heavily on agility to be effective. NightCrawler's main power is teleportation, and this adds unique combat options not available to Wolverine or Iceman.
For example, if he is surrounded by bad guys, he can simply teleport behind one guy and attack him from behind. The sad part is that NightCrawler cannot simply teleport wherever he wishes. Instead, the teleport locals are viewable as he walks around, and with the press of a button he can teleport to the next one. There are a lot of teleport places in each stage, so it ALMOST looks like he can teleport anywhere at will. Considering that NightCrawler will not be in the third X-Men movie, we can only hope this game explains his absence.
To add to the credibility of this game, each of the X-Men in the game will be voiced by the same people who played them in the movie. That means the Wolverine will be voiced by Hugh Jackman, Iceman will be voiced by Shawn Ashmore, and NightCrawler will be voice by Alan Cumming. This stellar cast includes Patrick Stewart, who will be reprising his role as Professor Xavier.
So its looks like another attempt to make a good movie licensed game. We'll have more on X-Men: The Official Game when it hits stores this May.
November 20, 2009
