X-Men: The Official Game or X-Men: The Official Catastrophe?

Games based on films or other licenses are always risky business when it comes to gamers. More often than not the final product is generic, somehow uninspired, or just complete garbage not capitalizing on the source material to create a suburb gaming experience. Games based on Marvel comics have often been a cut above the rest, delivering solid gaming experiences such as many of the Spiderman games and the X-Men games. The X-Men franchise has lent itself to a large number of games over the years with most being truly great, such as the X-Men Legends series, and a few being forgettable mediocre outings such as X-Men: Next Dimension. Now with the release of the final film in the X-Men trilogy hitting theaters, Activision is delivering an all-new X-Men game, X-Men: The Official Game. Is this new mutant outing yet another X-Men gaming hit, or yet another waste of store shelf space? Read on to find out.

Features:

• 3 playable characters


• 28 levels of play


• Takes place after X-Men 2 and before X-Men: The Last Stand


• Upgradeable character abilities


• Unlock special features

Story
Have you wondered why the game is called X-Men: The Official Game and not X-Men: The Last Stand? Well the reason for this is the fact the game is not based on the new film but instead is a sequel to X2 and a prequel to X-Men: The Last Stand. Essentially X-Men 2.5, the game bridges the gap between the two films and prepares audiences for the final film in the trilogy. Activision and Z-Axis should be commended for taking this route instead of just sending gamers through the same scenes in the film and actually ruining the new film for anyone who buys the game prior to seeing the movie.

While the developer should be commended for that decision, unfortunately they can’t be commended for how their final product turned out. But before getting into that since this is the story section of the review, let’s finish that topic. Players will not be pushed through the game through the use of well done highly cinematic cut-scenes and FMV’s like most film based games, instead they will take a trip down the N64 memory lane and be told the story through the use of slightly animated, albeit detailed, still frames with special effects overlays. Impressive? A great way to tell the story of a game connected to a film? No, not really. If you are a fan of graphic novels and comic book presentations then you might like it, but overall it just falls short.

Gameplay
You know you have made the wrong decision buying a title when after a few levels you find yourself somehow bored despite the fact you are playing a game. The gameplay is hollow, the presentation bland, the levels incredibly linear, and the A.I. archaic to say the least. With X-Men: The Official Game (to be called XOG for the remainder of this review) you will unfortunately be more than likely to find yourself having this harsh realization. What could have been an incredible game with fresh and exciting multi-character gameplay with a deep fighting system and imaginative level design is instead none of these. Essentially a bare-bones beat’em up title with a shiny gloss of paint, XOG could have been so much more if more time had been spent fleshing out what is in the game.



Gamers will take control of three different X-Men throughout the game: Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler, with each having its own levels built around their abilities. What is great about this setup and something that was a very right decision made by the developer is that by having the player take control of these different characters it does break the title up a bit, provide a lot more variety in fighting styles, and basically make the game a bit more enjoyable. Even better is that each character has its own distinct feel and abilities. For example, Wolverine is all about brute force, hand-to-hand combat, and so his levels feature open areas with wave after wave of enemies for him to rip to shreds. Iceman’s levels find him always in air gliding along on ice using his hailstorm and ice beam attacks to destroy airborne objects. Nightcrawlers levels are all about acrobatic movements and fighting, and so his levels are designed to take full advantage of this allowing him to cling onto walls, rails, and other objects. While all three characters are fun to play as and each has its strong points, they will all leave you feeling as though their abilities and their levels could have been so much more, in turn leaving you wanting more. Each character has a very limited amount of moves and abilities, none of which can really be upgraded or expanded upon. On that note, the end of each stage lets you upgrade your character but will only to give you more accurate control, greater health, etc. Of the three, Nightcrawler oddly enough is the most enjoyable to play due to Z-Axis’ allowing his teleportation abilities to be incorporated into his fighting moves, providing a much deeper fighting system. This is great and all but it leaves you wishing more thought had been put into Wolverine and Iceman’s fighting systems.