Reviewed by Megan Parker
Games based on movies have a reputation of being pretty bad. Critics talking about games based on movies have a reputation for saying that. There, now that we’ve covered the required comments, on to the actual important stuff.
This X-Men game, even though it’s supposed to be the official game of the movie is very loosely based in the movie (which is OK, because the movie is very loosely based in the comics). Most of what takes place is more as a separate story that intermingles with the story of the movie.
The three characters you play in the game are Wolverine/Logan, Bobby Drake/Iceman, and Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagner. If you’ve played the Lord of the Rings games that were based on the movies, the layout of the game is similar to that. The three characters have their own stories and missions. As the stories progress, you pick a path to go on. The problem with that is once you pick the path, it’s locked in until you finish the missions for that character. This can be a little aggravating if you ever get stuck anywhere. Instead of taking a break and playing a different character, you have to keep going to be able to access the others’ missions.
Each mission has a division in difficulties: novice, hero, and superhero. The level of difficulty of course is how hard the baddies are as well as how much of a reward you get by finishing the level. When you beat the mission you get a certain amount of mutations (depending on level of difficulty and how difficult the mission is itself). Mutations bring a slight RPG element to the game allowing you to change your specs, giving certain powers and abilities more effectiveness. Think of it as your “level up” system.
Sometimes two of the difficulty levels give you the same amount of mutations, which isn’t much inspiration to play the most difficult setting. The Hero setting is as it says, challenging for the average gamer and usually the best bet. Each level also has a minimum difficulty that you have to play to get a 100% rating on the level. The ratings are one of the two things that unlock bonus gameplay. The other is collecting five Sentinel Techs and a Weapon X File on most missions. Sometimes they’re pretty easy to find, but in some missions they are a little bit of a pain to gather up. Especially on Iceman’s missions where you’re more concerned with the clock counting down than anything else.
Iceman is definitely an interesting character to play. Unlike the other two characters, you spend your time in the air on a beam of ice (if you’re unfamiliar with the character, think of Frozone from Incredibles). All of Iceman’s missions are based around that specific use of his power. The missions tend to blur with repetitiveness after awhile, you seem to either be flying around putting out fires, freezing things or having a dogfight with various flying baddies. One mission is almost a reverse take on a certain X-Wing mission where you have to fly into a reactor to protect it, rather than blowing it up. Iceman is fun to play at first, but with the other two characters being a lot more fun to play, you tend to want to just finish with his and move on.
Wolverine is the next most interesting to play, but along with Iceman’s missions, there’s not a lot of variety. On the other hand, tearing through legions of baddies with Wolverine is a lot more entertaining. Wolverine of course, has his claws, healing factor and rage. You mostly fight a lot of HYDRA, which is a criminal organization in the comic books. They have various weapons that are actually annoyingly effective on Wolverine. Wolverine can take a lot of damage from bullets, but from the energy blades he can actually die pretty quickly if you’re not careful. As always, he can heal any wound, so as long as you’re outside of combat you can use your power to fully heal. Healing is done at a slower pace and is limited when you’re in combat. As you fight, you build up fury, which you can use to kill a lot of enemies very quickly and heal at the same time. It’s often a lifesaver in a tight spot.
Nightcrawler is by far the most fun character to play. He’s the most acrobatic of the three, using agility to his advantage. He also does some of the least damage, but there is compensation: teleportation. Or “bamfing”, if you really want to get into the lingo. If you’ve seen the second X-Men movie, think of the opening scene, but with you in control. You can port around like crazy, popping in behind the baddies and taking them by surprise. Honestly, it’s the most fun part about the entire game. Part of what Nightcrawler does is find alternate routes to get things, by piping, lighting and porting from place to place rather than just walking. Some of it reminds me a bit of Prince of Persia, where you have to jump around from small little posts and walls and things. It is a lot easier because you don’t have to guide your jumps as much. Plus, teleporting around is a lot easier than jumping.
The AI of the baddies isn’t too great, they will occasionally block you, but for the most part they are just fodder for you to tear through. The gameplay itself is actually very easy to intuit, but even if you need help there are plenty of hints to guide you through. Occasionally other X-Men help you, but they don’t offer much support. Probably the most helpful is Storm’s lightning attack that will take care of the surrounding baddies. Colossus is next to useless as a partner and seems to die faster than Nightcrawler.
The gameplay for all three characters can get a bit repetitive as the game goes on, though fortunately it isn’t that long of a game. Replayability of the game is pretty low, there are unlockables such as danger room scenarios and two other costumes for each character. I had hoped to have unlockable characters, but that seems like something they totally looked over. A multiplayer mode of any kind was overlooked, and considering it is about a team, it is something that should have been in the game.
The story itself isn’t anything to be applauded. It does loosely follow the movie and there is a nice bit of intermingling some of the comic book lore into the game. Overall the story is pretty inconsequential and the dialogue can be pretty bad. The scenes between levels are done through still images, almost as if they went for a comic feel, but it’s done more like a slide show than reading a comic. What was great was to hear the voices of a lot of the actual actors reprising their parts and doing a decent job of it. The sound effects and music are mostly taken from the movie and obviously work well.
The graphics are very good. They do a very good job of capturing the likenesses of the actors and the environments themselves are fantastic and pretty highly detailed. A lot of the environments are even interactable, such as freezing a fountain with Iceman or tearing through brush and fences with Wolverine.
So, is X-Men: The Official Game worth it? If you’re a big fan of the movies or comics, then it likely is. If you’re only a casual fan, it’s worth definitely at least a rental, if not a bargain bin buy in six months. The gameplay is very fun, especially as Nightcrawler but it does get to be repetitive after awhile. For a game based on a movie (which usually turns out in rushed and poorly done games), e Official Game is a fun play. It may not be game of the year, but it’s definitely worth playing.
Editor’s Note:
As there was no particular reason to write a separated review for X-Men 3 for the Xbox 360 (as to not fall into repetition), there are only a couple of things that should be noticed about this version of the game.
The first is a series of graphical bugs with Nightcrawler, where “bamfing” would cause you to be stuck behind invisible walls and floating above the ground. Where the character would get stuck was completely random, and extremely frustrating, since restarting was the only “fix”. NPCs had sometimes the same problem, being stuck in areas where they could be seen but couldn’t be reached, as they were behind invisible walls.
The other, by far a more positive aspect, is the ton of Achievements you can get, and if you complete all of them, there’s an extra one that adds another 50 points to your gamer score. Achievements greatly add to the game’s replay value on a 360.
Special thanks to Neil Wood, MacLean Marshall and Activision for providing a copy of this title.