Set in-between the events of the second and recently released third X-Men film X-Men: The Official Game tries to bring something a little different to a genre that is always accompanied by sighs and disappointment: Film tie-ins!
The game plays as an arcade third person beat ‘em up, progressing through the story via three X-Men this time: Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Iceman. Last time when X2 was out Wolverine was cool enough to have his own game but now you can see why they brought in two other characters; he just can’t cut it anymore! Wolverine’s repertoire of attacks will amaze only Dynasty Warriors fans as you can only bash three buttons together (quick and heavy attack and also push) to create wholly random and totally boring combos that leave your thumb red and patience worn thin after the first level.
The other two characters however are something a little different from the standard beat-em-up fare and offer a new dynamic to the gameplay. Iceman moves around levels on a platform of ice he creates in front of himself, pretty much like a surfer. At first it’s quite fun; he moves smoothly around the level and freezing stuff with ice beats slashing stuff all the time! Unfortunately that’s about all he does: skate around and freeze stuff using either a beam or some kind of “ice mortar”, maybe chasing something or trying to get away from something if you’re lucky…
The best character has to be Nightcrawler, whose levels are a mix of simple platforming and beat ‘em up, made different by his ability to teleport short distances. This means that although Nightcrawler can’t pack much punch he can teleport around an enemy to attack from behind (no jokes, kids) or unseen from the front. This also is a fresh break from the mediocre Wolverine sections but after a while shows its shallowness as all you ever seem to do, especially in the big fights, is to press L1 to target and then O to teleport behind them and attack. Through all the variety of the new characters they are let down by the lack of depth or development past the first ten minutes of gameplay.
And if you thought the X-Men were simple characters you haven’t seen the enemy AI yet! They range from brainless moron with a gun to brainless moron with a giant tazer! If you think they’re too easy then fear not as the further you progress in the game the more of these worthless peons the game throws at you, hoping that you’ll have so many around you that you’re constantly blocking and trying to break through their barrage of basic attacks! The boss levels are just as simplistic and you’ll find out the secret to killing them after about thirty seconds. The game however requires that you go through the motions of damage, recoil, kill little monsters, damage and repeat, making up for the lack of skill required by making it an endurance effort - Iceman’s first boss took Fifteen minutes to take down! Note to developers - if something is too easy don’t just throw twenty of them at me, make them harder dammit!
X-Men: The Official Game has the feel of a movie tie-in: the menus all look accurate, they’ve got some locations from the film and some of the original voices are there but it also carries the hallmarks of a standard tie-in too. The game feels very rushed and average, with a simple and fun gameplay system set up but not built upon, with heroes that are unsatisfying to play as and enemies that don’t provide an addictive or worthy challenge. The camera is awful and is either fixed in the wrong place or rotates whenever it feels like it – seemingly always away from the bloody action!
Once again what was a promising game is ruined by rushed development to coincide with the movie premiere. Maybe someday they’ll start making the tie-ins while the film is in pre-production, at least then by the time it’s released we’ll have something of value rather than wasted potential and another shameless cash-in…
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