X-Men: The Official Game

One of the most commonly know facts to all gamers everywhere is that movie-to-video-game translations are normally pretty bad. This trend is beginning to change with the release several very good and high-quality games released over the past few years. The sad thing is that overall, the trend is still continuing and has claimed its latest victim with X-Men: The Official Game. Read on to find out more about this game.

X-Men: The Official Game takes place in between the events of the second and third movies. This game will give players the answer to why Nightcrawler is not featured in the third movie as well as why the X-Men must go back to the place where Jean Grey sacrificed her life so her teammates could live. So now you must go back to explore the place and pick up clues, which leads you into something unexpected. The only way to know what happens is to play the game. Are you up for the challenge?

One thing that the game tries to do is mix things up since you will be playing as three different characters with three distinct styles of play. The first is the highly popular mutant with an Adamantium-laced skeleton: Wolverine. The biggest problem with him is that they pull every single cliche that has ever been in a video game with him. This means that every time that you play as him you will not do anything other then stab people, go to a corner to heal, get your rage meter up to do a big attack and repeat. The developers didn’t go into the comic books and find some of the more subtle traits that this character has to offer which is such a shame.

Next up are the Iceman missions, which plays completely different. Bobby Drake is constantly riding his patented ice slide as you go through the levels, which is a very nice break from the Wolverine levels. The problem is that you will be doing a lot of long-distance firing at enemies and the controls are not refined enough to let you do this accurately without messing something up. This puts a real damper on his missions. Then you have to combine that with the fact that both Wolverine and Iceman’s missions are extremely repetitive, which makes it even worse.

Last but not least are my favorite missions with Nightcrawler. Players will be able to tell that the developers seem to put the most time and energy into his missions. Having the ability to teleport to places really helps plays out, especially when you are facing a large amount of enemies on all sides. You can teleport behind them and ambush them that makes for a real fun time!

One thing that the developers did right with the game is the boss battles. The boss battles from this game really prevent this game from getting a super low score. One of my favorite battles is Iceman verse Pyro, it was a great battle with the master of ice versus fire. You will be fighting against a huge dragon fire creation, avoiding him and yet trying to find the right time to strike back. The only thing that hampers the enjoyment of these battles is control work is not that tight, but other then that, these battles that you will fight in are really great!

The graphics for the X-Men: The Official Game are both good and bad. First off, the developers did a really good job of making all of the characters look just like their real-life counterparts. The game levels also have a very nice look and feel to it but after this the game starts to cut short. Everything else suffers because the enemies you fight don’t really have the same level of detail on them as the rest of your posse. The cutscenes in the game have a “comic book” look that is annoying at first, but the deeper in the game you go you begin to enjoy them.

The sound for this game is a mixed bag. First of all the developers were able to wrangle up all of the actors who portrayed there characters in the movie to do the voices for those characters in the game. So that means that you will get to hear Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, and many others, that give the characters that extra “umph” of believability. What is sad is that even though there is strong voice actors the dialog for the game is somewhat under par for what it should have been. Next up is the sound effects that are very under-utilized and sound very generic and somewhat pathetic. Now combine that with the very lackluster music and you have something that sounded so good, but just fell over and gave up. It is such a shame that this has happened with this game.

If you are a fan of collecting and getting extras in your games, then you will like what this game has to offer. Hidden thoughtout each level you can find various collectables, unlockable costumes, and various missions that will help increase the games replay value. Also if you want to make your character more powerful you can play through it multiple times to get all of the upgrades available to you.

X-Men: The Official Game is rated Teen for violence. It will take up to 2 blocks on your memory card for game saves.

Gameplay: 5.5
This is the game that should have been much more then it was. It appears that this game was rushed in order to get out on time, which is sad because it has so much potential that is hampered by shoddy controls, non inspired levels, and shoddy AI.

Graphics: 5.6
Just like everything else in the game, the graphics get the job done without adding any extra “umph.” The main characters and a few of the levels have a new set of details but everything else suffers.

Sound: 5.1
The good thing is that the developers got all of the actors to voice-over their specific characters. The bad news is that the dialog, music, and sound effects are really poorly done.

Difficulty: Easy
This game is overly easy, even on the hardest setting, and that is thanks to the non intelligent AI that this game has.

Concept: 5.2
I really like the unique Iceman and Nightcrawler missions, but the game didn’t really exploit it well enough.

Overall: 5.4
The developers of this game can do much better than what was produced here. Everything about this game feels like it was under-utilized and rushed out before it was completely ready. It is sad because this game had the potential to be much more then it is.