X-Men: The Official Game Xbox 360

X-Men: The Official Game Xbox 360

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Nov 1, 2006 | 1 out of 2 found this X-Men: The Official Game review helpful

Pros: Three unique, playable X-Men; some key celebrity voice talent; a few nice visual touches.

Cons: Brain-dead beat-'em-up gameplay with no enjoyable combos or special moves; lousy cutscene work; disjointed, poorly presented storyline; a number of irritating bugs and glitches; 360 version's graphics are decidedly underwhelming.

By centering on these three characters and setting up the mission structure as the game does, you're left with a fairly disjointed sense of where the story is going. For instance, early on in the game, all three characters go through quick training sequences to get you familiar with how they work. The next mission is a return to Alkali Lake (the site of Jean Grey's tragic demise at the end of the second film) to recapture parts of the Cerebro machine taken by General Stryker. You start off as Nightcrawler, and are given the option later on to play either as Wolverine or Nightcrawler for another section. Once you've made your pick, you're stuck with that character for the duration of his missions during this chapter (which can go up to around three or four in a row, at times). Only after you've completed it can you switch over to the other available character. Not to mention that Iceman just disappears during this whole section and we don't join up with him until significantly later, in a completely new scenario that's given next to no plot exposition. It's not that a game of this type has to be some kind of brilliant work of fiction to succeed, but X-Men tells its story in such a perplexing and disconcerting way that it's difficult to care much about what's going on.

Each of the three playable characters fights a little differently from the other. Wolverine obviously has his Adamantium claws, as well as a rage ability that gives him some particularly brutal moves; Nightcrawler can teleport to any area within his visual range, as well as use his teleporting abilities in combat to pull off more acrobatic moves and transport himself to a "shadow realm" to regenerate his health (an ability we're not sure he ever had before this game); and finally, Iceman perpetually rides on an icy surfboard, flying through the air while shooting his ice beam and ice projectiles, and inexplicably regenerating his health (an ability we're positive he didn't have before this game). The Iceman missions are almost more like rail shooters, since you're near-constantly in motion, floating about various areas and sometimes navigating perilous traps and pitfalls--and for that matter, the Iceman missions are probably the most interesting part of the game, if only in comparison to the utterly dull Nightcrawler and Wolverine segments.