X-Men: The Official Game

Seriously lacking 'X' appeal...

These days it seems only too common that a new big name movie is accompanied by a videogame, regularly scheduled to coincide with the week that the movie hits the cinema. With only a few exceptions these more often than not tend to do a real disservice to the film, and can sadly prove to be nothing more than a quick way for greedy developers to snatch money off unsuspecting fans, who are simply looking to relive the movie's best moments.

Unfortunately X-Men: The Official Game fails to stand out from the crowd, thanks to dull and unimaginative gameplay, a disjointed storyline that poses only a passing resemblance to that of the films, and below par graphics with more than just the odd bug popping up.

The three playable characters in X-Men: The Official Game are Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler, subsequently the story revolves purely around them. This serves as the first oddity, considering the fact that Nighcrawler does not make an appearance in the latest movie. The storyline appears to take place mainly between the second and third X-Men flicks but rarely seems memorable or particularly close to much of what happens in the film, which will be a major disappointment for fans looking to play through the movies greatest action scenes. The only positive that can be drawn from this is that the game won't spoil the film for people who missed it at the cinema.

Each of the three characters have different powers, strengths and ultimately styles of fighting enemies, which results in a variety of different level designs, thankfully giving the game some much needed variety. Wolverine unsurprisingly has his claws which he uses to slash up anyone foolish enough to stand in his path, sadly a lack of diversity in different attacks make for some rather dull beat' em up levels when playing as him. Nightcrawler's levels are arguably the most interesting of the game as he can teleport to pretty much anywhere in his visual range, this coupled with his fast and deadly acrobatic attacks can make for some relatively exciting and entertaining fighting scenes. Iceman constantly rides through the sky on an icy snowboard, and has the power to shoot an Ice Beam and Icy Projectiles towards enemies. His levels also involve navigating perilous traps and pitfalls, which occasionally has its high points but often fails to be as fun as it should be thanks to the tedious and repetitive mission objectives.

Graphically, X-Men: The Official Game is passable at best. The Xbox 360 version has been only minimally improved from current-gen adaptations and it really shows; even the menus look low res. However, what stands out for the biggest criticism in the graphics department has to be the bugs. On many occasions the enemies will look like they are stuck in the walls and sometimes disappear, only to then magically reappear at the other side of the room, which is something you really don't expect from a game with an RRP of 49.99 GBP. The basic character models and a few of the backgrounds look reasonably detailed, also the frame rate has seen a slight increase. However, despite some very minor graphical improvements nothing else has been done to upgrade the game for the Xbox 360. This makes the extra cost over current-gen versions something of a complete rip-off by comparison.

Surprisingly, one of the game's strengths is the voice acting from Hugh Jackman, Alan Cumming, and Shawn Ashmore. It works very well within the game, as does some of the music from the movie soundtrack, particularly the X-Men theme in the main menu. Other than that the in-game sounds are all rather typical, although they do the required job to a satisfactory level.

Unfortunately X-Men: The Official Game does very little to warrant a recommendation. Because of its fragmented storyline which regularly feels distant and out of touch with the X-Men movies it's also very difficult to commend it to hardcore fans, despite that probably being the developer's main target audience for the game. Players looking for a decent beat em up/ adventure game should definitely look elsewhere, while fans of the series looking for their X-Men gaming fix should put X-Men Legends along with its sequel X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, firmly on the list ahead of this, as X-Men: The Official Game offers nothing more than an average game inspired by a great movie.

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By Steven Embling