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X-Men: The Official Game Review

Jon Wilcox

24/05/2006

With Brett Ratner's debut X movie set for release soon, TVG gets a chance to once again stretch our mutant muscles...

X-Men videogames have, in most circumstances, failed to live up to expectations, even when those expectations weren't particularly high in the first place (we're looking at you Wolverine's Revenge and X-Men: The Next Dimension.) Usually dropping Marvel's band of mutants into a generic gaming genre and hoping that fans of the series won't notice the sheer blandness and mediocrity, developers have rarely managed to make the likes of Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean-Grey stand on their own in a videogame environment.

Arguably the most successful attempts to bring the Charles Xavier's mutants to consoles have been Activision and Raven Software's X-Men: Legends franchise, which allow the characters a chance to develop thanks to its action-RPG features. Now the publisher (and the five development studios that have worked on the seven platform versions) are bringing the group back just in time for Brett Ratner's X-Men 3: The Last Stand movie. Set between the second movie and Ratner's third instalment, X-Men: The Official Game (a stunningly catchy title if ever we heard one) see players control three of the X-Men, Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler, as they take part in a series of events in the build up to the forthcoming film.

Each of the three mutants have their own unique powers, Nightcrawler has his stealth and teleporting, Iceman has his ice slide and other freezing abilities, and Wolverine has sharp claws and a bad attitude. As such the twenty-eight missions that make up the Campaign mode of the game have been designed to tailor to each of the three's unique abilities. A linear structure, players follow an event from for example Wolverine's point of view, before going back to play through what the other two mutants were experiencing at the same time period. As progress is made through the campaign, players will also unlock new standalone missions based in the infamous X-Mansion Danger Room, such as a checkpoint challenge for Iceman.

Following a very traditional structure of mission, checkpoint, and on several occasions, boss battles (against amongst others Lady Deathstrike and a number of Sentinels), there're very few surprises in X-Men: The Official Game. That said, there are times in the game when it seems to gather some sort of momentum, most notably during a chase sequence as Iceman as he races through tunnels in a Nuclear Reactor to stop one-time friend Pyro from causing a major incident. Outmanoeuvring Pyro's firebirds and the various security obstacles does create a sense of excitement, one of the few occasions when such an emotion is actually generated, and replicates the feeling of being Iceman in a similar way to when the player controls Nightcrawler - by far one of the most successful elements in the game.

The reproduction of Nightcrawler's teleporting and attacking abilities, which were shown off to great effect in the second X-Men movie, is nothing short of perfect. The sequence, to recap, saw the blue skinned character teleport and attack his way through the corridors of the White House and into the Oval Office itself. There's no doubt that Z-Axis (who've developed the Xbox 360, Xbox, and PlayStation2 versions of X-Men: The Official Game) paid attention to the sequence, it's just a question of how many hundreds of times given their accuracy in replicating the fighting style. Such accuracy has been attained in two areas, the visuals that feature the puff of blue smoke seen in the movie, and the control system that allows players to quickly jump around the environment and attack enemies before teleporting back out again.

Out of the three, it's ironically Wolverine who's the most mediocre and standard to play. Arguably the most popular member of the X-Men, the character is once again reduced to clichéd attack abilities that are occasionally and temporarily expanded upon thanks to the Rage meter, which builds when Logan attacks or is attacked. Pressing a single button when the meter is full allows the character to literally see red mist as an onslaught of slashes and vicious swipes rain on his enemies, and also allows him to regenerate some of his health. Unlike the other two characters, who have to wait for a meter to fill, players can also improve Wolverine's health status on demand, coming particularly handy following an ambush from enemy soldiers.

At the end of missions players get the chance to continue the mutations of the three characters, a simple level of character development split across five distinct (and mutant specific) areas. For instance, Wolverine can improve his healing rates and strength, Iceman can improve the accuracy of his hailstorm missile attack and balance on the ice slide, and Nightcrawler can increase the power of his jump attacks and teleporting 'Relocation' attacks. The number of upgrades that can be made at a time is dependent on the difficulty of the completed mission and whether a player has picked up a certain number of special items, with a maximum of four alterations. Pointed out on a number of occasions through the game, is the fact that players can always win more upgrade points by returning to a completed mission on a more difficult setting. The disappointing thing is that it's also the only way that the longevity of the title can be further expanded.

For most of the game the three X-Men take the battle to the Brotherhood of Mutants in solitude, however there are occasions when NPC X-Men such as Colossus and Storm help out. In one mission Wolverine has to destroy electrical transformers that power an incomplete Sentinel, and relies on Storm to remove some of the excess power from the machine. In this instance, players will have a limited amount of control over Storm and can command her to unleash lightning bolts that kill off any enemies in a room.

There are some frustrating times to be had whilst playing X-Men: The Official Game, and though its mediocrity is something that can just about be coped with (unless you've forked out fifty pounds for the Xbox 360 version), the majority of these are to do with the choppy nature of the checkpoint system. Despite some missions being quite short in comparison to others, X-Men: The Official Game does have a habit of adding more challenging objectives towards the end of them. More often than not player will find themselves getting the good old 'Game Over' message before having to redo the mission again, wasting time on easier sections before returning to the scene of their previous demise.

As with so many movie tie-ins and licences, X-Men: The Official Game features a number of the actors from the franchise including Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Alan Cumming, and Shawn Ashmore, reprise their roles as Wolverine, Professor Charles Xavier, Nightcrawler, and Iceman respectively. Others including Halle Berry's Storm lend their likenesses to the cutscenes, which further strengthen the link between the game and the movie franchise, together with the music theme. Such additions are close to obligatory in movie licenses these days, and so meet the minimum of expectations.

We played X-Men: The Official Game on Xbox 360, which probably put it at a bit of a disadvantage given the high expectations for jaw-dropping graphics and/or gameplay in the next-generation. Unfortunately X-Men falls flat on both accounts, especially the graphics, which have been given that extra bit of gloss compared to the current-gen visuals, putting it squarely in the realm of the Xbox 1.5 category of Xbox 360 games. In addition, the fact that each of the three characters have their own camera systems, the result being that players can pan 360 degrees as Nightcrawler but have narrow fields of vision as Wolverine reflects the nature of the different characters but can be frustrating at times, especially during the Wolverine sections.