X-Men: The Official Game
While the Spidey series has found its niche the rest of the comic book world seems to get lost in the back issues. How many sub-par superhero games do we have to trudge through every year? Marvel Nemesis, Fantastic Four, most of the Batman games and now the latest X-Men adventure leave much to be desired. I understand that it's nothing more than a marketing plug to squeeze some extra cash out of the movie franchise, but after experiencing the greatness of the X-Men Legends series I have to admit that I was cautiously optimistic.
Fortunately instead of just mimicking the theatrical experience this movie-based game actually tries something different. I was half expecting to fight my way through the same story that I had just seen on the big screen, but that wasn't the case. This adventure takes place in between the second film and the third. I'm not going to spoil anything for you but if you're wondering why (my personal favorite character) Nightcrawler was nowhere to be seen you'll find your answers here. You'll also see some familiar faces pop in from time to time, but there's nothing too earth shattering.
Gameplay:
Do you remember action games of old where you could just sit there and hordes of enemy soldiers would come at you? And you're ultimate weapon was the indestructibility of your warrior and your ability to press the X button? Most games have evolved past that archaic design but X3: The Official Game seems to want to prove the old saying is true, "everything old is new."
The problem comes from the obnoxiously repetitive gameplay, terrible AI, and the over simplicity of control. You'll often get through a stage with doing little more than bashing a couple of buttons as a never ending supply of enemies gets shoved your way. They never really put up a fight and even the bosses follow simplistic patterns that are easy to avoid. To top it all off each character that you can play as has the ability to heal wounds so even more of the difficulty is stripped.
You get to play as three different X-Men and they each control differently for the most part. Now, being the comic geek that I am I'm always excited about going "snikt" with Wolverine and understand the upfront brutish nature of his character, but the lack of thought put into his portions really bring this game down. The combo system available for him is paltry at best and the designers didn't take much consideration into exploring some of this other abilities. Playing as Wolvie leads to just balls-out hack n' slash that gets old really fast.
Iceman plays differently in the sense that he rides around on his ice stream and throws snowballs at things. He controls pretty well though I'd compare his maneuvering to Spider-Man's swinging in his games. It's easy enough to make him move but sometimes cornering can be a real bitch. The fact that you are constantly bombarded with wave after wave of enemies and fires to put out doesn't help matters much either.
Nightcrawler was easily the best to play as, though the experience wasn't enough to save this game from mediocrity. His teleporting and acrobatic abilities added to some strategy and quite a lot of fun. Getting the drop on a guard or running along a wall showed promise that Nightcrawler could most likely excel at his own game. Unfortunately in this title he gets drowned out by the rest of the lazy game design.
Playing through each stage not only rewards you with boredom of some degree, but also gives you the ability to lightly customize your characters. Don't get too excited just yet though. You can't actually do that much in the grand scheme of things. For the most part you can increase stuff like strength, healing ability, but adding new combos or techniques is sadly not possible. Exploration and tinkering with this feature could have been cool if the developers sought to make it that way. In the end it's just a useless mechanic that doesn't add anything to the gameplay.
X3: The Official Game is unfortunately just another pointless exercise in tipping the cash cow. If the game had incorporated more combat depth, the ability to change between characters, or featured a more involved upgrade system things could have been much different. As it stands though this one falls into the disappointing superhero game category and deserves little attention. Go play X-Men Legends if you want to experience what the mutant franchise is all about.
Graphics:
This game might as well have been called X3: Attack of the Clones. As is the case with most low budgeted action titles this one in particular tosses repetitive enemies at you left and right. To make matters worse the environments are dull beyond belief and offer limited features to separate them apart from some other levels. The main character models are decent enough and feature some fine detail but lazy design strikes again thanks to severely limited animations. The only personality to be found in the visual department of this game is in the comic book inspired cut scenes. The images are done with the likeness of the film's actors and move about like a Flash-based comic. Unfortunately the gameplay doesn't really make it worth getting from one scene to the next.
Audio:
One of the biggest hurdles for a movie tie-in is landing the participation of the actors from said material. Luckily for this game the big names all stepped into the sound booth and slipped into their X-suits one more time. The performances are decent but to be fair the dialogue isn't the greatest and the script is relatively weak. The voice acting is head and shoulders above the blah sound effects and crappy music though. At the end of the day the audio rounds out to average at best.
Conclusion:
If you absolutely and positively must play as Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Iceman then you may want to just dress up for Halloween. You might have a better time doing that and in the end you'll wind up with a bag full of candy. I knew going in that this game was tied into the movie so I had my suspicions about the experience that awaited me. Unfortunately my suspicious nature proved to be true in this case because everything leaves something to be desired here.
The gameplay is mediocre with a dash of repetitiveness and restrictiveness thrown in for flavor. The graphics feature glitches, dull textures and a certain lack of creativity in design. The sound is all over the map with fine voice acting but terrible sound effects and music. Overall this game feels like wasted effort and squandered potential. Put Nightcrawler in his own game with a Prince of Persia-esque control scheme and you'll have a hit. Until then you can go on living without playing this one.