Usually, video games for movies are fairly anti-climactic. I’m not talking about “genre” games, like Star Wars: Empire at War or 007: Agent Under Fire, but the “official game of the movie”. You know how the movie/game begins and ends; you know the role you play, and how to play it. This usually leads to a fairly mundane gaming experience, even in the most graphically appealing movie games. Sadly, the fact that X-Men: The Official Game doesn’t follow the path of the movie plot doesn’t stop it from being boring.
In X-Men: The Official Game, you’re essentially playing X-Men 2 ¾ . The game serves as a loose lead-in to the 3rd movie, revisiting locations from earlier movies in the series, as well as a few locations seen in the 3rd installment of the series. The action centers on Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler, who serve as the only 3 player controllable X-Men in the game.
One can only surmise that making only 3 of the X-Men playable is attributed to the short timetable in which the game was developed. One point where the game stands out is the different experience when using each of the characters.
Wolverine, as undoubtedly the most popular of the X-Men is seen as a required component of any X-Men title. As the X-Men are a group of mutants committed to non-violent activism, Wolverines snarling façade gives the developers the necessary outlet for sarcasm and darkness in a playable character. His character is the “tank” of the 3 playables, slashing and bashing his way through endless hordes of enemies. When you’ve cut your way through enough of the teeming masses of baddies standing in Wolverines way, you can engage his “fury” attack, which allows for special attacks that mete out additional damage while healing at a slightly increased rate. In this game, Wolverine acts as little more than a puncher, and with his more interesting attacks available only for short bursts, playing as Wolverine becomes monotonous. (Some of this has to do more with level design than the character itself, but I’ll get to that in a bit.)
The second playable character, Iceman, serves as an interesting departure from playing as Wolverine. As any comic fan knows, Iceman’s abilities stem from his ability to produce ice directly from his body. He uses this ice to protect himself, attack enemies, and most importantly, travel. One such ability clearly added to the game for playability sake, is Iceman’s ability to regenerate health (not a power he has ever possessed in the comics or movies). Playing as Iceman is easily the most exciting part of the game. As Iceman, you are constantly in motion on the ice slide, firing bursts or steams of ice at enemies and targets, and defending yourself with an ice shield. The constant motion, along with the ability to occupy nearly any open space in the level with his ice slide makes playing as Iceman relatively entertaining.
The experience of playing as the final playable character, Nightcrawler, is a mix of the two other characters. Nightcrawler is a character with the ability to teleport to nearly any location visible to the player (within a certain range). In addition, the player can use this teleport power while targeting an enemy to “teleport attack”, appearing behind the enemy and using a combo attack of punches or kicks to neutralize them. This attack is extremely useful, as Nightcrawler is not built to take a lot of damage. He also has the ability to transport to a “shadow realm” to regenerate his health (an ability I am fairly sure the character does not have outside of this game). Nightcraw...