  Slicing and dicing, Wolvie style.
|
When I first saw the commercials for Activision's X-Men: The Official Game, I have to admit I was intrigued. It looked like it would be quite exhilarating. Unfortunately, I was in for a big disappointment.
I've always been a half-hearted X-Men fan. I was never much into team comics as a kid, I think the films are sub-par and when it comes to animalistic regenerative super-powered predatory beings, I would take Lobo over Wolverine any day. (He'd so wipe the floor with Logan if it came to it, despite what that stupid Marvel-D.C. crossover would have you believe. And yeah yeah, I know Wolverine's skeletal structure is made of adamantium, the strongest substance on Earth. But Lobo once beat up Superman. Are you honestly trying to tell me Wolverine could do that without having his little claws break off?)
I watched the cartoon from the '90s and have played a number of the X-Men games over the years. So when I first saw the commercials for Activision's X-Men: The Official Game, I have to admit I was intrigued. It looked like it would be quite exhilarating. Unfortunately, I was in for a big disappointment.
Although not extremely terrible, the game feels like it has been rushed to come out in tandem with the new film, X-Men: The Last Stand. The cut scenes are somewhat artistic in their construction, incorporating graphic design with photography as the main characters faces are taken from their film counterparts. Actors Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Alan Cumming, Shawn Ashmore even reprise their roles from the X-Men films. (Although a small part, Dwight Schultz, best known as Murdock from the A-Team and Barclay from Star Trek: The Next Generation does a reasonably good Ian McKellen impression as Magneto. Oddly, the game developers were able to use McKellen's image for the character.)
But the animation has all the sophistication of an episode of Max the 2000-Year-Old Mouse. When the characters walk around, they usually look like cardboard cutouts sliding across the screen. And the camera often zooms in and out of static images to give the impression of movement. The mouths don't even open and close when they are talking. It all just screams of laziness.
The gameplay is rather limiting as well. Despite the numerous characters Activision could have provided, you can only play as Wolverine, Nightcrawler or Iceman and you don't have the option of when you play them.
The characters do offer three distinct playing styles: As Wolverine, your missions are usually ones of endurance. Like in a scrolling fighter, you fight a ridiculously large onslaught of enemies and you have to survive until the very end. Then you fight various bosses, such as Lady Deathstrike and Sabretooth. As Nightcrawler, with his mutant powers and agility, the missions are far more like a Tomb Raider game as you jump around and teleport to various places to complete various objectives. As Bobby Drake, you ice surf around, spending most of your time chasing down Pyro and Sentinels in time challenges. (By completing missions you gain skill points. You can also unlock training missions and playable costumes.)
So even though the X-Men are technically a team, there is no multiplayer option and most of the missions are solo. From a story perspective, this make sense for the loner Logan, but typically the X-Men go out in a group. Occasionally in the game, Storm or Colossus back you up. Storm is useful as you can activate her lightning attacks if you get swarmed by enemies, but Colossus is a tool. When he follows Nightcrawler around, he spends most of his time complaining about what he can't do. He can't get through the security door, so you have to find a control panel to let him in. He can't destroy the generators he's supposed to, because the shield surrounding them is “impervious” to him, so you have to find a way to turn them off. And when he's attacked, he complains his armour doesn't work against the enemies' weapons. Doesn't work? My God, this is Colossus! He can turn himself into solid steel. Unless he's fighting Magneto, or some kind of mutant that can shoot metal corroding agents out of his hands, his armour really should withstand the attacks. Thankfully, you can choose the difficulty level for each mission individually as I had to lower just so the idiot wouldn't die on me.
Similarly, for almost all of Iceman's missions, I had to choose the easiest level, just so I wouldn't run out of time while I was playing. He is almost impossible to control as you have to surf at top speed to shoot down all the enemies. And for the most part, his missions are boring and repetitive.
In fact, much of the game is quite repetitive. Although playing as Wolverine and Nightcrawler is more fun, in the end, even their missions eventually become monotonous. The game definitely could have benefited from more mutants.
Personally, I've always been partial to Rogue, not just because she could steal other mutants' powers, but because of her ability to fly and her super strength. I mean, she can rip trees out of the ground and bat people with them. That's just plain hot! But to be fair, these X-Men are taken from the movies and not the comics, and so her backstory with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is ignored and so she never stole Ms. Marvel's superpowers. As cute as Anna Paquin is, the movie Rogue is pretty lame.
But certainly adding Storm and Colossus as playable characters would have added to the enjoyment of the game. And I get that Jean Grey's temporarily out of the pictures but I find it quite odd that the X-Men's team leader, Cyclops is left out of the mix. And where are Beast, Angel, Shadowcat and Dazzler? They certainly could have made the game more enjoyable. Well okay, maybe not Dazzler because disco sucks, but you get what I'm saying.
WHAM! Rating: |
6.8 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
T (Teen) |
Official Web Site: |
|
|
