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Pitiful Attempt

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 23
Date: May 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I really enjoyed the last few X-men games and was highly anticipating finally being able to play one on the 360. What a waste of money. While game play graphics are passable, transition, intro and cut scenes are terrible. Heck they aren't even animated. In fact the cut scenes look like they were developed with Flash and their quality is surpassed by South Park.

In terms of game play, you are restricted to three playable characters and mission based scenarios. Wolverine is straight button mashing hack and slash, Iceman is basic aerial navigation and shot lineup and Nightcrawler plays like the Prince of Persia's retarded cousin.

Save your money and if you really feel the need to spend some time with an awful video game, go dig up a copy of ET from the Atari 2800 land fill.

Poor Quality Cash-In

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: May 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Not always is a game based off a movie bad. There really are some good ones out there. However, there are some that truly are bad and should be avoided. X-Men: The Offical Game is that game. The game overall is pretty poor. The developers didn't seem to take it seriously. The game is meant to connect The second X-Men movie with the third one. Unfortunately, the game just reeks of bad quality. Perhaps if it had spent more time in development, the game could've been good. Instead it's rather bland.

The game begins with a training mission with each character. This is simply to get you adjusted to the gameplay mechanics. Later on you'll come to see these training missions are just a waste of time. Playing the game is already simple as can be. Afterwards, you go back to Alkali Lake as Nightcrawler and recover parts of Cerebro. Afterwards you'll be given a choice between which scenario you want.

Throughout the entire game you'll only get to play as three characters. Wolverine, Iceman or Nightcrawler. Each of them have their own abilities, and their own scenarios. Once you pick one character, you're stuck with them until their scenario is over. You won't really run into the other playable characters a lot, though. Neither are the scenarios very hard or exciting.

X-Men is pretty much a simple beat 'em up game, with little bits and pieces of story thrown in for good measure. The story isn't really impressive, though. It's hard to follow, and the game doesn't put an emphasis on it. What voice acting there is isn't so bad. At least the voices that come from the stars of the film. You'll recognize them instantly. Those who aren't voiced by celebrities don't sound all that great. The story also unfolds mostly through storyboards rather than cinematics.

But what emphasis there is on gameplay is simplistic and mediocre. All you've got to do is beat people up. You might have to open a door or something, but that's about it. It isn't that the game is a beat 'em up that frustrates me. It's that there's nothing more to it than button mashing. And there aren't a lot of combos to perform either. As I said, it's simplistic.

Outside of beating up your enemies, you may have to telport as Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler does have a healing ability, and so does Iceman, but I'm quite sure they didn't have one before. Iceman's levels are a little more interesting than the others, seeing as how his are constantly moving along. The bulk of the game, however, is simply beating up your enemies. And as I mentioned, there isn't a whole lot of variety to beating them up.

There are moments when the game can be hard. Well, frustrating actually. The game doesn't provide a lot of difficulty, but it does provide you with having to charge at your enemies head on to--you guessed it--beat them up. You'll have to run through bullets to get to most of them, and that can be a little annoying.

Boss fights aren't really exciting either. Those consist of you performing a simple little dash and hit sort of pattern most of the time. They have predictable patterns and don't really do a whole lot to get you. Again, this makes the game rather easy.

Where the game really hits a low point are the graphics. There are some glitches that might make you question the graphics. For example, you can knock an enemy into a wall and they'll get stuck there, unable to get out of it, and unable to damage you. Sometimes enemies will pop up out of no where and there's no explanation. If these sorts of things only happened once or twice, I wouldn't mind. But they don't. They happen numerous times and constantly. I wish I could say the game looks good, but for the XBOX360 it looks rather lame. It's a bit more colorful than the regular XBOX version, but it looks disturbingly identical in all respects. So if you've got the regular XBOX, it really isn't all that different.

It's also rather annoying that the character selection is only limited to three characters. There could've been more characters than just Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Iceman. They each play a little differently, but they're the only three characters. That's rather disappointing.

This is nothing more than a Cash Cow game. It's nothing but a beat 'em up game with little variety. If it had spent more time in development, it probably would've been a better experience overall. There are better games out there. Ones with a bit more quality than this. I can't recommend this one. Not at all.

Jameson Thottam a Marvel Fan...but not of this

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: June 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Jameson Thottam a Marvel Fan...but not of this

The lousy movie-licensed game genre claims another victim in X-Men: The Official Game. Based loosely in-between the stories of the second and third films, X-Men is a completely unremarkable beat-'em-up (with a few boilerplate shooter elements tossed into the mix) that feels just haphazard enough to likely have been rushed through development to get it onto store shelves ahead of the film. It's not that it's entirely broken, mind you, but X-Men's missions are entirely generic and devoid of captivating content, and there are enough annoying little glitches and other obnoxious things prevalent throughout to give the game that thrown-together feel.

The X-Men are back! Jameson Thottam
Well...a select few of them, anyway.
X-Men seems to follow the basic plot concepts of the X-Men movies, but it centers its focus around three of the heroes: Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Iceman. Whether this was a deliberate choice, or a direct response to which of the film's actors Activision could actually get to reprise their roles for the game (Hugh Jackman, Alan Cumming, and Shawn Ashmore are indeed in the game), we'll likely never know, but Nightcrawler's inclusion is specifcally to explain why he's not in the new movie. For what it's worth, Jackman, Cumming, and Ashmore all do serviceable jobs voicing the characters, as does Patrick Stewart, who returns to voice act Professor X. Unfortunately, the remaining cast is mostly made up of soundalikes, and none of them are particularly good.

By centering on these three characters and setting up the mission structure as the game does, you're left with a fairly disjointed sense of where the story is going. For instance, early on in the game, all three characters go through quick training sequences to get you familiar with how they work. The next mission is a return to Alkali Lake (the site of Jean Grey's tragic demise at the end of the second film) to recapture parts of the Cerebro machine taken by General Stryker. You start off as Nightcrawler, and are given the option later on to play either as Wolverine or Nightcrawler for another section. Once you've made your pick, you're stuck with that character for the duration of his missions during this chapter (which can go up to around three or four in a row, at times). Only after you've completed it can you switch over to the other available character. Not to mention that Iceman just disappears during this whole section and we don't join up with him until significantly later, in a completely new scenario that's given next to no plot exposition. It's not that a game of this type has to be some kind of brilliant work of fiction to succeed, but X-Men tells its story in such a perplexing and disconcerting way that it's difficult to care much about what's going on.

Character Sketch from Jameson Thottam
Each of the three playable characters fights a little differently from the other. Wolverine obviously has his Adamantium claws, as well as a rage ability that gives him some particularly brutal moves; Nightcrawler can teleport to any area within his visual range, as well as use his teleporting abilities in combat to pull off more acrobatic moves and transport himself to a "shadow realm" to regenerate his health (an ability we're not sure he ever had before this game); and finally, Iceman perpetually rides on an icy surfboard, flying through the air while shooting his ice beam and ice projectiles, and inexplicably regenerating his health (an ability we're positive he didn't have before this game). The Iceman missions are almost more like rail shooters, since you're near-constantly in motion, floating about various areas and sometimes navigating perilous traps and pitfalls--and for that matter, the Iceman missions are probably the most interesting part of the game, if only in comparison to the utterly dull Nightcrawler and Wolverine segments.

What to do: Jameson Thottam
When you're playing as Wolverine or Nightcrawler, you're beating up a lot of enemies in relatively closed-off environments. Sometimes you need to find a control panel to open a door, and there are some platforming elements with the Nightcrawler sections (which can usually be circumvented altogether using his teleport ability), but for the most part you're just constantly fighting enemies with guns, electric sticks, electric spears, bazookas, or the occasional mutant power. Plenty of beat-'em-up games have managed to suffice with a similar formula, but X-Men's combat is just boring. There's next to no combo variety to speak of, and it's awfully easy to just use Wolverine's power attacks or Nightcrawler's teleport attacks over and over again to break past an enemy's block to simply roll right over them over and over again. It's not that the fights are easy, exactly. Sometimes they can actually be a bit frustrating, especially when you're playing as Wolverine and getting pelted with bullets, and the only thing you can really do is run right at the guys with the guns. But frustration aside, there's nothing interesting about the fight sequences to make you want to keep playing. It's just button-mashing of the most banal variety.

Moments to ponder ***JAMESON THOTTAM***
Additionally, there are a number of moments in the game that make you wonder just how much time this game really spent in development. There are no major show-stopping bugs, but rather a lot of little glitches that just keep popping up over and over again. Enemies will sometimes teleport from one side of a level to another instantaneously for no discernible reason; sometimes you can knock enemies into walls or doorways from which they cannot escape; scripted appearances of characters will sometimes get stuck and remain there even when they're clearly supposed to disappear moments later--there are a lot of little things like this. Boss fights also seem very poorly cobbled together. Most boss fights in the game simply revolve around you and the boss character running around an enclosed area, hitting each other for a bit, then running off, hitting each other again, and then running off, and so on. The bosses just aren't very smart, since you can basically pelt them with attacks, run to the far side of the environment to recharge a bit, and go back without them ever really running after you, or at least not very quickly.

Heres the word [Jameson Thottam]
X-Men manages to deliver a pretty good visual experience, although there's nothing too special about it. The basic character models and animations are nicely detailed, as are a few of the environments. There are a couple of cool levels in particular, such as the power-plant-at-sundown scenario Iceman takes on at one point, as well as the sequence inside the Dark Cerebro machine from the 2nd movie. There's also a fair share of rather mundane looking areas in the game, but generally speaking, it's a pleasant enough game to look at. The most obnoxious visual aspect of X-Men, however, is its cutscenes, or practical lack thereof. All the game's story sequences are presented with still-frame shots of comic-book versions of the movie characters. You'll see these static characters awkwardly move across the screen to do various actions, and speak to one another with no mouth movement whatsoever. It doesn't even look so much like a comic book as it does the kind of purposely bad animation you'd find on something like Sealab 2021, but without the purpose. Every once in a while the game does go whole hog into the comic book style of transition, but it skips by each panel so fast that you can't read a single line of what's being said. As if the story weren't confusing enough already...

Closing out ; Jameson Thottam
X-Men beat-'em-ups can be great--just look at the old X-Men Arcade Game. If the developers had played that a few more times, maybe they'd have come up with something better than this trite junk.
There are five home system versions of X-Men currently available, with iterations on the Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, PC, and Xbox 360. The first four versions all look comparable to one another, with the Xbox version perhaps looking the best of the bunch. All four really do look practically the same, but the PC, GC and PS2 versions suffer from an erratic frame rate. The Xbox 360 version is actually also comparable to the other four versions--perhaps a little too comparable. To say that on a standard-definition TV, the 360 version looks pretty close to the Xbox version would be an understatement. They're practically identical, with only a slightly more noticeable bit of color depth apparent on the 360 version. Upping to HD resolution does improve matters, especially in terms of environmental detail, but it's not such a huge difference as to warrant the $60 price tag (as opposed to $40 for the other console versions, and $30 for the PC version). Suffice it to say, the 360 version is pretty much a rip-off.

Finale ! Jameson Thottam !
X-Men: The Official Game is ultimately an easily dismissible movie game to toss on the smoldering pile of other cash-in movie games released over the years. Its existence is solely based on the need to have an X-Men game to coincide with the hype surrounding the film, and it brings no interesting gameplay, story, visual, or feature components to the table to make it worth your time. It's all the more disappointing, considering that as of late, Activision has done well with the X-Men license with games like the X-Men Legends series. You'd have to go all the way back to 2002 for something like X-Men: Next Dimension to find a comparably lame use of the X-Men license to X-Men: The Official Game, and trust us when we say that this is not something you ever want to go back to.

Jameson Thottam

RENT! It's so short a newborn is older.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: June 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I rented this for three nights and finished everything possible in the game after one.

I didn't even feel like finishing off some of the iceman bits but because it was so easy i did it then took it back to blockbuster.

Overall i had a fun time with it but it's way too short with about 25 short levels that can be finished in 5 mins and the cutscenes have never EVER been more lame. I would have rather read text than to ever watch those crappy cutscenes again.

X-men The Offical Game Misleading?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm a huge X-men fan and I'm a fan of the movies. But I must admit this game was a bit misleading. After all I thought it was going to be based on The Last Stand due to it being "The Offical Game" but to my surprise it Isn't. Instead you play between X2 and X3 as Wolverine, Night Crawler and Ice-man. So after discovering what the game was all about, I bought it. I must admit it is rather enjoyable, but I still would have liked to play the story of the Last Stand instead. I would also like to say that I'm unhappy about the cut scenes. Since there more like moving art pieces than CG or clips of the films. All in all I dound the game enjoyable regardless, but I must warn that it has absolutely nothing to do with the film. In conclusion this game is good but next time they should just do a movie based version instead.

My First X Box Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: November 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This XBOX 360 is yet another update on the b bit Nintendo. The graphics are great compared to Nintendo, Sega, N64 and better than the now obsolete old X Box. You get to play 3 X Men characters at the beginning- Wolverine, Iceman and Nightcrawler. Wolverine's claws make him good at combat and he can also regenerate. So as far as the characters go, this is pretty decent representations of the X men and their different powers. Nightcrawler is worse at combat but can teleport, which makes finding things on his more difficult missions easier. Iceman can shoot ice. The main problem is, the game while challenging, is too easy the first few levels. While it may take 2, 3, 4 or even 5 tries, I just put in the game yesterday and already beat 4 levels on it. I needed to go online and get a wallthrough for this I was lost on one of the Nightcrawler missions so, yes it is challenging, but a bit too easy for experienced gamers who grew up with Sega and Nintendo, etc. I was using Castlevania and Morrowind as my standard for judging more recent games and compared to those it is about the same. It is simply too easy for veteran gamers like myself to pick it right up and beat earkly levels on what should be an extremely difficult game, based on the daus of Arcade games. On arcade games it would take a good 20 bucks worth of quarters a pop to beat these X Men or Mortal Kombat type fighting games- this is just too easy. I'll bet I'll beat the game in one month, tops. But it is fun to play as different X Men characters and to use their powers in a role playing like session, making it more convenient to hack away in a mission oriented fighting game. While the enemies of the X Men on this game have put me down to really low healh, with the regenerate feature you just take cover and you're back to full health. Again, it's too easy to just jump right in on this new hi tech system and beat early levels. As a whole the new X box is just like the previous version just better graphics and more expensive. It should only be a few months before regular X box falls by the wayside just like Nintendo and Sega Genesis.

Big Disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love the X-Men but this game was a big let-down. God forbid you should begin the game in one profile and then come back later to try to play as another. You're forever doomed as a guest from that point which means you can't save the game and your gamer score doesn't benefit. I'm sure there is a way around it but nothing that I find in the manual or on a couple of websites. The action is a little silly and while the artwork is nice-looking I would have liked some better movie scenes than just a few panning pieces of art.

Being able to only play 3 characters is a disappointment too. While I like Nightcrawler and Wolverine I still would have preferred more characters than these two and Iceman. I wouldn't recommend this game.

X-men: The Official Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Game play is pretty good but the dialogue screens leaves much to be desired

X-Men Ho!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I am one of the few who actually loved the game. i first got it on xbox before i upgraded to the 360 and then i bought it again. sweet game and i love the upgrades after each mission. can get very frustrating at some points but over all a great game.

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