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I am a huge X-Men fan and I have to first say that I bought this game on the day it came out and had beaten it with most extras unlocked by the third day I owned it.

If some of you recall Activision has had a history of X-Men movie spinoff games first starting with the PSX’s platform X-Men: Mutant Academy which eventually “evolved” into the incredibly good X-Men: Next Dimension and then again with the great but lacking X2: Wolverine’s Revenge game when the second movie hit theaters.As a previous reviewer has stated, X-Men: the Official Game does have the feel of Wolverine’s Revenge to an extent. However it is both improved and downgraged in it’s own respects.

X-Men: The Official Game is a prequal to the third istallment to the X-Men movie franchise as opposed to being a direct movie adaptation version, the bonus of this particular concept is the ability to play as Nightcrawler the “bamfing” blue mutant demon who is not present in X-Men 3 due to frequent pre-production issues when X-Men: The Last Stand was starting to come to fruition.

This X-Men game starts with the X-Men training in the danger room and mourning the recently departed Jean Grey and takes a team of five (though you only ever control three mutants in depth) mutant heroes through an unresolved Col. Stryker plot that was not spoken about in the second X-Men film. The three characters you get to control in depth (I say this because you do get to tell Storm when to fire lightning in particular levels) are Iceman, Wolverine and of course the loveable Nightcrawler. Each of these character have their own defining traits as you play as them and never feel simply like the same three heroes with different special abilities.

Here are the pros and cons of each character:

Iceman: I thought that Iceman was going to be one of the coolest players in the game (no pun intended!). I was however dissapointed the most with him.Unlike in the X-Men Legends game series Bobby Drake-Iceman is permanently suspended on his ice bridge.It’s truely difficult to steer him and all of his levels seemed to be timed so you never really get a chance to enjoy playing as him or even look around for the hidden unlockables in his level. That being said, Shawn Ashmore actually does voice-work for the character and it makes him some what desireable to play just to enjoy hearing him while you struggle to keep your sanity throughout his various time trials.

Wolverine: As I mentioned before this game has the feel of X2: Wolverine’s Revenge with respect to overhead views and constant slicing and dicing (no blood) of infanite faceless goons. However, where Wolvie’s Revenge has complex battle combos and stealthy attack rewards this Wolverine has got a head butt attack that works some of the time and and fury meter that pretty much makes you invincible and super powered throughout it’s limited use. Wolverine has great locals that he travels to and hearing Hugh Jackman actually voice the character is really quite a treat and deffinitely makes this confused loner the second best reason to play this game. Now onto the shining star…

Nightcrawler: Who whould have thought that a character whom has never had a successful career as a solo comic book character might actually have the potential for a great solo game?Nightcrawler is by far the most enjoyable character to play as in this game. Teleportation, Running matrix-style on walls, sneak attacks, and a humble german accent are all fully realized in this charater’s missions throughout the game. These great features are only made better by Alan Cumming himself actullay voiceing the character!You’ll find once you master his teleportation attacks, Nightcralwer his the most fun player in the game and I would truely love to see Wolverine’s Revenge type of treatment given to this loveable circus performer in another game really soon!

Despite the numerous flaws with Iceman and and substandard voice-work for Pyro this game truely is one of a kind and deserves to be given a chance. It will be a quick victory even on hard difficulty settings (expect with Iceman, who’s time limits become almost unattainable) and smooth and enjoyable ride.

Other great things to note are Patrick Stewart and Tyler Mane bringing thier voices in for Professor X and Sabretooth repspectively and John Ottman’s original score for X2 is actually used in the game.

The game is great and I would like to have seen a few things improved upon visiually or even Nightcrawler given more solo treatment in this game and hopefully in an upcomming game, but if not to own, any fan of the movie series should at least give it a rent.

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X-Men: The Official Game PS2

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