Is there an unofficial game? It might be better.

X-Men: The Official Game (of the movie). You all know where this is going. When was the last time you played a great game that was the official game of the movie and timed to be released with its theatrical counterpart? Yeah, never for me too. X-Men is a quick cash in on the summer movie release, and although it's playable, it's terribly boring and mediocre.

The timeline for the game is set between the second and third movie. Each stage along the way is dedicated to one of three superheroes, Iceman, Wolverine, or Nightcrawler. Iceman's stages are all air based and have you flying missions on his ice bridge, much like a dumbed down Ace Combat or Crimson Skies. Wolverine's missions are straight brawling, and Nightcrawler's are brawling with a teleportation twist.

Only Nightcrawler's stages have any remote redeeming quality to them. The teleportation gig adds a new twist to a classic beat-'em-up. Nightcrawler can instantly warp to a number of preset locations within an environment. He can also teleport towards or behind an enemy to start an attack chain. When fighting, you mix these two together for some mildly entertaining results. The game engine does a great job of keeping up with the frenetic action and movement, but your eyes are another story. While playing on Hard, some of the fights can be excruciatingly long, and with all the teleporting going on, it'll have your head spinning trying to keep up.

Iceman and Wolverine's stages are so basic; you would have expected as much coming from first year game programming class or an internet flash game. When I say beat-'em-up for Wolverine's levels, I mean old school. We're talking two button attacks, with a very small set of combos and no progression throughout the game. For Iceman, you're either in a tunnel or in a small free space shooting fire birds or sentinels with ice beams... the whole game.

The graphics look decent on the PS2, but awfully underwhelming on the Xbox 360. In what is quickly becoming Activision's MO, the 360 visuals are nothing but a high res port of the current gen version of the game (see: Gun and Tony Hawk for other examples). I'm also tired of seeing Havok physics being touted as an in game feature when all it does is make the death animations look hokey. The cutscenes that carry the story are done in a style that make photos look like paintings. They either had no budget left for cutscenes with animation, or they really thought this preserved the comic book feel. If it was the latter, I think they failed miserably.

Over these still scenes they have the movie's actors doing the voiceovers. While the voice work is fine, the whole thing just comes off as so low rent, it's hard to take it seriously. It's a shame too because the filler story isn't that bad, and I might go as far as to say it could be worth a rental for fans to get another piece of the X-Men story before watching the third movie.

1. Nightcrawler's teleport combat system could be the start of something good
2. Another hi res coat of paint for the 360 game
3. Somehow achievement points made this gameplayable to the end

1. Obvious movie cash in
2. Basic, NES era game mechanics
3. Lame attempt at story cinematics
4. Characters play the same at the beginning and end of the game, no progression