X-Men: The Official Game for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

"X-Men: The Official Game" is, to say the least, yet another example of what happens when an insanely popular, multi-million dollar comic book/movie franchise decides to sell out its source material for an uninspired and disengaging video gaming experience. To put it simply, only those who can more than spare the money and the hard drive space will purchase or even rent something like this.

Nevertheless, I refuse to be a hypocrite. I added this game to my Gamefly rental account with the hopes that it would perhaps rise above the obvious stereotypes facing so many(if not all) movie-licensed games. It did not, and those stereotypes are more than justified after playing this game.

You must embark on a series of missions(many involving familar events and locales from the films) alternately playing as Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler. There's not much more to add to the plot summary because the aforementioned layout is just that: you play second-rate versions of the characters you've come to know and love in a tedious and arduous series of tacky, slapped-on missions with some of the most mediocre "boss" battles I have ever experienced in a game. I mention "second-rate" because the art design and personal attributes of the three main characters are hardly exciting or enthralling.

This is NOT the X-Men game fans have been waiting for, and is certainly not the game that fans like you and I have deserved for so long. This is just another successful attempt at additonal profit and licensing by the production companies, and a painfully unsuccessful attempt to please the many dedicated fans of the source material, which the production companies need to start taking note of.

In the end, you get what you get; the gameplay is far from spectacular, but you somehow get the sense that it tries to succeed. However, it fails miserably in this aspect and in many others, and hopefully someone out there will enjoy this game for longer than a half-hour.

I played this back in '06 and didn't think much of it then, now that I am playing it again, my opinion hasn't changed. Even on the hardest difficulty it only takes me a few tries to get through a level, the worst character in my opinion is Iceman. He's always on his "sled" the targeting is less than accurate, and the stages are repetitive. Nightcrawler is the best with is teleporting, the stages are set up to take full advantage of that as does his combat. Wolverine is mediocre his stages are repetitive but his combat is fun. There are 16 achievements and one is for getting 950 gamer score in the game. and 3 are worth 0. I hate those!