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X-MEN: THE OFFICIAL GAME XBOX 360 REVIEW |
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Activision
has been on the roll when it comes to producing
Marvel games, and their latest Marvel-based
craze reels you in with spectacular
presentation. The cell-shaded cutscenes are the
first to immerse your eyes, while the backdrops
makes you feel in tune with the movie. But don’t
be fooled by its beauty alone. X-Men: The
Official Game doesn’t have that strategic
suspense it had with the X-Men Legends series.
What you have here is a straight brawler. The
game starts you off on the Liberty Island, where
you face off Wolverine’s rival Sabertooth. But
just before the confrontation, you’re introduced
to comic-like, cell-shaded cutscenes,
illustrating how the X-Men team is grieving over
Jean’s death. You have three X-Men to choose
from: Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler.
You’ll go through a brief tutorial, explaining
the characters' abilities and unique powers.
Afterwards, you’ll be able to take on your first
mission.
When you complete a mission, it’s off to Gene
Alteration to upgrade your character’s mutant
strength such as the ability to heal faster,
increase damage on attacks, and many more! In
the gameplay department, this latest X-Men game
plays out fairly decent. The controls are
well-designed for greater accessibility, but the
response time on certain moves is a bit
sluggish; still, they become manageable over
time. The game features some cool combos but
they are somewhat limited in numbers. The face
buttons on your control are used for various
types of attacks, while the trigger buttons are
used for blocking, charging, healing, and other
mutant functions. Boss fight is easy in this
game but dealing with enemies’ AI does come
cheap. You are constantly hit with a hail of
bullets, or a barrage of electric spears that
make it difficult to get close to swipe them
with your metallic claws or attack them with
teleport-related combos. |
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PRODUCT
OVERALL RATING: 8.0 OUT OF 10 |
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The best
part of combat, however, comes from executing
those highly-animated mutant abilities like
Wolverine’s “Berserker” and Iceaman’s “Ice
Beam”. Activision did an incredible job sticking
close to each X-Men’s inherent powers. Textures
on characters remain particularly close to its
movie counterparts. The exhibition on super
moves like Iceman surfing on ice is a visual
treat. The environments are nicely detailed and
the animation sequence is relatively smooth. The
cutscenes are impressive with a chain of flashy
illustrative page-turners; however, the problem
with the game is not so much with the vivid
presentation, it’s the clipping issues and the
awkward camera display. Some of these issues
include enemies getting stuck in the walls, and
a few will teleport from one side of the
building to the next for no reason.
In the audio front, the game delivers a fairly
solid sound experience. Most of the punches and
kicks pack some wallop, but the sound effects
could’ve used some more depth. The best part of
the audio component is that the game uses real
actors like Jackman, Cumming, and Ashmore, which
perform nice jobs with the voice-over works.
Patrick Stewart is back to lead the role of
Professor Xavier but the rest of the characters
have been dubbed over with sound-alikes. On the
music aspect, there are hardly any upbeat
soundtracks to get you into the mood of whacking
your enemies. As for the rest of the audio piece
like background ambience, they do their job
well. We have played four versions of the game:
Xbox, PS2, PC, and Xbox 360.
Xbox 360 version is the best-looking of the four
bunches, though the graphics and the gameplay
mechanics are very identical to the regular
Xbox. PS2 has better gameplay and controls,
while the PC version comes with less frame rate
issues. Overall, X-Men: The Official Game
delivers a good movie representation. If only
the graphical clippings were smoothed out, and
there were more playable X-Men, a bit of Mortal
Kombat-like gores into the action, and a number
of strategic elements added to the gameplay,
this could have been another Activision’s
blockbuster hit. Fortunately, these tiny visual
imperfections don’t happen too often. For what
it’s worth, it’s a good button-smasher,
beat-them-up that mostly casual gamers would
enjoy. |
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