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GBA

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X-Men: The Official Game

by Vincent Anderson - June 20, 2006, 8:53 am EDT
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5

Not even Nightcrawler can save this game from mediocrity.

Games based off of feature-length films over the years have been, for the most part, utter garbage. There have been some rare exceptions, but the general rule of thumb is that if it’s based off of a movie, you’d better stay away. I’d say that X-Men: The Official Game for the Game Boy Advance almost falls into this same bottomless pit, but it does just enough right to not be completely terrible. It truly is mediocrity at its best, if that’s possible.

The concept for the game is simple. Play as one of four X-Men (Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, or Iceman) and claw, throw, or teleport your way through a dozen levels in the Canadian compound at Alkali Lake. This game doesn’t do much to expand upon the latest X-Men movie, but it does offer a simple explanation as to why Nightcrawler was not featured in the film.

With the game being a prequel of sorts to the latest X-Men movie, your entire mission consists of going through the apparently abandoned complex and retrieving the parts William Stryker used to create his Dark Cerebro. You start out playing as Wolverine so you can familiarize yourself with the controls of the game. As is the case with most GBA games, the controls are easy and intuitive for anyone to use. The A button makes your character jump, while pressing B along with up, down, left, and right will make your character do varying attacks. Pressing A and B at the same time will unleash a super attack. Wolverine’s super is a 2-way claw attack (so that if you are in the middle of two enemies you can attack them both at the same time). Colossus slams his fists into the ground, which can not only destroy nearby enemies but walls as well. Iceman’s super attack is a freeze blast that can temporarily stun enemies from afar. Last but not least is Nightcrawler, whose super attack features his trademark teleporting. These attacks all tie into the character’s strengths: Wolverine’s quickness, Colossus’ brute strength, Iceman’s uncanny (see what I did there?) freezing ability, and Nightcrawler’s agility.

The gameplay is simple side-scrolling beat-em-up action. Simple not only in terms of what you have to do in all the levels, but simple in style, too. There’s only a limited amount of unique enemies in the game, and most of the levels feature the same kind of basic structure, only with varying colors. It makes sense because the entire game occurs in one place, but it’s rather depressing, even for a military compound.

Speaking of enemies, as I said, there are only a handful of different types. The most basic enemies are dogs, and there are a lot of them. They’re easy to defeat, but they can get annoying at times because they’re so low to the ground and thus most normal attacks won’t hurt them. There are also a few different kinds of military-type shooters. Some like to lie on the ground and shoot, while others will stand up and fire right at you. They tend not to move around a lot unless you come towards them, and they’re easy to take out. Then, for some reason, you get the privilege of dealing with some robotic enemies. One type of these robots is attached to ceilings and will fire dual lasers at you. Another is spider-like and the second most difficult of the robotic enemies. The third is a robot that is humanoid in appearance, and it stands about twice as tall as your characters (save for Colossus). Sometimes you’ll run into Toad (yeah, I was surprised too) while you’re running around levels. He’s no different from any other enemy except in appearance. Just keep hitting him, and once he’s defeated, he’ll leave you with an item.

The four X-Men can be accessed and switched at any time during the levels by pressing the L button. If one of those characters dies (unless acquiring a special token), you will not be able to access him again until the next stage. The same method applies for boss battles. Those battles occur with members of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants, including Juggernaut and Sabretooth. To help you in these battles, there’s a charge meter that can be filled up to four times for each character, by collecting items. When you press the R button, your character will enter into a brief state where he’ll deal out twice the normal amount of damage.

Sadly, this game didn’t hold my interest for too long. After a number of levels I got bored going through the levels and doing the same exact thing over and over, and at that point I just decided to start running through the levels without attacking anything. The boss battles don’t do much to alleviate this problem, as they are few and far between. For what it's worth, though, they are entertaining distractions.

There are some good things about the game, but unfortunately the bad outweigh the good. The characters are fun to play when you first start using them, but you’ll soon find yourself annoyed when Colossus has to break his twentieth wall in a row just to proceed through a level. The animations of the characters and enemies are spot on, but they only impress for so long. The hand-drawn sketches of faces used for dialogue add a nice touch to the overall presentation. Sadly, none of these details overshadow the fact that the game becomes increasingly tedious and, in the end, boring.

Score

Graphics Sound Control Gameplay Lastability Final
6.5 5 7 6 1 5
Graphics
6.5

Being a Game Boy Advance game, there’s not too much to expect here, especially being a 2D game. There is nothing to complain about, but nothing stands out, either. That said, the fluid animation for each individual character and enemy is fairly impressive.

Sound
5

No voice acting for this version, and the music is generic techno. It’s something you’d expect from an X-Men game. The short elevator level has some nice elevator music going and is sadly the only music in the entire game (save for the main menu) that I can remember. Sound effects are good enough, but you’ll be hearing a lot of gunfire and grunts from fallen enemies.

Control
7

Controls are simple and easy to pick up quickly, and even if they weren’t, you can access a tutorial before you ever play a level. The attack system gets the job done even with a limited amount of buttons.

Gameplay
6

Starts out interesting, but the longer you play this game, the easier it is to realize that you’re doing the same exact attacks over and over again on enemies that all look the same. The sad thing is, even with the tougher enemies, those same attacks take them down rather easily. Soon you’ll be doing what I did and just run through to the end of levels.

Lastability
1

The only reason I’m not giving this a 0.5 (or a 0.0 if I could), is because the game takes at least a couple of hours to beat. Some of the bosses are annoyingly hard enough that you have to go through them a number of times (thankfully you have an unlimited amount of continues) before you finally dispose of them. Other than that, there’s absolutely nothing to do that's actually worth doing. You could go through the game for a second time but honestly, why put yourself through torture again?

Final
5

This game is decently fun for a short time. I tried to enjoy it all the way through, but it just wasn’t happening. Playing as Nightcrawler is one of the few reasons I even got as far as I did. Like I said, it’s not a terrible game for what it is, but sadly there’s just nothing to enjoy after you’ve gone through about half of the levels. I’d say this is a rental game, but that might even be giving it too much credit. You’d probably be better off borrowing it for a few hours from a friend.

Summary

Pros
  • Boss battles are a nice diversion
  • Entertaining… for a while
  • Nightcrawler!
Cons
  • Game becomes extremely repetitive
  • Lack of variety (enemies, level layouts, etc.)
  • Not enough boss battles to distract from the mundane
Review Page 2: Conclusion

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Genre Action
Developer WayForward Technologies
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: X-Men: The Official Game
Release May 16, 2006
PublisherActivision
RatingEveryone 10+
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