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X marks the spot. The X-Men are such a rich source of stories. In the 40-plus years since their creation, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at Marvel Comics, they've grown, expanded, died, been resurrected, travelled through time and space, fought prejudice and saved the world. They've also formed the foundation for a cinema franchise that managed two excellent films before soiling things comprehensively with X-Men: The Last Stand. Anyways, alongside the movie franchise, games based on the X-Men have also been doing fairly brisk business. However, although Patrick Stewart, who is mentor figure Professor Xavier in the films, has also voiced the character in some of the recent games, none have been quite as closely related to the films as this latest offering, dubbed The Official Game just to clarify things.  Rather than going the route of “adapting” the third film, the game instead proffers material that bridges the story between X-Men 2 and the disappointment that is The Last Stand. The game involves story elements written by Zak Penn, who worked on X2 and co-wrote The Last Stand, and vet Chris Claremont, the man who created some of the strongest X-stories of yesteryear but has gone off the boil somewhat recently. The result is a mixed bag. It employs the reasonable device of limiting the playable characters to three - Wolverine (voiced by Hugh Jackman), Iceman (voiced by Shawn Ashmore) and Nightcrawler (voiced by Alan Cumming) - with Colossus and Storm along as collaborative non-playing characters (although not voiced by their movie actors). This provides a variety of experiences as each hero has a different style based on their powers. Unfortunately, there's a lot of button-mashing playing the brawling Wolverine, and playing Iceman is just kinda dull, as you scoot around on an ice-slide (something we've not seen him do in the movies yet), freeze-blasting stuff. Thankfully, Nightcrawler is a lot more fun, as his teleport ability can be used both for getting from A to B but, more importantly, during combat. A fight between the Nightcrawler, flitting about rapidly, and Jamie Madrox, the self-explanatory Multiple Man, is pretty novel.  Marvel's mutants deserve so much more though, as there's so much potential inherent in the enormous cast of X-characters. This game might have its moments, and it's certainly less of an insult than The Last Stand movie, but that dream X-Men game is still waiting in the wings, caught up in the hideously convoluted tangle of Marvel's myriad threads of X-Men stories. Personally, I reckon a Marvel mutants massively multiplayer online role-playing game (you make a mutant character, the X-Men are NPCs that appear throughout) could be cool, even if City Of Heroes has arguably pre-empted such a thing.
Daniel Etherington
X-Men: The Official Game is out now on PS2, PC, Xbox and GameCube.
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 useful linkswww.activision.com
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see also
 e3 2006games #153  rise of nationsgames #152  silent hill moviegames #151  ds round-upgames #150  tomb raidergames #149
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