X-men 3: The Official Game (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

It's hard to believe that until a few years ago (with the release of the Toby Maguire Spiderman) anything associated with Super Heroes was considered a risky business. Superman had long since gone, Batman had bitten the dust with the disastrous Batman & Robin and even Spiderman had been shelved for some two decades. There had been some success in TV animation, of course and the comics still sell well but the journey to the big screen (and the mass general public) was not always a smooth one. It's all different now though and the last couple of years alone have boasted successful movie outings for Spiderman, Batman and X-Men. However initial trailers for the third X-Men movie were greeted with questions as to characters' whereabouts and plot progression. In short it made little sense. That was until 'The Last Stand' was announced which claims to be a bridging story between parts two and tree of the franchise. An X-Men 2.5 if you like but even if this satisfies the comic book purists will it satisfy the gamers?

Gameplay

As I've just mentioned, this takes place between the second and third X-Men movies and allows you to play as three separate X-Men: Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler. This is also the only one of the many formats where you may also control X-Men's archenemy: Magneto. The game is a simple case of getting from A to B with your health intact and, if time permits, collect some of the bonus gold tokens (although this simply pushes up your score). It's important to realise that each character has very different abilities and it's only by capitalising on these you'll reach the end of the level. I'd really like to say there's more to this game but that really is it. You play through the game and every five levels or so there's an end of level boss, which while more challenging than the other enemies you'll meet is still relatively easy to defeat.

Controls

The control system here is split, forcing you to use the d-pad (for the characters' movement) and the shoulder button to change your current character (providing they are available) but it's the stylus and touch screen where all your power really lies.

Graphics

Outside of the 'animated' comic book intro things really are very average and we've seen much better visuals on the DS in its short life. The backgrounds are bland and the main characters positively blurry. There's even the occasional slowdown, which is unforgivable given the size of the sprites.

Sound & Music: The various level soundtracks are outstanding. It's been some time since I've heard music of this quality. The same cannot be said of the sound effects unfortunately and not only do the majority of these sound bland and unexciting but there's no sign at all of any voice work.

Dual screen

It was Activision's Ultimate Spiderman which has, to date, given one of the most complete uses of the stylus and touch screen thanks to some inventive gameplay from Vicarious Visions. Amaze Entertainment attempt the same with this X-Men title with limited success. Like Spiderman the stylus is used to manipulate objects around you. This differs greatly depending on what the object is and the character you are playing so while Magneto can levitate objects around him (and crash them into foes) Wolverine is more useful with the hand-to-hand combat battles. The other characters have other abilities and deciding where and when to utilise them is the key to surviving the levels and progress through the game.

Final comments

Amaze Entertainment do appear to be the developer of choice at the moment and most of their games are fairly entertaining products. This X-Men title clearly presented them with a bit of a challenge and while the use of the touch screen and stylus has to be applauded, the overall experience is both flawed and incredibly repetitive. It's a real shame as, initially at least, the game shows a great deal of promise but even once you are half way through there's little incentive to go on to the very end. There are other modes available but given that these are simply 'lifted' from the story section they don't really offer much in the way of original gameplay. Overall this DS outing for the X-Men is an interesting experiment on how action titles can utilise the technology available it's just a shame that this is where the majority of the development time appears to have gone instead of to the gameplay.

Pro: Great Sound and Use of Stylus.
Con: Flawed and Repetitive Gameplay.
Final score: 5.5

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