X-Men 3: The Official Game

Master the power of the X-Men

NA release: 16th May 2006
EU release: 19th May 2006
JP release: N/A
Developer: Hypnos Entertainment
Publisher: Activision
NGC Magazine Score: 38%
Mods Used: None

This is a game that seems to be ashamed to be based on the film it’s based on. While the box has the logo for X-Men 3 on it, everything else refers to the game as “X-Men: The Official Game”, but we know that this is a tie-in to The Last Stand. Although, to be fair, that film was also inconsistent with its numbering on different promotion material. On top of this, this is actually set in between the second and third films, uncovering the Sentinel project.

You play as three different X-Men: Wolverine, Iceman and Nightcrawler. To the surprise of nobody, Wolverine’s levels are the most abundant. They’re also extremely bland and unsatisfying: just a mindless beat-em-up. It also never feels like you’re fighting with claws at any point. Really, you could be any random person punching enemies. These levels kill the momentum of the game, especially as quite a few are just fighting waves of enemies in a small room.

Iceman’s levels are the least common type, and here you fly around on ice (the effect is done really well) and use ice beams and missiles to take out airborne enemies. You have full movement and can do a quick 180 degree turn. There’s not a lot to it, so the occasional nature of these levels help them from not outstaying their welcome, and are more enjoyable than Wolverine’s levels.

Finally, you’ll play some levels as Nightcrawler. He’s very agile so can make lots of jumps, swing on poles and climb on some objects. This traversal is also furthered by his short range teleportation ability. It’s really just a lot of fun to just move around. His levels have a lot of combat, but the greater traversal (including some which can be combined with moves) gives him far more options in combat than Wolverine and makes him a lot more fun to play as.

It really is a shame that the game isn’t focused more on Nightcrawler. The Iceman levels are fine, but the Wolverine sections really drag the game down. The developer was at the start of something special with the Nightcrawler sections, if they had been able to use it as the basis of their own game, it could have worked really well.

Fun

Oddly, Nightcrawler’s the best character – he zips from sport to spot like a mosquito with a grappling hook, and has a beefier range of moves than wolverine. but both he and the freeze-skating Ice Man are let down by boxed-in levels and tedious fights with robots and – uh? – fire-breathing dragons.
Mark Green, NGamer #1

Remake or remaster?

Not for this, but it shows a Nightcrawler game could be really good, although I suppose the Infamous: Second Son is kind of that.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to buy X-Men 3: The Official Game.