The Oshkosh West Index - Mutants’ sharp claws can’t save a dull X-Men adaptation

Volume 102, Issue 8

Online Features

Mutants’ sharp claws can’t save a dull X-Men adaptation

By Nick Gutierrez
posted 7:05:48 AM CST, May 26, 2006

With the reputation of the X-Men saga on the line, a solid X-Men 3 video game preceding the movie’s release had the potential to fortify fans’ opinions before Brett Ratner’s third film installment hit theaters. Sadly, however, the developers at Z-Axis rushed to their deadline and put forth a pitiful game that hopefully doesn’t serve as a harbinger for the film.

Somewhere in the conception of X-Men 3, the developers lost their focus. Rather than stay true to the story line and further expand the X-Men universe, the game requires players to perform mindless tasks outside the main plot that do little more than to extend the play time. The misguided attempts to add a new realm of objectives will end up leaving gamers with quite the headache.

Visually, drastic mutations couldn’t save the horribly rendered characters in X-Men 3. The thought of Wolverine conjures images of three razor-sharp, adamantium claws tearing apart hapless foes. The Wolverine in this game, however, comes off more along the lines of a pretentious bunny rabbit. Blocky movements plague each of the characters, diminishing the unparalleled grace with which the X-Men traditionally dispose of their foes.

These pitiful character motions carry over to drag down the pivotal point of the X-Men franchise—the fight scenes. In the films, the fluent action and epic skirmishes are trademark qualities that should be carried over into the game. However, faulty graphics limit the potential for even minimal satisfaction to be had from battle sequences.

Major lag times between each player’s attack gives enemies the opportunity to ruthlessly assault the exposed mutants. This unfair leveling factor seems like a sad attempt by Z-Axis to lengthen the game yet again by having gamers die more often. However, even this attempt falls short as the game lacks any modicum of difficulty.

Hacking through legions of foes proves no more difficult than mashing the buttons on the controller at breakneck speeds. In an attempt to break up the monotony of the hack-and-slash genre, X-Men 3 puts gamers in control of three different characters.

The purpose of the trio of heroes requires gamers to utilize each of the character’s unique abilities to prevail in the face of danger. The fact that each character has a mere five moves renders this idea paradoxical. Sure, shredding foes to pieces with Wolverine’s claws has a minute fun factor, but doing the same attack fifteen times in a row becomes ridiculously redundant.

Quality sound in a movie-based game greatly benefits from having the voices of the actual actors dubbed for their characters in the game. However, in this regard Z-Axis fails to deliver yet again, as almost no actors from the film are present in this sad excuse for a videogame. Instead, voice-overs are attributed to a motley band of third-rate actors.

With no real appeal other than the X-Men title stamped on the front, X-Men 3 should be quarantined before the terrible mutations it underwent infect other games and the industry collapses. X-Men fans must now wait with their fingers crossed, hoping that the beloved film franchise does not fall the way of its video game counterpart.

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