This summer, bargain bins will most likely be overflowing with copies of X-Men: The Official Game, seeing as it failed to score higher than it's clawless predecessor, X2: Wolverine's Revenge. For the PC and each of the consoles, X-Men's metascores ranged between 58-69 -- hardly worthy of the homo superior race. Heck, even the PS1's Mutant Academy (loosely tied to the first movie) averaged a 75.The chief complaints with The Official Game are, well, pretty much everything. Combat, cutscenes, and background story all failed to inspire the critics, and there are frequent glitches. Kind of makes me long for the days of X-Men and its Clone Wars sequel on the Sega Genesis. Let's hope Brett Ratner did a better job with The Last Stand.
- IGN (59/100) enjoyed playing as Nightcrawler, but was generally displeased: "The combat and stage design are substandard in every way, enemy AI is ordinary coin-op fare, and the presentation elements are nowhere near the level we've come to expect from Marvel or Activision."
- GameSpot (56/100) was also disappointed with all home versions of the game: "It's existence is solely based on the need to have an X-Men game to coincide with the hype surrounding the film, and it brings no interesting gameplay, story, visual, or feature components to the table to make it worth your time."
- TeamXbox (50/100) found few differences in the current and next gen presentations, despite the $20 retail discrepancy: "The Xbox and Xbox 360 visuals are essentially the same, aside from the obvious boost to the pop from HD-quality resolutions. Everything is a bit cleaner and lighting has more impact, but the graphics can be viewed as a disappointment, especially if you are a next-gen'er."
