And... how does this relate to the movie? A weak attempt at capitalizing off a flick, rent this one at most.
Truthfully, it's not. The basic storyline of the movie has nothing to do with this game, and Z-Axis should probably have some kind of punishment inflicted upon them for bastardizing a franchise like this. However, a quick review of the *other* games that they've made reveal a number of mediocre titles, including BMX XXX.
***** GAMEPLAY - 3 /10 *****
The "extreme sports" background to this developer's history seems to accoutn for so many of the ... "factors" of gameplay, including the jerky style of avoiding hits. As Wolverine, you hold a trigger, press a direction on your left stick and roll out of the way... when it works. Nightcrawler simply teleports to a more convenient location, and Iceman holds up a nice shield temporarily while he slides around on a physically impossible sheet of ice. The controls, while passable, could use an overhaul as some of the combos and different moves between the trio of playable characters simply don't make intuitive sense.
With such a variety of interesting characters to play in the XMen universe, it was a letdown to see that you in fact can only play as three, and even more frustrating in certain missions where you have to actually defend other, seemingly invulnerable allies. Quite ironically, I understand the thought process that went into including these three particular characters - the developer wanted a cheap way out of the health kit / healing process avenue, and chose three that could, conceivably, heal themselves.
There was a particular point in the game where I noticed an irrecoverable glitch - Colossus decided to get stuck on a corner that was no higher than his ankle, and continued running in a straight line, not turning or correcting his course to get around it. Overall, the combat is lackluster, and the level design reeks of repetition (especially the Nightcrawler missions), and the gameplay will leave you with an overall feeling of discomfort and dsigust.
***** GRAPHCIS - 3/10 *****
Graphically speaking, there is *NOTHING* in this game that makes it worthy of a "next-gen" title. Games that look better than this one are available on PS2 or XBox. The unimpressive level design is quickly overlooked when you consider the cutscenes, if they deserve that title. Instead of attempting to do some FMV or even in-game engine renders, it relies on "comic book" style of still images that may change a single frame while dialogue is read over the top of it. Not being a big fan of comic books to begin with, I found this style of delivery a poor attempt.
***** SOUND - 4/10 ******
The vocal talent in the game isn't the worst I've heard, and, to the game's credit, the inclusion of Patrick Stewart (who always seems "game" to lend his voice) and Hugh Jackman were esentially this game's only high points. The sentinels sound as you'd expect them to, but the other effects, including gunfire, and NPC voices are lame.
***** VALUE - 3/10 *****
Lacking any kind of multiplayer (versus, co-op, etc), and not being able to choose *WHICH* of the three playable characters you'd like to take into a mission (the levels were, after all, designed for each character separately), there's really no incentive to play this game more than once. Higher difficulty levels yield more "mutations" to the basic characters, but can often be frustrating and are ultimately, more repetition. I'm not going to write this one off as valueless altogether, but unless you're a hardcore fan of the series or comic book, you probably should keep this one as a rental at most.
***** ACHIEVEMENT VALUE - 3/10 *****
This game may well fall into the "Easy 1000's" category, so long as you can master the controls and figure out what to do to complete all of the game's objectives to 100% for each level. However, if it weren't for the very achievable 1000GS, this game wouldn't be worth playing at all, in my books.