Way back when in the year 2000 the original X-Men movie hit, and people began to feel the buzz about the new movie franchise, we started to see a new franchise of X-Men games come out. The first movie was solid, people were swooned by it, and it was one of the era of MARVEL’s solid movies… which was later complimented with the solid X-game X-Men Legends.
After that we had X-Men 2 and X-Men Legends 2, both of which did well for fans.
But while we have had good times with MARVEL, we have also had bad times. Fantastic Four the movie and game, Elektra the movie, Hulk the movie and game, and Marvel Nemesis : Rise of the Imperfects game. That being said, while Activision’s hopes that sticking to the formula that made the original X-Men movie great in terms of their approach to this newest tie-in movie game is wonderous, often time such hopes and promises fall short into the pit of mediocre video gaming reality (as you have seen in the past).

The first line of defense at the head of the charge to deflect criticism of the possible failings of the official X3 game is the person tagged to scribe the game. If you are a fan of X-writer Chris Claremont’s work then you’ll be pleased to hear that he’s been tagged as one of the co-writers of the game, along with X2 : X-Men United and X3 : Last Stand co-scribe Zak Penn. If you are NOT a fan of Chris Claremont’s work then… well… sorry, it’s not like there’s multiple choice here.
If you are not familiar with the history of Chris Claremon he’s been the go-to scribe for Uncanny X-Men (MARVEL’s big X-title) for 16 years straight, which included scribing the pivotal Dark Phoenix Saga which is supposed to be part of the X3 : Last Stand plotting (what with Jean Grey now being the Phoenix in this new movie) and supposed to make up main subplots in the movies in general from what I heard.
Finally we have one more joining this hopefully dynamic duo in one Chance Thomas, he whose resume of works include the not so sterling King Kong game (which looked pretty but really was not so hot), the Lord of the Rings video game treatments (no word if the games were the movie trilogy, Third Age or recent PC Battle for Middle Earth trilogy) and the Unreal franchise of games.

So there is the good word on the solid team-up on it’s creative side. Too bad we might have a bit of a problem in the not so good news that comes in the dysfunctional third party groups whipped together to make the games for the different consoles.
Match the creator to the console you’re going to be playing this on in the future.

Amaze Entertainment, who I can’t remember ever doing a worthwhile handheld in recent memory, is going to be puttering out the Nintendo DS version of X3. Wonderous.
Beenox Studios has the PC version under their wing. Anyone ever heard of Beenox Studios?
Hypnos Entertainment has the reins of the X3 version slated for the underwhelming (they’re going downhill like cart riding Rub Rabbits in Feel the Magic XY/XX) GameCube, which couldn‘t even get a bounce in sales when Resident Evil 4 was fresh on the system and filled with positive reviewer hype.
WayForward Technologies is leading the charge for a GameBoy Advance version… wow.
Finally Z-Axis will be handling the rest of the present gen consoles and the one next gen in it’s release onto the PS2, Xbox & XBox360 respectively.

Wow. They needed… what… FIVE THIRD PARTY COMPANIES to make ONE GAME?!?
If that

sounds like there will be a lack of unity in these many third party companies whipping out various versions of what should basically be the same game then you got that right.
This means we can probably expect a wide range of reviews ranging from successful to failing grades depending on the version, and the company that put out said version, which seems to me to be no way to make a tie-in game. Are you comforted by that fact? You shouldn’t, and neither should the people behind X3 : Last Stand. At least, if nothing else, EA Tiburon (who the WB pegged for Superman Returns) can be given kudos for seemingly handling all versions of Superman Returns from the handheld to the console and probably PC, unlike the hodgepodge of companies lined up just to make the X3 Official Game.
Yeah, I know, you might say that this might at least promise a good version coming out since they’re all from different third party companies… though somehow it also means that you’ll have to review the game over and over again on the various consoles since it also means there might not be unity of content in each (an X3 version that might be a homerun on one console might suck on another).

Wait! Time for a distracting commentary! Here’s a Patrick Stewart as Professor X quote from X3!
"Since the dawn of existence, there have always been moments when the course of history shifted. Such a turning point is upon us now. The conflict between the better and worse angels of our very nature, whose outcome will change our world so greatly, there will be no going back. I do not know if victory is possible. I only know that great sacrifice will be required? And because the fate of many will depend on a few, we must make the last stand."
Patrick Stewart (Professor Charles Xavier, from the first trailer for X3 : Last Stand)

Yeah. Here, see if this is a surprising turn of events for you.
According to the original article writer who I read about this game from this quote is “foreshadowing an ominous and deadly war that quickly approaches”… yeah, I think I remember seeing that in the recent trailers, right. Yeah, yeah, after X-Men 2 set the stage for human/mutant dis-relations it can only come to a not so happy head as everything goes downhill into violence, explosions and obligatory fight sequences.
However if you think this game is going to be about X3 then you’d be wrong. Despite the fact it’s supposed to be the official game of the movie it is, in fact, a “bridge” between X2 & X3, taking place in the time between the two movies (from what I read about it).

So far only 3 characters have been talked about in the game.
Wolverine - Yeah, like you were not going to be given another chance to play Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (the first time being in the X-Men movie tie in game Wolverine’s Revenge which, if I remember right, starred the voice talent of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine).
Iceman - Considering you really didn’t see Iceman much in the movies except for X2 why are you going to be playing Iceman now? Isn’t this abit of a late time to play catch-up?
Nightcrawler - New to the movies as of X2 you now get to play as the teleporting X-Man.

One thing the original reviewer noted was that each of the characters play very differently from each other… duh! You’d be one damn bored player if they were all carbon copies of each other (with a few selection of “custom” moves pasted onto generic characters who all

basically have the same moves) so I damn well hope each character is a unique character to play as.
And for the most part it seems their fighting styles should bring pleasant flashbacks of X-Men Legends.
Wolverine is your heavy handed close quarter combat go to guy, while Nightcrawler’s best move is to teleport in and out of fights hitting fast and hard. The only one who seems odd is Iceman who “doesn’t even appear to ever walk on solid ground”… what the hell does that mean.
Another welcomed addition is that each character you can play as will have what looks like an individualized tutorial level to get you up to speed on each before you play. This sounds nice and all, though I kind of wish the gamemakers lifted the quick to learn method of gameplay teaching used by Rockstar Ontario for The Warriors, which was the easiest game I ever learned to play right out of the box.

Rumored tutorial sequence has Wolverine starting off at the top of the Statue of Liberty (X-Men 1 anyone?) as he fights it out with Sabretooth (this is how you’ll learn his moves).
His moves? According to the writing I have before me on this it looks like Wolverine’s combat style is to use quick fast sequences of combo moves featuring normal and strong attacks. Basically (from what it sounds like) if you can remember your rhythm and rote of automatically stringing combos together from memory while playing God of War you should be able to work Wolverine’s combat system with no real difficulty. This should be nice, as long as the combos are as rich and detailed as they were in God of War (or The Warriors), otherwise if the combos are abit meek in comparison to these games then we have ourselves a problem here… which we might be since one “combo” might be a rapid fire succession of Wolverine slashing enemies in the chest over and over again. I hope not, that’s not as much of a combo as it is button mashing. Oh, and be careful while blocking because apparently one flick of the right analog stick will send Wolverine rolling… not a good thing if you’re on a ledge or near a hazard area and you accidentally twitch the stick in that direction, though it’s good to know if you need to dodge attacks or quickly close the distance between yourself and enemies for quick counterattacks.

As you might have guessed, Wolverine’s big asset is his regeneration ability which will quickly get your health built back up after strong conflicts. This, by the way, brings us to the health meters.
Wolverine seems to have two health meters, which is abit of a confusing thing to talk about… so let’s not. You’ll get the gist of that anyway once you grab hold of Wolverine (virtually) and start breaking down the character on the fly as you play the demo, so me trying to decipher this isn’t necessary (you’ll get the gist of it once you roll Wolverine into battle for yourself).

One downer, though, is that Wolverine’s sections did not feature a free controllable camera from what I read about it. The excuse, mind you, is that Wolverine’s hacking and slashing quickness would cause for confusing “spinning” camera views that would mess you up, hence the reason why they used a fixed camera system. I don’t know if that is true or not but somehow I guess this will work since I didn’t read any complaints about the system from this piece I am looking at concerning the game (and the rest of the characters seem to feature free moving camera

controls).

Iceman’s sample level spoken of, however, may cause you to cringe (and yet it explains the lack of solid ground reference above). Apparently since nobody could get enough of flying levels ala Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire we have another level just for flying as Iceman soars through the air on his ice slides, surfing about in the air grabbing some serious “air” pulling 180 degree turns as his ice sled melts behind him as he slides… so what’s keeping him up again…?
Anyway he shoots ice beams to hack down enemies, or using an ice storm which is mostly a thinly veiled missile attack sequence… oh, yeah, I don’t miss X-Men Legends one bit, how about you.

Iceman’s tutorial should make you even more disappointed by this if you haven’t already received a major bummer from what you read. In his level he flies about the Statue of Liberty putting out a series of fires surrounding the state, while shooting down a series of robotic air drones with ice beams or missile… I mean ice storm attacks. After that Iceman fights the mean nasty fire serpent that is wrapped around a building!
Ugh. I’m not going to be looking forward to these “levels”, that’s for sure.

Pray Nightcrawler’s part of the game doesn’t suck as bad.
Nightcrawler is the team teleporter, as you know, with his trademark brimstone stench and “bamf” sound effect (please no campy Adam West Batman sound effects) he quickly moves here and there delivering a quick flurry of hits on enemies (remember X-Men Legends?) which should work well here.
Well… not really. You can’t teleport at will (unlike X-Men Legends) but you can teleport to “hot spots” denoted by glowing blue smokey areas (where you can port to)… eh?
Nightcrawler’s tutorial takes place in a sewer system (which is where this game may yet be headed) where you’ll learn that Nightcrawler is all about platforming action, where you’ll jump up on pipes, climb on things, teleport here and there to progress, and more. Also you’ll find you have a computer hacking ability once you get into a facility and dust off Nightcrawler’s hacking abilities… apparently they didn’t want to bring a true computer hack into the game (Shadowcat anyone?) so now Nightcrawler is your go to for infiltrating computer systems… OK, since when?
Otherwise it sounds like he has a quick fluid combat system that (when combined with teleporting) sounds like it’s fast moving and smooth flowing… then again that’s just sound, wait until you play it before you can say for certain it is as fluidic as it sounds.

Still it sounds to me like this is a beat-em-up game, which might be a bad thing lest we remember how badly the last beat-em-up game was (Fantastic Four).
Look, I don’t know if this is going to be all that as they say it will be, but considering they already had a solid game franchise for the X-Men (the X-Men Legends franchise) I don’t see why they had to bypass a third game in the popular franchise for a kinda sorta maybe tie-in game that really won’t be as much of a tie-in game as it is a filler between movies. I, for one, would rather play X-Men Legends 3 when the movie hits rather than an inferior movie tie in game, mostly because at least I would probably have more fun playing the Champions style button mashing joy that is X-Men Legends than I would a not so exciting button masher that X3 is beginning to sound like.
I could be wrong though, so I will dedicate sometime to a full review in the near future. Stay tuned.