Yeah, I agree with 'The Stinger'. I'm a Marvel fan but I wasn't very satisfied with this game. X-Men Legends I/II are good games you can actually enjoy.
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I picked this game up today, and ive been seeing some mixed reviews from people who have played it, ranging from pure garbage to a really fun game.

First and foremost, X-3 is worlds beyond the dungheap that X-men: Wolverine's revenge was. You know, that other game with Hugh Jackman on the cover also put out by Activision.

Still, the game does have its flaws and pretty much only a true fan of the X-men films and characters will feel compelled to purchase this game.


For starters, you can only use three characters. Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler. You cannot choose when you can use them either, they are all strictly level based. This is a pretty drastic turn from the X-Men legends games, in which you can pretty much use whoever you want, whenever you want. Being restricted to only 3 characters, plus the occaisional assist from Storm or Colossus in the form of a special ability that can be activated every so often, thats really a blow to the game right there. With so many characters in the X-Men world, this game leaves fans of the characters who arent in the game out in the cold, and most likely, uninterested.


Iceman is a pretty fun experience in the game. The iceslide is pretty sweet, as well as his frostshield, icebeam, and hailstorm abilities. I thoroughly enjoyed every one of Iceman's missions and only had trouble with one of them, which I was able to get better at with the proper allocation of upgrades.


Nightcrawler is also fun, but in sections his levels can be annoying. He has a few annoying parts where its just figure out where to go, press the switch, destroy or disarm some device. His combat abilities are great with various teleport attacks and with some practice you can really string together some really cool looking combinations between ground melee attacks, jumping attacks, and throwing in teleportation attacks. There are several instances where you can actually fight like he fought in the opening sequence of X-2, teleporting around from enemy to enemy throwing down combos and moving on to the next target. The boss battle with Multiple Man is the highlight of Nightcrawler's missions.


Sadly, Activision has once again missed the mark with Wolverine. Going for a broader audience, there is once again no blood associated with his adamantium claw attacks. And again, we are faced with enemies who can somehow BLOCK his adamantium claws with their ordinary metal weapons, or sometimes even just their arms. When you first begin as Wolverine, the game can be very, VERY frustrating. Enemies can come at you with shock rods that can empty your life bar almost instantly. You find yourself running away, because for some Godawful reason, Wolverine's healing factor cant work if there is an enemy closeby, or if he is not standing perfectly still with his claws sheathed.

Incredibly stupid, and irritating. However, once you have slogged through enough of his levels to get your attack strength maxed out, he becomes a bit more fun to use when you can drop enemies left and right with one or two of his heavy strikes, even on the hardest difficulty setting. Normally im against the one or two hit kills in these types of games, but these look pretty cool and they just look like they would actually kill someone that quick if they got hit with it. Not only that, but once youve suffered through having to claw an ordinary soldier about seven or eight times to kill him, youre ready for a break anyway.



The presentation is kind of a copout. There are no movie sequences, just painted storyboards with voiceovers from the actors. The game really feels rushed in this sense. The story driven parts really arent that good because all you see are still images that might shift once or twice combined with voiceovers that try to make up for the lack of visual action. It just doesnt look good, and it seems like a cheap way to do things.



I found the game to be pretty fun overall, once you get past the often annoying moments with Wolverine until you can get his ratings up to respectability. Then he becomes the most fun character to use. He faces hordes of enemies, and when you first start it seems like a ridiculous amount because it can be so difficult to defeat them all. But once his ratings are up he becomes a killing machine and these hordes of enemies fall within one or two heavy strikes and it doesnt really seem like that many at all.


It could be said that Activision just threw this game together to make a buck off the license, and there could be a fair amount of truth to that, but there is some fun to be had here if youre a fan of any of the three characters in the game. Nightcrawler and Iceman are well done, and Wolverine, though annoying at first, becomes fun to use as well once his ratings are up.

X-3 is a decent game, but could have been much better.
X-Men legends 2 still holds the title of best X-men experience on the PS2 in my opinion.


However, I would recommend a rental first before a purchase. Only fans of the X-men material would probably want to purchase this, because the average gamer can see all that the game has to offer within a 3 day period.


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