If a blockbuster movie based on any sort of super hero type (mutants included) is developed, expect the game to be released right along with it. We are quietly betting on the fact that a game based on Superman will rear its (ugly?) head in the next couple of months. And despite the same picture of Wolverine's claws from the movie poster being used on the cover for this game, X-Men: The Official Game is not based entirely on the movie plot.

X-Men: The Official Game on the Xbox 360 begins with one of three mutants that you get to play during the game. The first is Wolverine, who ranks as one of the most popular mutants and is one of the few characters to survive the aftermath of X-Men 3: The Last Stand. Wolverine, as any fan of the X-Men will know, is very action-orientated. Playing as him is extremely fast-paced; he wastes no time at all cutting through his opponents with his razor-sharp claws.

As you complete different challenges, you can also complete achievements and unlock other areas of the game. Playing as Wolverine was quite straight-forward. You can block and attack your opponents as well as jump and evade.

After playing Wolverine, the next character is Iceman, followed by Nightcrawler. This combination of characters is rather interesting, especially since Nightcrawler was not actually in the last movie and Iceman is by no means considered a 'main' character in the X-Men universe.

Each character (as in the comics and movies) is unique and therefore has different skills and abilities as well as strengths and weaknesses. Wolverine is mainly offensive in combat and relies solely on brute strength to get him through. Iceman on the other hand, can use both offensive and defensive abilities such as creating hailstorms and ice-shields. He also gets to travel around on a wave of ice.

Nightcrawler would probably be considered more of a defensive type of character with his super-human agility and teleportation ability. He can punch and kick but he tends to get injured very easily (but also gets to heal in this game). He is also one of the characters that relies heavily on teleportation to survive which means you need to have great control over the camera angles when playing him.

The cut-scenes in the game are, at first, a little strange to watch. Although the animation looks very similar to the comic books, the format of the cut-scenes is a little tacky. You can hear the voices of the characters in the background, but the characters themselves do not move. Instead, different frames are used in sequence to give the appearance of a comic book. The voice-overs are also a little off in places; in particular, Storm's voice sounds more like Rogue's in some of the scenes.

The key to playing the characters is to learn the combination keys for each character. There are two ways to do this; first off is button mashing. You can button mash your way to finding out the combinations but that won't work if you have limited game time. The next option is using the in-game hints which actually come in handy. Some of the combinations are neat - there is a particularly cool combo that Nightcrawler uses which combines teleportation and kicking and we enjoyed using Nightcrawler most of all.

The missions are all set up in logical order. Each mission is fraught with unique challenges and dangers. There are all sorts of enemies to encounter along the way but successfully completing the missions is the only way to progress. Pass the missions and you unlock new achievements and areas of the game. This is quite standard in most fighting/action games so no surprises there.

Some of the missions are too tailored for the characters, which gave us the impression that the game was developed with beginners in mind. Even though this aspect of gameplay is advertised on the back of the cover, we thought it was a little over-done.

There are three levels of difficulty in X-Men; Novice (for straight out beginners), Hero (for the average gamer) and Super Hero (for experienced gamers). We chose the middle ground to start off with and made note of the difference in the missions for each character. Wolverine's missions seemed to focus on brawling his way through everything; Iceman's missions were mostly airborne making full use of his ability to use the wave of ice and Nightcrawler's missions required a character with the ability to leap and jump exceptionally high.

Once your character reaches a phase of completion within the mission, you can then move to the mutation area where you can up-skill your mutations. Just like it is in real genetics, you get to pick between regressed genes and dominant gene mutations for your character. This adds a level of flexibility to the characters as you are able to strengthen different areas each time you complete a mission.

The animation used in X-Men is not exactly mind-blowing. We mentioned the cut-scenes earlier - the animation used in the cut-scenes is very detailed.

The background music used in the game is taken directly from the movie(s). We still can't quite make up our minds what this game is supposed to represent. To us, it's a strange kind of hybrid of all three movies and the comics. This might be a little confusing to some.

Giving it up for anything related to Marvel is usually easily done. This time around, though, our hands seemed somewhat inanimate. Whilst X-Men: The Official Game offers gamers and Marvel fans alike an opportunity to play their favourite hero, the game just didn't seem to satisfy us the way we expected. Beat em' up games are, unsurprisingly, repetitive by nature, but that doesn't mean they have to be any less challenging or interesting.

We found some of the areas of the game seemed to follow a very generic pattern that became a little tedious to continue playing for any length of time. This makes the flow of the game seem a little disjointed. All in all, we wouldn't be queuing for the shot to rid ourselves of our X-men fanatical mutations just yet but we expected more from an Activision and Marvel double team act.