Next better player, please.
I'm not sure whether it's the DS' fault. You know, this machine has a touch screen, and somehow, some developers just feel compelled to make use of this innovation, just so that the "DS version" of their game won't feel so run-of-the-mill. As such, instead of the usual button controls for what is essentially a hack and slash game, X-Men: The Official Game uses the stylus extensively for controls. You'd still use the D-pad (or the ABXY buttons, presumably to provide a solution for lefties) to move your characters around, but for every other action, you'd have to use your stylus. The idea is good, if it's used on a complementary basis. It's not, when you end up bashing up bad guys with your stylus, when the good old button-smashing way of doing things is more effective. True, dragging objects across the room with Magneto is an interesting way of doing things. But on the other hand, tapping an enemy to engage in a fight is just plain silly.
It doesn't help when this team of superheroes are so limited in their abilities. Yes, these characters have vastly distinctive mutant powers, and the game make use of them for specific situations. So, if you need to brawl through an area quickly, you'd use Wolverine's brute. If you need to take on a ranged enemy, you'd use Iceman. You get the picture. However, one can't help but feel that the game is focusing a lot on what these characters can't do, instead of what they can. For example, despite his strengths, Wolverine can't hit a flying enemy. Magneto is totally pants when it comes to melee, even though he's really good in manipulating metal objects. Iceman is good for aerial and ranged attacks, but put him in a tight situation and he's a goner. And Nightcrawler, what can I say about him? For all his teleporting abilities, he's largely used to slow time instead of engaging into something more destructive. I understand that the developer will want the player to switch around the players during the course of a mission, and mind you, they made the switching really easy (just tap the shoulder buttons). But the over reliance on stylus play, and the mutants' inabilities to do simple functions make the game feels really restrictive and subdued.
The gameplay isn't the game's only pitfall. For a game that's developed for a "current-generation" handheld in the DS, the presentation of X-Men: The Official Game is just horrendous. I know that the DS is not exactly your PSP, but it certainly isn't a GBA as well. The character models are ridiculously blocky and distorted, and the background details are totally uninspired. The only reasonably done aspect of the graphics is the animated cut-scenes, which (vaguely) resemble comic panels. The sound effects are also weak and repetitive, offering nothing of note for a franchise that you'd expect to be more cinematic than others. I don't like to use the word, but short-changed is exactly how I felt as I played through the first few levels of the game.
All in all, X-Men: The Official Game for the DS just doesn't live up to the hype that the movie is generating. Inept elements aside, if you're playing the game just for the backstory to X-Men III: The Last Stand, you'd be terrible disappointed, since the explanation for Nightcrawler's disappearance in the movie is as badly conceived as the game itself. I've not rated a game so poorly in years, and I hope that this is the last time that I come across something so painfully bad again.