To round out coverage of the tie-in to the third X-Men film, here’s the java phone game.

I always find these interesting. How do you adapt something to a platform that’s so limited, and yet has such varied specs? You often get many different versions of the game that are essentially the same thing but at slightly different resolutions. I played two versions that represent the highest spec (240x320 screen) and lowest spec (124x124) available.

Both are isometric action/puzzle games. Your play field is a small room that you move diagonally through, pushing boxes, standing on switches, climbing ledges, and beating up goons and robots. On the higher end this game looks quite good, with nice pixel art, although the sound is limited to occasional midi stings and brief jingles. The lower res version is of course a bit muddy but gets the point across.

Like the accompanying games, there’s a variety of playable characters. Wolverine excels at combat, Iceman freezes enemies to make blocks, or slides over gaps, and Nightcrawler teleports over pits or through hazards. You also briefly control Cyclops (who is in no other platform’s version of this game) and Magneto. Each stage has hidden collectibles; some for score, others that permanently and usefully upgrade that character’s health or energy (used for your advanced techniques). Some are hidden quite deviously indeed! Thankfully, health and energy do regenerate naturally. Caveat: the lower spec version is much more basic, with only Wolverine playable, no upgrades or unlockable skills, and no in-game plot; but it does have unique level designs, so that’s something.

Speaking of the plot, it hurriedly covers three acts roughly corresponding to the main events of the console game. A jaunt through the Weapon X base and a face-off with Deathstrike, a pop-in to the Japanese castle to see Pyro and Silver Samurai, then just quickly off to Hong Kong to deal with the Sentinels and Master Mould, all the while haphazardly swapping between the three main playables. Jason speaks but is not seen, while Xavier and Rogue (also unique here) show up for some moral support.

All told it’s a quite cromulent mobile game and pretty much what you’d expect for the platform, no more, no less. The phone keypad is uniquely suited to the diagonal movement of an isometric game like this, which is a plus. Having now played all these games it’s disappointing how some characters such as Rogue and Kitty barely show up at all, but I do like the original storyline, which is expressed differently in each version of the game… so you absolutely must play them all to get the full experience! Nah, it’s fine.