Conducting a straw poll of friends and colleagues, the general consensus of the third X-Men film is of a movie that never scaled the heights that the others - particularly the second in the franchise - reached.

The related games have never even threatened to get that high, instead serving to be a procession of quite good action titles. The fun X-Men Legends was as good as it got on home consoles, and generally the standard has been above the norm for a movie tie-in licence. But that's absolutely not the case here.

Set between the second and third movies, this one's primarily a beat-'em-up that allows you to take control of three of the main characters; Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Iceman. Each - hurray! - has different pros and cons, but with the first two at least you'll be mainly going through the usual motions; beat people up, clear a mission, unlock a bit more story, yadda yadda yadda.

It's worth noting too that the story itself is wildly uninteresting, with some devastatingly dull and badly implemented cut-scenes designed to move things along. And that's from a reviewer who's quite partial to the X-Men.

Right throughout the game, the problem is that it all - graphics aside - feels so tired. There's nothing fresh about the beat-'em-up engine, no interesting combos in place, nor particularly impressive enemy AI at work. You just bang the buttons and get on your way.

Likewise, the boss sections are spectacularly routine, with nothing particularly clever about the way you're asked to win them. Sure, it's all mildly entertaining if you're in a forgiving mood, but it's also the lazy way to go about integrating a movie licence into a game. Some credit for the graphics though, which we were quite impressed with. In fact, you'd argue that that's where a good chunk of the game's development time (and money) has clearly been spent.

And therein lies the problem. Cut-scenes aside, the game boasts an impressive sheen of visual gloss that does its damnedest to hide the uninteresting, unimpressive and uninspired game that sits beneath it all.

When you look at something like last year's Chronicles of Riddick game, you can clearly see that there's still real benefit to a movie tie-in that bothers to apply some real thought rather than a routine template. X-Men: The Official Game roundly sits in the latter category though, and it's all the more disappointing for it.

A weak tie-in to an intriguing licence, with precious little spark about it at all.