You’ll punch, kick, flip, and spin your way to saving the world through a series of eight, poorly executed levels that my dog could’ve designed better, even after being put to sleep. This is pretty much your full–time gig as comic–book heroes, other than spouting out horrible lines of clichéd dialogue such as "Get thee hence foul Lord of Evil, lest I shall smite thee with my super mutant powers." And if you play as any character other than Wolverine, you might as well forget about the punching, kicking, flipping and spinning, and prepared to be satisfied with just shooting projectiles out of your body.

You can control a number of Marvel’s superheros including the agile Wolverine (who is clearly the star of the show), the tornado flinging "Storm", the laser beam flinging "Cyclops", the playing card flinging "Gambit", or the snowball–flinging Iceman. Despite the roster of five heroes, there’s really only two choices in regard to game play – Wolverine or "not–Wolverine".

If you play as Wolverine, you’ll get a bunch of pretty cool Matrix–style fight moves to use against your enemies, not that you actually have a chance to EMPLOY the moves against your foes. Getting through a level basically consists of running to your right and jumping past your enemies. However, it’s nice to know that you can accomplish a double–back–flip should you have the urge to do so.

On the other hand, if you choose to play as any of the other projectile–flinging heroes, you’re pretty much relegated to throw whatever "beam–of–smiting" the developers have given the hero as you sleepwalk your way through eight levels of uninspired and boring baddies. You do have the ability to switch X–Men (X–People?) at will, so if your current X–Man gets low on hit points you can just switch to the next one.

The bosses (except for Apocalypse) are laughably simple. You can generally pick a hero with long–range attack capabilities (such as any of the "not–Wolverine" heroes), and fire away from a safe distance at your foe. There were times when my enemy didn’t stand a chance to launch a counter–attack, as my tights–wearing defender of justice hurled objects that constantly knocked enemies down. Should this kind of "challenging" game play interest you, Activision was nice enough to create a game mode where you simply fight boss monsters. This should add about a "Yahoo Serious Film Festival" amount of time to the life of the cartridge.

Activision should be ashamed of themselves for dropping such a subpar game into the hands of an unwary public. I’d imagine kids that are fans of the X–Men would pick up this game solely based on the license. For Activision to knowingly release such an awful game is simply taking advantage of both the Marvel license and their customers. If the X–Men were real, I have a feeling that their next target may be sitting in a corner office at Activision headquarters!