X-men Origins: Wolverine Review

Written by Jim McIntyre Friday, 01 May 2009 14:55

Games based on movies suck ass. It’s practically gaming law. So I’m sure you can understand why I felt I had drawn the short straw, when I agreed to review Raven Software’s X-men Origins: Wolverine. It was with an abundance of glee, that I discovered the game to be the crazed jay-walker of the gaming world, rather than the law-abiding trash I had expected.

Wolverine follows a similar, yet slightly different storyline to it’s movie counter-part. Wolverine’s woman is killed and wolverine is out for revenge, so on, and so forth. The game jumps between Wolverine being in Africa as part of Strikers special team, and 6 years later when he is out to kill everyone. Story really isn’t a strong point of this game. It’s often hard to follow, under-explained, and jumps around way too much.

Not so surprisingly for a game about Wolverine, combat is where this game shines. Everything about the combat just feels fluid, it’s simple but rewarding. A big element of this is the leap ability. Simply target a foe with the right bumper then hit the left bumper and you will sail through the air towards them and land with your claws implanted in them. It means you don’t have to constantly run between enemies, and when your fighting melee units and there’s some douche off to the side, shooting you in the back, you can quickly get to him. It sounds like a simple thing, but it really helps keep the pace of the combat up.

Through dispensing enemies you gain experience and rage. Your experience is used in an RPG like fashion with you leveling up and putting skill points into different abilities. Rage is used by the four rage abilities that you will unlock as you play. You can also equip mutagens that you discover around the levels, which have different effects such as increasing your health, or decreasing the amount of damage you take.

The only real issue I had with combat was with throwing enemies. Most bits that are supposed to be difficult can be easily overcome by just hurling your enemies off ledges, and even a lot of the harder foes can be quickly overcome this way. The combat is also pretty violent, in a logical “I’m chopping you up with metal claws” sort of way, so expect to see some limbs go flying. You can also use the abundance of sharp pointy things strewn throughout the levels to impale your foes on. It's all quite gruesome in a pleasant way.

Speaking of foes there is a hell of a lot of the same ones. When your hacking your way through standard baddies this seems acceptable, but when the same mini-bosses are thrown at you so many times, it just becomes annoying, especially as most of these mini-bosses require you to slowly chip away at their health by doing the one action when they present an opportunity. The actual boss fights are for the most part much more enjoyable as you can fight them in a semi-normal fashion.

Breaking up the standard combat are some puzzle sections. These are never incredibly difficult, and most just require moving objects to the right place, but some of them may make you stop and think for a bit, and they are a nice way to break up all the combat.

Graphically Wolverine is a real mixed-bag. There’s parts that will have you grimacing in disgust, and parts that may have the freakier of you considering flopping it out, proverbially of course. Some environments in the game are highly detailed, and just look great, then you encounter sections that look horrible. As Wolverine takes damage it’s shown on him, with the wounds healing as you get your health back. It’s a nice touch and looks good visually, but what annoyed me was his shirt is often destroyed in the fighting yet suddenly back in the cut-scenes. I know it’s a small thing and I’m being pedantic, but shirts shouldn’t regenerate.

Wolverine also sports a shockingly decent amount of length to it, lasting probably around 15 hours for your first time through. With a myriad of dog-tags, mutagens, and Wolverine figurines to collect, not to mention different ways to level up your character there is even a good amount of replay-ability to this title. Once you get the right figurines you also unlock a bonus game where you get to fight a Wolverine in a costume, defeat him and unlock that costume.

I did encounter a fair amount of glitches. Thing such as teleporting into the middle of a wall and suddenly drowning inside that wall happened to me a few times. Thankfully the checkpoints are never too far out from where you died. The frame rate is also quite questionable at times and sputters a fair bit towards the end of the title.

X-men Origins: Wolverine is a flawed, but enjoyable experience. There is a lot of fun to be had with this title, plus where else are you going to get the opportunity to play as the badass that is Wolverine and spill some blood? This game is shockingly enjoyable, there are moments that will grate on you, but press on and you are sure to have some fun. This is a game that all Marvel fans should play, so if you are a fan of Wolverine, or simply a fan of hack and slash games quit reading this crap and go grab it.