What is this we have here? It certainly looks like another movie to game tie-in to me. Let's have a look now and see if Wolverine's latest outing breaks the trend, and that trend is to try not to fall in the category of 'appalling' video game based on the film of the same name.
Wolverine's latest game is of course based on that of the recently released movie. The game upon firing it up for the first time has certainly got a few surprises. Wolverine's latest outing, whilst not perfect, it certainly breaks the movie tie-in trend of games not being great, but does it claw its way to the top alongside other highly-praised action titles?
Gameplay:
Being a game based on the adamantium clawed Wolverine, you expect a lot of enemies to claw your way through before you get from A to B, and in this regard the game most certainly does not disappoint. This is thanks mostly to the pick up and play nature of the combat, with some further abilities to upgrade and master. The majority of the action will be done on foot as your typical hack and slash action game goes. Wolverine naturally claws his way through most enemies, but instead of breaking it down into a button masher there are some options available to finish off your enemies in style.
Typical combat flows with light and heavy attacks and mixing the two up to unleash some more long winded combos. Ability wise, Wolverine has a few at his disposal including spinning attacks, useful for when you're surrounded by multiple enemies and another one is known as rage, basically your claws ignite in flames and you unleash more damage as you attack your enemies. These are easily the main two abilities that you will be accustomed to quickly, there's a couple more which have similar effects and mixing these up a bit is the best way to unleash maximum damage, which proves especially useful during boss encounters. These abilities can also be later upgraded to last longer and also inflict more damage, essentially there's a stat system to increase as you progress where you can choose what you want to advance first.
One of my favourite abilities of Wolverine is his lunge ability, you can basically lock onto a target and dive at them from a considerable distance and follow up with a couple of deadly moves and for most enemies, an instant kill. It's actually fairly easy to run through the game like this taking out most enemies, but then you'd be be missing out on all the fun. Switching things up frequently proves entertaining, transitioning from your typical light/heavy attacks, into a rage ability, and doing some spinning or corkscrew ability to finish the typical cannon fodder off proves rather entertaining. The Quick Kill, is a nice satisfying way for Wolverine to finish up his left-overs. Throwing is another option, you can throw enemies into objects in the environment, which conveniently is always of a sharp and spiky nature, or even throw them over high-ledges to their instant death. Grabbing an enemy to throw them, but first pressing the heavy attack will initiate the Quick kill. There's a few varying Quick Kill animations that it switches between, and once you nail down the timing they should be like second nature. Performing them only takes a couple of seconds, but during this time you are also unable to be attacked by other enemies which can prove vital. A Quick Kill is essentially a finishing move, it's like the chainsaw in Gears of War, only in this game you never quite know how Wolverine might decapitate his enemy, off with his head or slice him in half? Whilst the majority of Wolverine's action is done on foot, moving from location to location and wiping out any and everybody in between, there are some other moments that offer up a change of pace for the animal, and not all are to Wolverine's satisfaction.
For one, Wolverine is not a man who likes heights, therefore lunging towards and taking out airbourne helicopters is very much a tough decision, though smashing through the window and lifting the pilot up to the blades so his head magically disappears, well that kind of makes it worth while. There's also several moments where you will have encounters with various bosses, the mad dash to hunt down and do battle with Gambit in particular stands out as one of the finest scenarios in the game, as does riding piggyback on a fat man in a supermarket and sticking your claws into his shoulders to alter the direction and ultimately destroy all the aisles in the store.
If ever Wolverine should lose his way, he has another useful ability known as Feral Sense. A quick press of Up on the D-Pad will glow the environment, showing up all interactive and destroyable objects in the vicinity, as well as a guide of where Wolverine is to go next, as such the animal can never truly be lost. This is particularly useful for finding the collectible items in the game, downed mercenaries, of which Wolverine leaves many laying around in a bloody mess, well in Feral Sense, downed mercenaries carrying Dog tags, one of the collectible items in the game, well they certainly glow and show up much more visible in this animalistic sense.
Unlike the film, the game is somewhat more difficult to keep track of the story, while both follow the same plot, the game goes more in-depth filling out more of the blanks. There's flashback gaming sections galore throughout the game, which means you'll end up on some mission in the past in Africa, and seemingly taking on one of Lara Croft's missions... Wolverine still has plenty of enemies, and some excessively large ones to dismember as well, it's basically puzzles galore for each flashback. While it breaks up the gameplay, I'm not so sure that it's the break the game needs from lobbing off limbs. In present day missions you have a bit of platforming like traversing on some balancing beams and going through elevators and ventilation ducts every so often before reaching the next group of enemies. Every time I got so far and a flashback to Africa mission began, I couldn't help but think where the hell is lovely Lara when you need her? Wolverine seems rather impatient for puzzles to me, and I don't recall him moving blocks around to different positions to be able to progress in any of the recent films or even the old cartoons. Not that the puzzles detract too much, but they certainly are a negative in an otherwise fine, action and gory romp.
Graphics:
The first thing that pops into my mind when I think about the visuals, is how lovely that animation was when Wolverine just sliced through some merc's body and how that red stuff, blood I think it's called, just squirted everywhere. Blood and gore aside, whilst it is the thing that stands out as the main attraction, there's of course many other aspects and environments in the game too. If you've seen the movie, then you'll appreciate some of the environments from the film, as well as all new scenarios and environments as the game goes considerably more deeper into Wolverine's story than that of the movie. The cutscenes featured however are a bit of a mixed bag in terms of visual quality. The opening cutscenes and a handful of the cutscenes leading up to the game's conclusion look particularly nice indeed, whilst the majority of those in between do not live up to such a high standard when compared. But I digress, decapitation, blood, real-time wound healing and some rather nice effects when using Wolverine's different abilities during combat more than make up for the odd visual shortcoming.
Audio:
Whilst the latest film is the fourth time that actor Hugh Jackman has reprised his role as everyone's favourite X-Man, it is the second time his vocal chords have been leant to an X-Men game.
X-Men: The Official Game most certainly fell into the category of abysmal movie to game tie-in's, though Jackman's vocal role and the visual likeness of the character when in comparison to this new game, then all seems to fit naturally well here. One of the more interesting aspects is merc chatter, you can often hear them talking about 'Weapon X', that being Wolverine, and how they thought they just saw something or how they're going to kick his ass... that is right before you run up behind and lob off his head.
Longevity:
As expected it seems as lengthy as your typical action affair, and it's most certainly a game worth re-playing for the fans. While there are several somewhat annoying puzzles, and not annoying just because I'm not a fan of them, but more annoying because they seem out of place. After all, Wolverine is not your typical adventurer, many of the flashback to Africa segments will often see you moving objects around and turning wheels in order to proceed...
After completion there's Bonus challenges to take part in where you can take on Wolverine in a fight to the death, at least a classic representation of Wolverine, and beating said Wolverine unlocks a nice new, or is that old costume to re-play through the game in?
Overall:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine certainly breaks the trend of the expectation of being a 'bad' game based on a movie. The game is somewhat surprising for one, and for the most part it is the combat that is very satisfying, and it is the opening cinematic of Wolverine plunging his adomantium claws through a wall and right into a mercenary's face that will initially shock many. While there's bound to be some controversy surrounding the gory nature that this title has taken, I believe there's a tamed down version available in the US, alongside the Uncaged Edition. It is the Uncaged Edition that we're looking at here, and there's plenty of blood and body dismemberment to go around, most certainly not the version for the kids... but ultimately sick adults, like myself, will likely appreciate the over-the-top gory nature of the game.
I had heard that the game goes beyond that of the movie, but in this regard it went somewhat further than I had expected. Which is a good thing, it attempts to fill in more details during the same time line as the movie and features things that are more reminiscent of the classic cartoons or comics as fillers. It's actually pretty nice to see that the game is not being restricted by the movie, as there's a lot more story to the game, and certainly a Quick Kill mounts up to more blood than is in the entire feature film. It's good to see that combat and general gameplay have pushed forward the tone of the game, apart from those horrid Africa flashback segment anyway.
For fans or even gamers just interested in action hack n' slash games a like, you can't do wrong to invest some time in Wolverine's latest gaming outing, for the most part it offers up a visceral ride of gory action.
