Next week on Deadliest Warrior...

The Charge:
Unleash the fury of Wolverine.

Opening Statement:
Licensed games, as a general rule, suck.  There are the exceptions; every few years development studio comes along and gets it right; granting us gamers gems like Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, or Ultimate Spider-Man.  Games based of licensed movie properties usually do far worse than suck (e.g.: last year’s Iron Man attempt by Sega), and I’ve been proudly avoiding such titles since I found not one, but TWO copies of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial in a box of used Atari 2600 games my mother bought from a co-worker in the late 80s.  It’s part of an unfortunate “lowest bidder” situation that I’ll not bring up here, but long story short, licensed games are pretty much analogous to garbage.  Raven Software, makers of many exceptions to the licensed game rule in recent years are looking to once again buck trend with their ultra-violent take on Marvel Comics’ Wolverine.  While their track record with licensed material is more precious than putrid, Raven has never had to tackle the challenge of dealing with a video game tie-in to a big summer movie.  So just how sharp are the claws on X-Men Origins: Wolverine?

Facts of the Case:
Wolverine is arguably the most popular super-hero in the comics industry today.  He ranked 4th overall in a Top 50 comic book characters poll by Empire Magazine, and even garnered the top spot in a list of the 200 greatest comic characters of all time by Wizard Magazine.   The apotheosized bad-ass of the X-Men has been featured in probably close to (or even more than) two dozen high profile video games, a handful of which even managed to be pretty awesome at times (Capcom fighting games, or ensemble beat-em-ups).  If there ever was a character tailor made for a blood soaked hack-and-slash game, it’s Wolverine.  I mean, hello; the guy’s most defining characteristic is the spring-loaded knives that pop out of his knuckles.  Honestly I’m surprised it’s taken the video game industry this long to attempt an M-Rated adventure for the surly mutant brawler.  And believe you me; X-Men Origins: Wolverine does everything short of including the pornographic to earn that M-Rating.

Daddy...what's coming out of kitty's ears?

The Evidence:
Not so much a brawler with blood, Wolverine honestly plays more like a celebration of brute force.  I kid you not when I say that gamers will feel like a hurricane-force vivisection after a mere five minutes of game play.  Enemies are for the most part, cannon fodder to fall upon the sacrificial altar of Wolverine’s claws.  And fall they shall…in pieces.  There seems to be no limits to how brutal, how juicy this game can get.  And outside of one senseless display of mild censorship about 10-15 minutes into the first level, the game doesn’t seem too interested in pulling any punches.  Of course, using cartoonish brutality is a double edged sword.  For the first 45 minutes of game play, my friend’s and I were howling and hollering with fits of laughter at the shocking ways in which everyone’s favourite nigh-invulnerable Canadian mutant dispatched the baddies, but we also expected the game to keep upping the ante if it expected the same reaction from us in every level.    But I’ll get deeper into this a little later on.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine plays like a simplified God of War or Ninja Gaiden II.  Wolverine has access to a fairly breezy combo system, alongside an assortment of grabs, counterattacks, and his trademarked lunge attack, which allows him to attack enemies from across incredible distances, getting uncomfortably (for the bad guys) up-close-and-personal within the splitting of a second.  The enemies attack in swarms, and outside of the occasional towering boss or goliath-sized creature, it all feels pretty loosey-goosey.  When the pieces do fall together though, it’s a fairly dynamic and visceral (read that aloud for more emphasis) experience.

Lather, lunge, rinse and repeat.

The ooey-gooey splatter-fest combat is broken up occasionally with some truly exciting set pieces that have player utilizing the lunge to dive from vehicle to vehicle.  I LOVED these parts of the game, as they broke the usual QTE mold, and didn’t flash a prompt onto the screen to tell us what buttons to press.  I felt they made an exciting little infusion of cleverly disguised platforming segments that gave the game a much needed burst of cinematic appeal.  As well, expect a couple clever little box puzzles, and the occasional stealth section, diving from cover to cover, trying get close enough to lunge an enemy.  These sections unfortunately don’t pop up nearly enough and in the early hours of the game; when regular enemies serve as little more than an annoyance, a few more moments of excitement like the early helicopter attack or boat chase would have been much appreciated.
The visuals of X-Men Origins: Wolverine are a mixed bag for me.  The character models are good, and the highly touted, much ballyhooed animations of Wolverines innate healing factor are gruesomely hilarious.  He can get chunks of flesh and skin blown off, leaving his metallic skeleton visible, and gamers can watch it all grow back slowly as they fight.  On the downside, times when the game looks great, the locales are flying by at such a high pace that we never get a chance to appreciate how good the game can look.  Yet levels where Wolverine is stuck in dark and boring maze-like tunnels seem to stretch on forever.  It’s a shame, because with some better pacing, and a little more polish, Wolverine could have been an absolute stunner.

A typical dream for Dave Johnson.

Rebuttal Witness:
While the combat is both bloody marvellous and marvellously bloody (ouch), and the audio/visual experience scrapes a passing grade, I can’t with good conscience gush any further about the potential for fun this game possesses without bringing up the shortcomings that I personally feel keep it from being a recommended must-buy for anyone outside of hardcore X-Men fanatics.  If gamers find themselves getting the least bit bored with the combat, take a break, because the levels are all generally 50 – 60 minutes slogs through wave upon wave of identical enemy groups.  What’s worse is despite the wonderful array of evisceriffic attacks that Wolverine is equipped with, until at least the fourth or fifth mission, the game doesn’t force gamers to do anything outside of spam the square button and run around in circles around weak-sauce foes.  Quite frankly it gets a little on the irritating side when a player can accurately predict  when they’ll leave a hallway into a box-shaped room and face the exact same wave of attackers as they did not 2 minutes earlier.  As well, the much-lauded boss battles outside of two mildly memorable encounters seem to degenerate into simply lunging onto an opponent’s back and again spamming one button ad nauseum.  The levels are simply WAAAAAAAY too long and the exciting moments are few and far between.  It feels as if Raven Software wanted to pad out the game’s length.  Had they shaved 15 minutes off of each mission, and varied the enemy encounters a little more, not forced gamers to fight the same mini-bosses 2-3 times each level, I think X-Men Origins: Wolverine could’ve been a real winner.  As it stands, I’d recommend it as a decent weekend rental.

Okay...wave of machine gun guys, followed by jerk with machete, followed by two bruisers with shields.

Closing Statement:
What could have been a wonderful tapestry of decent graphics, exciting game play, and brutal combat mechanics is unfortunately unravelled by levels that are simply far too long to be enjoyable.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine stands head and shoulders above the majority of games based on movie licenses, but has its legs cut out from under it just as it approaches greatness.  This could have been an amazing game, in many respects I believe it is, but this animal will probably seem a little long in tooth for anyone outside of the most dedicated student of the hack and slash.  Wolverine’s claws are sharp…but man is his level design ever dull.

The Verdict:

Platform: Sony Playstation 3/Microsoft Xbox360/ (PlayStation 3 Reviewed)
Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: May 1, 2009
Rated: M (17+) for Mature.