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.

As Erich takes a week off to sojourn on the magical voyage of fatherhood, Dave, Steve and Jon begin the show by helping him with video game-inspired name options for his bouncing, baby offspring.  And that’s as warm and fuzzy as it gets, as the discussion promptly diverts into the realm of the bloody and eviscerated with three takes on Raven’s vicious new hack ‘n slash, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

From there, it’s on to Jon once again setting the bandwidth on fire through his nigh-erotic love affair for Capcom and their plan to bring over some PS1 classics to the PlayStation Network; Steve tossing in more grist to the rumor mill with speculation over Apple buying out EA; and Dave weighing the ethical questions of stores licensing exclusive gameplay content through their pre-ordering process.

Finally, it’s a trip around the horn sounding off about this week’s Symposiumn ad Nauseum topic: video game dogs.  Woof!

Hit us with your feedback, sensuous flattery, and general witticisms in the comments below or by emailing us at feedback@pixelverdict.com.

You can listen to the show with the player below, download it here, or subscribe through iTunes or by adding our feed to your podcatcher of choice.

Here is the rare case where the licensed video game property is actually a superior product than the film it’s based upon.  I’m sure a multitude of other reviews have noted this, but the inversion of such a hard and fast video game rule (movie good/licensed game suck) is a phenomenon worth repeating.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the game, is awesome.

I am a whore for action beat-em ups and will even siphon enjoyment out of questionable hack ‘n slash outings like Beowulf or Viking.  As such, I’ve had my eye on Raven’s Wolvie effort since it was announced and eagerly digested screens and direct feeds of the blood-soaked mayhem.  I am pleased to report that this shred-fest has exceeded my lofty expectations.

First the general layout of what to expect.  The plot takes its cues from the film, hitting the big story points.  You’ll square off against Blob and Gambit and eventually Deadpool in some familiar settings.  Some of these instances felt shoe-horned in, no surprise since Raven claimed it had been working with the Wolverine property for several years.

In between the movie-specific levels, you’ll be traipsing through Africa in a series of flashbacks.  It is here, among ruins and spikes and secret switches and movable blocks that a God of War influence is particularly evident.  Wolverine’s platforming and puzzle-solving abilities are certainly Kratos-ish, but is in combat where Raven’s brawler separates itself from its brethren.

Wolverine has a robust selection of attacks at his disposal.  The two-button light/heavy combo list is par for the course, and allows you to carve through multiple characters at a time.  Special Rage moves (replenished by orbs from deceased foes) send Wolverine in a room-clearing frenzy of claw death.  Wolverine can also grab enemies and, if their health is low enough, brutally finish them off.

"I can see your spleen from here!"

And I do mean brutal.  Screw the T for Teen rating.  Wolverine is a shockingly violent game.  The finishing moves are eye-popping in their creative lethality (and vary from enemy to enemy) and when Wolverine skewers the last guy in a room the camera slows allowing the sheets of blood to dissipate in slow motion.  This is visceral combat that gives the gore of Ninja Gaiden 2 a serious challenge for the crown of most virtual bloodletting.

There are just a ton of ways to wreck fools, either through straight combos, special moves, finishing moves or the environmental deaths–my favorite: tossing dudes into concrete mixers–that I never got bored with the gameplay.  Granted I have a high threshold for repetitive action gameplay, but I just was grooving to Raven’s mechanics here.  The variety, the weight of the combat (it feels like Wolverine is tearing into the bad guys), the sound effects, the bloody visuals, it all works, totaling in an experience I am sure to be revisiting over and over again.

Last gameplay note: the lunge.  This simple construct of catapulting Wolverine across the screen, claws out, attacking enemies, is genius and is the kind of maneuver that will surely be copied.

A few shortcomings to tick off though.  While built on the Unreal engine, there are more than a few graphics glitches.  Wolverine will be able to walk through walls or may stand on an enemy’s head and when the action heats up slowdown occurs (though it was rare).  I also ran into some audio bugs.  Speaking of which, the soundtrack wasn’t great.

Gameplay-wise, my biggest criticism is that Wolverine can be too much of a bad-ass; enemies pose little threat.  I died only once from enemy damage and that was in the beginning.  The only other deaths were as a result of platforming screw-ups.  Add that to Wolverine’s regenerating health, I never felt overly challenged.  That’s on normal difficulty, however; we’ll see how hard shakes out.

Replayability is actually solid.  There are unlockables to find which give you old-school comic costumes for Wolverine and blasting through the game again once you’ve mastered the learning curve should be fun in that tear @#$% up kind of way.

Finally, a note about the Weapon X Arena GameStop exclusive content.  If you didn’t pre-order the game from GameStop you’re missing out, alas, because it’s a pretty nifty add-on.  You get four rooms, the Dismemberment Room, the Ladder Challenge, the Environmental Kill and the Custom Enemy room.  All but the Dismemberment Room are pretty cool.  Basically, these are free-form rooms with spawning enemies that you just hack through for a blood good mindless, cathartic smackdown.  Hopefully the add-on will get released as DLC because it’s genuinely worthwhile.

The Verdict: Not Guilty.  Snikt!

Confused by the title of this show? This week’s podcast doesn’t offer many answers. Still, Erich, Dave, Jon, and Steve try to make sense of their corner of the gaming world while talking about Far Cry 2, Too Human, Ninja Blade, Fire Pro Wrestling, Rhythm Heaven, Samurai Shodown Anthology, Resident Evil 4, and Conan. In the news section, Dave confesses to pre-ordering the new Wolverine game because of something called a “dismemberment room,” Erich wonders whether the upcoming Rock Band titles will hit before music games die, Steve looks forward to more Fallout post-apocalyptic goodness, and Jon crosses his fingers in hopes that Capcom will be announcing something cool at CAPTIVATE ’09. They wrap things up with this week’s Symposium Ad Nauseum topic, “Kick-Ass Female Protagonists,” and finish with the lamest sign-off ever. If you can think of a better catchphrase for the show, email us at feedback@pixelverdict.com.

You can listen to the show with the player below, download it here, or subscribe through iTunes or by adding our feed to your podcatcher of choice.