FoxZero.net

In a market flooded with movie tie-ins this is one of the best and it stands on its own as a decent game despite its lack of depth.

Overall Score: 6 Above Average

Audio: Hugh Jackman’s voice really add to the adrenaline rush! Every thing else sounds sounds on par.

Graphics: Overall really good with colorful backgrounds, awesome effects, and character detail, but the real time healing just looks awkward.

Control: The combo and power attack system has just the right complexity for a beat ‘em up. The controls overall are very responsive for both the platforming and fighting.

Story/Plot: It sort of follows the film it was adapted from while adding in its own secondary plot. Unfortunately it still fails to draw you in or make you care about the characters.

Depth: Single player campaign takes about 9 hours to complete. Player has tons of upgrades to unlock, but restarting campaign erases stats! No multiplayer.

I would like to say that I think movie tie-in games are a joke, but I cannot. Why? Goldeneye. Amid the flood of movie tie-in games we occasionally find a real gem. Unfortunately for Hollywood these gems make us forget about the film they were based on. Say Goldeneye and I will instantly think N64. Luckily this new game here can make me forget about the disappointing film X-Men Origins: Wolverine and replace those memories with a very satisfying beat ‘em up and platforming experience. As a game Wolverine does not stand anywhere near Goldeneye in terms of gameplay, but as a movie tie-in it can happily sit beside it.

The game starts off in the “not so distant future” with a post apocalyptic like setting. Wolverine is hacking and slashing and then he starts talking about how he cannot remember how he got to where he is now or who he really is. Then the plot of the movie kicks up as a huge flashback. You will start off playing in Logan’s past fighting soldiers and mutants in the jungles of Africa and then jump to present day to fight those battles from the movie.

Of course a ton of sequences and enemies were added that were not part of the film and have limited explanation. In addition to the movie plot about half the game seems to focus on a new plot created by Raven Software. Basically you just get to check out a few laboratories where striker is making the Sentinel prototypes that I remember seeing in the X-Men comics; giant robots designed to kill mutants. The game is far more like the X-Men comics than the movie, which in my opinion is a good thing. Unfortunately the movie part is made worse by taking the best sequences from the film and changing them around with lame dialogue. The new plot is interesting but never engaging for a decent length of time. The most interesting character, Dr. Trask, has hardly any time given to him considering that he is a huge part of the plot! And the biggest disappointment for me is that the game does not return to the future until the very end as a tease for a potential sequel! With all that said the plot is still more engaging than the film was.

The action is what this game is all about (like the film) and the gameplay is solid. Controls are easy to pick and moves are simple to execute, but random button mashing really won’t get you anywhere. The three main attacks are a light blow, heavy blow, and grab. Combos are executed by pressing the light attack button a certain number of times and then pressing the heavy attack. Other combos start with grab. Holding R2 and hitting a shape button with engage one of Logan’s Rage moves or Berserk mode which allows him to move faster and inflict more damage. There’s also a cool lunge move that allows Logan to pounce on enemies from a good distance, and of course auto targeting makes this easy and fun. There’s also different grab moves, a block and evade button, awesome counter attacks, and finishers but you get the basic idea. Every major button on the gamepad is put to use but you never feel overwhelmed by the controls, but at the same time you feel the moves are complex enough to give consistent variety in the combat. The game does a great job of allowing you to understand each concept of the combat by introducing each of them one at a time. The only part I found annoying about the controls is that various set pieces require you to quickly mash on a single button; definitely God of War inspired, but without the challenge and fun.

To help keep the combat fresh there’s an experienced based upgrade system that allows you to power up and purchase new moves. After each level you gain you will earn skill points to spend on upgrading Logan. You can chose to upgrade various states as well as buy new moves. It seems intuitive as you can upgrade areas where you feel you need the most help, but it kind of slows things down as this whole system could have just been automatic like an older RPG.

My favorite aspect of the combat is that there are so many ways to finish off you enemies! If you use a powerful combo on a weakened enemy they will be completely dismembered or sliced in half. Use heavy blow on an enemy near death and Logan will pounce on them in slow mo for a nice decapitation. Grab an enemy near a spiked object and you can impale them. And then there’s quick kill. To perform a quick kill all you have to do is grab an enemy, push heavy attack, wait for the visual cue and then hit heavy attack again. Logan will then perform an awesome fatality on the victim which usually gets blood all over the camera. The best part is the enemy will usually scream “nooo!” or shout “Holy shit!” before they die. I absolutely love the quick kill! There’s usually several different quick kills for each enemy type. My personal favorite is the quick kill for the ghost soldiers. Logan will grab their shotgun and you have to press X rapidly to twist the shotgun around and blow their face off. The gory carnage is really the highlight of Uncaged Edition. Honestly I don’t think it would have as enjoyable without all the bloodshed. I need to try the PS2 version.

The boss battles are hit or miss. I won’t go into too much detail as each engagement is different. The more simple bosses like the Windigos require just the use of your lunge attack, but the better and more drawn out battles require that you use every single one of your moves, including all of you block and evade moves! I enjoyed the battle against the Mark I prototype, but the awesome battle that caught me off guard was the fight with Gambit. I thought it was going to be quick and painless like in the film, but no, it was an epic battle that spanned across an entire level. While others disagree with me I found this to be the most enjoyable part of the game. All of the other boss battles were disappointing at best. The fight against the Sentinel was just boring and the final battle with Deadpool almost felt anticlimactic, especially since Sabortooth wasn’t there to mix things up.

On the graphical side of things this game looks pretty good. The amount of color and detail that went into the environments really makes for a pretty picture at 1080i (provided the camera is free of blood stains). The two things that bother me with the visuals is the odd clash with realistic backgrounds and Wolverine’s cartoony claw animations, and the real time healing. The real time healing was marketed as a selling point for this game, and oddly enough it just looks awkward as patches of muscle and skin start popping up. The sound is pretty straight forward, but it’s Hugh Jackman’s voice that really add color to the action! The other voice actors do ok, but the dialogue can be pretty lame at some points, especially the disappointing battles with Maverick… I mean “Agent X”. One other thing about the graphics did strike me odd; there seems to be some minor censorship going on. Example, during a few parts of the game you’ll get to lunge onto helicopters and take out the pilots. One way of dispatching them is to have Logan pull the pilot through the windshield and decapitate them with the propeller blades. Here the blood turns purple. Another oddity occurs during one of the quick kills where Logan appears to ram his claws down the neck of an enemy and then tear out their rib cage, yet this isn’t seen. Could the Uncaged Edition have been pushing an AO rating? I must say that’s pretty brutal (in a good way).

With the more basic details out of the way there really isn’t much beyond that. The platforming parts are pretty standard and nothing to get excited over. Outside of the battle with Gambit I found the game did little to present a challenge. I enjoyed slaughtering countless enemies yes, but slaughtering is the key word here. Once the hard difficulty is unlocked I just found the enemies to be cheap. The difficulty just isn’t properly balanced. While it doesn’t show so much on the visual side of things the gameplay does make the game feel rushed, and I know Raven Software is an excellent developer. Another sign is the extremely limited amount of unlockables, just a few different costumes to play in from the X-Men comic books. These are cool but I find them out of place in this game. Starting a new game erases your stats and upgrades as well, so you have to stick to the level select after you beat the game on the normal difficulty setting. With only a single player campaign that takes at most 9 hours to complete the game needs more to it to increase the replay value.

After all that is said I did very much enjoy this game. If it were just 30 or even 40 dollars I would buy it. It’s a straight forward beat ‘em up with some decent platforming elements and just a ton of ways to dispose of your enemies. A good variety of enemies require you to keep changing up your strategy and using different techniques to take them down. It’s not very challenging and it can be cheap, but if you’re in the mood for a modern beat ‘em up you can’t go wrong with this game. I claim this game to be above average and considering how most people consider average games to be crap, that’s reason enough to check this game out. You might like it.