Deadpool

A delusional anti-hero with a love of casual misogyny, a serious case of ADD, multiple personalities and a constant habit of bulldozing straight through the forth wall. Deadpool is not exactly your typical run-of-the-mill Marvel superhero. You either love his brand of puerile, off-kilter humour and zany antics or loathe his annoying in-your-face demeanour; the Merc with a Mouth polarizes comic book fans quite like no other. Whichever side of the fence you fall on will dictate how much enjoyment you can glean from his first starring role in a videogame. His insanity and violent tendencies certainly lend themselves well to the medium but effective comedy is not something so easily accomplished. Fortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, Deadpoolnails a lot of its comedic elements, and diehard fans will certainly appreciate High Moon Studios’ faithful rendition of the character and their reverence for the material. They just may not necessarily appreciate the way it plays.

There’s no arguing with the titular hero’s characterisation. The story has something to do with Mister Sinister and an army of clones but Deadpool himself never gives you any reason to care or pay attention to its narrative so why should you? The game opens inside Deadpool’s decrepit apartment as a dialogue plays out between his three distinct personalities and the head of High Moon Studios (a frequently shameless namedrop). In a typical case of fourth wall breaking Wade Wilson wants his own videogame, budgets be damned, and so the rest of the game follows this ludicrous dream as it plays out and quickly flies off the handle with plenty of player engagement and a willingness to mess around with videogame structure and the various tropes and conventions therein.

The opening starts off strongly enough with a barrage of jokes and references spattered across a broad spectrum. Upon taking control you’re immediately rewarded with an achievement – which Deadpool playfully alludes to – before being given another just for the sake of it. You’re then free to walk around his apartment, perhaps engaging in a phone conversation with Nolan North – who voices Deadpool in a fantastically maniacal fashion - where Wilson asks if he would voice him in his upcoming videogame. Or maybe you’ll surf the web for cyst-bursting videos and decline another friend request from a certain Ryan Reynolds (who played the role in X-Men Origins: Wolverine) before emptying your bowels of the Chimychanga Wilson so adores. It’s all as nonsensical and self-referential as you would imagine but it’s a lot of fun and there’s some genuine humour to be found here.

The rest of the game unfortunately struggles to maintain this same rapid momentum throughout its six or so hours. Jokes are extremely hit and miss but they come at such a constant clip and in such copious amounts that you’re bound to find some that hit the mark sooner rather than later. You’ll have to wade through a cavalcade of dick jokes to get there, but you’ll find them. Parodying videogame tropes and mocking lazy game design and industry practices is fine, too, but when you indulge in those same faults yourself it reflects poorly. There’s nothing worse than calling attention to something that’s bad while simultaneously asking the player to suffer through it.

Deadpool’s most outlandish digressions and homage’s to classic videogames from the 8-bit era and beyond provide the game’s veritable high points, diverging into absurdity with gleeful results that almost encroach on Suda51 territory. It’s disappointing that these moments are so brief since the rest of the game is rather dull and uninspired by comparison. You’ll venture through not one, but two different sewer sections, a generic skyscraper, ancient tombs and a prison complex filling out the rest of this drab brown and grey package. The overall art and level design lacks the wackiness of Deadpool’s whimsical asides, all too often striking a disconnect between the comedy of its optional distractions and the lackadaisical mechanics of the core gameplay.

High Moon Studios have opted to play it safe, meshing simple melee action with unsatisfying third-person shooting. Firearms lack impact, and their aiming is inaccurate, but they’re never really needed when you consider Deadpool’s brand of button-mashing combat is able to decimate most enemies with relative ease. The majority of your time is spent slicing and dicing through arena after arena and laying waste to hordes of similar enemy types. Chain together enough combos and you’ll gain momentum to unleash devastating radial moves, utilizing a dodge to get out of danger and telegraphed button prompts to counter much like in the Batman: Arkham games. With each kill you earn Deadpool Points which can be spent on new weapons and upgrades that allude to variety but never deliver. Button mashing is always the order of the day.

It’s formulaic but there’s fun to be found in its simple violence, even if tedium is quick to follow. Light platforming sections provide a breather from the savage action, and the game’s brevity means it doesn’t overstay its welcome as poorly as it could have. Unfortunately, however, an obnoxious difficulty spike near the game’s conclusion does sap the wind out of its already faltering sails. Deadpool’s idea of an increased challenge is to throw oodles of bullet sponge enemies at you for lengthy periods of time. Contending with close ranged melee attacks and ranged projectiles that deplete your health in an instant is a frustratingly tedious juggling act hindered by inconsistent controls. Your dodge is mapped to the same button as the counter resulting in many situations where you want to get out of danger and end up further entrenched in it. Despite its frustrations this was never much of an issue previously, but with the sudden ramp up in difficulty it takes on a whole new meaning. Poor checkpointing and over-long battles do little to alleviate things either, while the game’s poor camera leads to many cases of being hit without seeing how.

Once you do make it through Deadpool’s artificial late-game challenge and defeat its awful final boss there isn’t much more to do. If its combat hasn’t yet worn thin there are challenge rooms to compete in but that’s pretty much all she wrote. This isn’t a game as “awesome” as Deadpool likes to tell you but some of its jokes are certainly worth seeing, even if there’s a similar number that fall completely flat. It’s just a shame this isn’t a more original game to play, taking the wacky off-the-wall insanity of its protagonist and his excursions and applying some of that daring to its mechanics. It’s played safe, and although its jokes might make one playthrough worthwhile even they struggle to maintain the interest of a game severely lacking the nuance and depth of its contemporaries.