How Much Nolan North?
Chimichangas, budgets, and voice acting are rarely used as the basis for serious video game stories, but High Moon Studios didn’t try to create a serious game when they made Deadpool. High Moon chose to create a game that focused on crazy dialogue, violent action, and dick jokes. Most of the time, Deadpool fulfilled the goals that High Moon set, but the experience did occasionally fail to entertain.
Deadpool focused on the titular character and his quest to create a video game with High Moon Studios and Nolan North. This was made explicitly clear in the opening level when Deadpool lounged around his apartment before calling and threatening the head of High Moon. A script was delivered and Deadpool immediately began changing the entire story and different set pieces before beginning his first contract assignment.
In order to pursue his goals of murdering people and finding chimichangas, Deadpool traversed office buildings and the island of Genosha while killing multitudes of enemies with a combination of melee weapons and firearms. Traversing the island involved simple platforming mixed with the occasional puzzle or stealth section in order to reach the next open combat area. None of the puzzles proved to be harder than finding the correct power source for a tool or discovering the correct jumping order for different platforms, and the stealth sections involved Deadpool sneaking up and quietly murdering enemies.
The combat was similarly simple, but the attacks and weapons could be randomized and combined to create powerful combo attacks. These combo attacks earned DP (Deadpool Points) that were used to upgrade Deadpool and his weapons. Deadpool had access to three melee weapons (katanas, hammers, and sai) as well as four types of firearms (pistols, shotguns, Uzis, and a pulse rifle). Most enemies could be killed with one or two hits, but bosses and more powerful enemies could take a lot of punishment. These powerful enemies are a main reason why Deadpool’s combat became frustrating. Many bosses had unblockable attacks that took most of Deadpool’s health. When these attacks were mixed together with a half dozen ranged enemies, the chance of survival greatly decreased.
One other problem with Deadpool’s combat was the camera. Deadpool could use teleportation to flash around the room and avoid incoming attacks, but the camera had a difficult time tracking this teleportation. Occasionally, Deadpool teleported behind an enemy, but the camera focused on a wall or rock instead of the enemy, which made it difficult to avoid any incoming attacks.
Combat in Deadpool was entertaining at first, but the difficulty spiked during later chapters. Enemies that were simple to kill earlier could murder Deadpool in two or three hits. Deadpool also spouted many phrases during the combat scenarios that ranged from insulting enemies to discussing combat tactics with the player. Most jokes were entertaining at first, but the increased difficulty resulted in Deadpool repeating jokes too many times during battles or death screens.
High Moon Studios shot for the stars when developing Deadpool—even going as far as hiring Daniel Way (author of the Deadpool comic for many years) to create the story for the game, but the resulting product isn’t amazing. The combat proved to be entertaining for most of the game, but the lack of variation mixed with drastic difficulty changes made the later chapters very frustrating. The jokes and constant backtalk provided quite a few laughs, but the same lines were repeated too often. These issues took Deadpool from being an essential experience to one that requires slightly lowered expectations.
