A bloody action game with not much adventure.
For Wolverine’s first stand alone game in a long time, Wolverine holds nothing back. It’s action packed, gory, and full of generic Wolverine humor. It almost feels like a God of War or Devil May Cry clone, but falls short in few factors.
If you’re followed the movie, you’ll pretty much know the story. Wolverine has a dark past set in Africa, where his crew of United States mutant marines are looking for “something”. The game follows close to the movie, enough where it borrows part of the script word-for-word. You’ll even run into the same boss fights Wolverine encounters in the film. Does it work? Overall, yeah, it works pretty well. Does it make it a good story? Not really.
The game play is very similar to God of War. Wolverine runs into waves of enemies, most with their own abilities, and you mash button combos to kill them in a fury of blood and limbs. The gore is pretty outrageous, too. You can cut off limbs, heads, and actually pick people up to rip them in half. Wolverine himself runs into a gory mess too. As bullets or machete's slice into him, you’ll see battle damage appear, and slowly heal over time. If you’re into that sort of thing, it’s pretty gritty, even if it’s the same thing over and over again.
Wolverine has three basic attacks: light, heavy, and grab attacks. His claws are his only weapon for all of these attacks, unless you count the use of select pieces of environment. You’ll also receive upgrades through XP received from killing enemies, completing quest, or finding hidden secrets. These upgrades range from upgrading your maximum health to doing more damage with a special attack. With a special attack, you drain a rage meter located directly under your health bar. While in rage mode, you’ll have access to a couple of special attacks such as a spin attack or berserker mode for extra damage and health regeneration. Another mode would be Wolverine’s feral vision, which allows you to see where to go next and spot the breakable items or enemies.
The types of enemies are limited. You’ll fight off several tribesmen, several special marines, and then a few other characters. It’s a bit unrealistic in this age to think there would be more than you’re typical hack-and-slash action game. The few characters that got old really fast were the bosses. They just lacked variety, and they were really easy. They just took a bit too long to kill. Some of them lead to cheap deaths, especially the final boss. You’ll fall off the map more than once, thanks to several glitches.
The game features a host of glitches. The most annoying glitch is one that prevents you from loading the game because you have a download in the background. This causes the game to crash, resulting in a lost signal to your television. To fix it, you just need to pause or cancel the downloads, then load the game. The other glitches may cause you to die in the game, but mostly they’re graphically faults.
If it doesn’t bother you that the game is repetitive, then you’ll be happy to know the game is fairly lengthy with several enemies to kill throughout. The levels aren’t too badly designed, but they’ll get tiresome since some require a bit of back traveling. The game isn’t overall horrible, and for a game based on a movie, it’s not half bad. But towards the end, you’ll crave for the ending more than a chance for a second playthrough.
Recommendation: Rent
