X-Men Origins: Wolverine

So there’s a discernable and almost concerning difference in mentality between and the games industry regarding violence. Within the film world, big budget films need be toned down lest they earn the dreaded R rating and restrain kids from seeing the movie and buying the action figures. As a result, we have the goreless Terminator, as well as an action movie where the main protagonist and antagonist are murderers with claws and yet not a single drop of blood is allowed to let.

And then there’s the video game industry, where games go out of their way to feature gratuitous violence to appeal to those exact same kids who nag their parents to buy their shady crime game or space marine shooter of the month while whining away with cries of “But Mooooooom! Doug’s mom let him buy that M rated game!”  And thus the game based on that exact same movie can feature torn limbs, seared flesh and exposed bone so frequently that the appearance of a healthy, unscathed human being becomes foreign.

So X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Uncaged Edition is the very embodiment of what’s wrong with retail marketing in video games. As a Mortal Kombat child, I won’t sulk much on the issue.

Here’s a game so excessive that it makes God of War look like Tom and Jerry. slices and dices and dismembers his prey with more rage than the combined teen angst of the late 90s rap/rock movement. And just as the comics have the bad habit of doing, the game goes overboard with Wolverine’s “Healing factor.” My what a factor it is; you’ll find Wolverine’s skin tear, flesh char, muscles rip and organs and bone expose, and then watch in awe as they gradually patch together until Hugh Jackman’s muscular frame is restored.

And you know what? In this game, it just fits the gimmick perfectly. “God of War clone” is the most apropos description of X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Uncaged Edition (and my what a top-heavy title the game has.) But the game makes just enough tweaks and modifications that you feel less like you’re playing as Kratos and more like our real Canadian hero. Every attack, from the basic light and heavy slashes to the super rage attacks to the ability to mount and repeatedly stab a fallen enemy, has the look and bloody result that you’d expect from nobody but Weapon X. The brightest new tweak is the “Lunge” attack, which allows the player to lock on to a distant enemy and instantaneously pounce the fool like, say, a wolverine. Besides making a great way to quickly close the distance between you and that unassuming trooper with a gun, lunging into a crowd of enemies is just nothing short of pure Wolverinism.

Okay, okay, so Wolverine The Game is actually really good. Almost great, even. I was expecting to be grossly disappointed with a shallow, generic, buggy movie tie-in like all almost every other Marvel movie game... moreso with this game because I hated its movie counterpart almost as much as Wolverine hates humans with two arms. This dislike for the X-Men movie prequel is less due to the lack of violence as it was from the terrible lines, illogical plot and forced attempt to shoehorn as many comic characters as possible, regardless of what drastic changes must be made to the original character’s integrity. And Will.i.am is in it. Wolverine: The Video Game (is that not an easier title to pass through your system?) tweaks and paces out the story so that it becomes a bit more tolerable. Some of the minor characters are dropped, a subplot involving Sentinels is inserted, and the game mixes the main story with flashback stages set in a Mayan jungle that actually manages to stay diverse enough to not feel inconvenient. The plot as a whole is still bad by any storytelling standards, but inserting an elaborate action sequence involving the introduction of helicopters to Wolverine’s claws between pieces of dialogue makes for a more palatable experience.

The game is predominantly linear, with going from one side of the stage to the other and inserting his bone to many a man’s insides along the way. (Surely you’ve heard of the bone claws storyline.) There are a few breaks: the occasional platforming/climbing bit and the odd floor switch puzzle, almost all of which are so simplified that they exist only to give Wolverine’s liver a chance to grow back. Really, the story of the game is this; waves of enemies appear, Wolverine growls, they get cut, you move on. Except for maybe one or two parts, the game never feels like wave after wave of drones are being thrown to prolong the experience (expect for a few exceptions), and I appreciate that. There’s a decent variety of goons ranging from armed soldiers with guns and a quick death wish, to superpowered guardians with swords, elaborate attacks and a slightly delayed death wish. These tougher goons keep the game from being a complete button-masher, and also encourage the player to keep an eye on their surroundings for spikes or other hazards to take advantage of instant kills.

To top it all off, pressing Up on the d-pad reveals Wolverine’s “Feral sense”, which I guess is a cute term for “sense of smell.” This allows a visual representation of things you can interact/impale with, which helps to keep the player pointed in the right direction. So there’s a constant sense of forward momentum, and just enough downtime placed between the lengthy murdering sprees that there’s no sense of fatigue. Oh, and there’s some quicktime events, almost always involving mashing a button repeatedly, but they never catch you by surprise and always deliver a spectacular cavalcade of violence.

So Wolverine hits all the right notes in the field of being a game about Wolverine; you can even unlock his yellow and orange costumes if you hated Hugh Jackman that much at the Oscars. But the game has a few hiccups that keep it from being the best at what it does. The biggest issue (and perhaps only legitimate issue) is the pacing. The second chapter just seems to go on and on. “” consists of an endless stream of forestland followed by what may as well be the largest military base to not appear on Google Maps. And in that level, a certain large enemy, the “Wendigo” is inserted with a bit too much frequency. This “Wendigo” has absolutely no resemblance to comic book Wendigo. Similar to God of War’s Cyclops but more annoying, defeating the large beast requires that Logan lunge on his back when it’s caught off guard, mash X to chip away its health bar, then repeat 3-4 times over. The first battle with Wendigo, and its giant magma monster cousin in the jungles would’ve been considered memorable affairs, but then another Wendigo appears later. In the Alkali Lake level, you’ll fight one Wendigo, and then another, and then two at the same time, and then four in succession (with each one awaking if you accidentally fall near it’s cage, leaving the possibility of fighting comic book desecrations at once!)

Once you finally escape that blasted lake, the game becomes awesome for a good lengthy stretch. The scenery becomes interesting and the enemies become tougher without feeling “cheap.” Then the game throws three, THREE boss fights at the player, all in succession of each other, and all of which could rank as the most entertaining boss fights in a rather long time. For these couple hours, I’m grinning with joy at the shockingly entertaining action game that I’m playing, that can easily give the last Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden games a run for their blood-stained dollar.

And if you were disappointed in the lack of screen time given to Gambit in the movie (you know, like EVERYONE else?) well you’ll be more than thrilled by what this game gives you.

And then I get to the final chapter, the military base at the end of the movie. And instead of an epic war involving legions of guards standing between and his revenge, I get a small scuffle with some Foot Soldier-worthy troops, two easy bosses, and an ending. The only explanation I can think for such a strong game getting cut off at the shins is the kind of deadlines that’ll ruin any movie tie-in game.

Now, there are other little issues that scream of a rushed product, but they’re less hampering than they are petty or even humourous. The lunge move is sometimes used as a means to clear a massive gap with a lone enemy lying across the distance as bait, and it’s almost funny how Wolverine will only attempt such a long jump if the promise of fresh meat awaits him.

The aftermath of the adamantium skeleton fusion is often depicted as a violent and savage massacre, and in the game, Wolverine collects his thoughts long enough to reason with a doctor and then rescue a little girl.

Without giving anything away, a revelation involving Will.i.am and another character from the movies appears that, while harmless to the actual game in question, filled me with great rage at the long-since soiled movie canon. Another story sequence appearing only in this game could have served as a suitable replacement for a terrible plot device from the movie…except they resort to that terrible plot device during the ending anyways, rendering the cutscene before it useless. Ask me personally if you’d like the spoilers.

Wolverine gets experience as he progresses, earning points that can be used on assorted stats. But the system as a whole feels useless. I barely noticed the upgrades to attacks or stats when I assign points to them. More insubstantial is the “battle reflexes” system, which theoretically increases the damage Wolverine does to certain enemies the more he fights them. Why they included such a system in a linear game with a finite number of enemies, I’ll never know. Perhaps World of Warcraft has made people fascinated with seeing a number that gradually increases overtime to give a false sense of progression. If leveling up in games makes you feel better about your progress, here’s an exercise: grab a pen and a piece of paper, and make a line every time an hour passes. At the end of the day, you’ll be at level 24! By the end of day three, you’ll have reached World of Warcraft’s level cap!

If all of the faults in the last two paragraphs are insubstantial to you, then these complaints will be nothing short of worthless. As Wolverine takes damage, his shirt rips (both for realism and because ladies find Hugh Jackman sexy), yet the shirt will magically reappear in cutscenes. It becomes more comedic when you’re wearing one of the classic costumes, and Wolverine develops superhuman fabric regeneration powers that can repair torn spandex. If you’re climbing a rope or ladder and enemies without guns are on a nearby ledge, they’ll start randomly swiping their swords in your direction in perhaps what is the evil enemy soldier version of jazz hands.

So there’s a bit of a stench reeking of rushed product looming about the Wolverine video game. The more overbearing issues keep a very good game from being a very great game, but that doesn’t keep Wolverine from being a throwaway. It’s a sufficient God of War/Devil May Cry clone, and we haven’t gotten a good one since God of War on the PSP. On top of that, it’s almost certainly the greatest game ever made about Wolverine. If for whatever reason you’re swamped with playing other action games that are trying to imitate comic book storylines (of which there are now two too-many) and you can’t afford to drop another $70, you can get by just fine by waiting for the price to drop, as movie-based games are prone to doing. But if the urge to stick three claws into someone’s diaphragm surfaces, or for whatever sick reason you actually LIKED the movie, well then here’s looking at you, bub.

3 ½ stars