The beast is uncaged!
Marvel's favorite Canadian son finally gets his own game worthy of praise. It's not exactly a movie tie-in game and the action and story wears thin before it's all over, but damn if it's not a blast to butcher your way past enemies till the very end.
The story isn't as jarring as the reviews would make it out to be. From the very first intro cinematic on throughout the test of the game, the levels are all just a series of flashbacks. Its not Academy award winning stuff, but it provides enough of a stage for Wolvie to go in and hack people to bits. I didn't find it quite as repetitive as others have complained about, but I do see why it would seem that way when the story was told it way it was and having you fight enemies you thought you were done fighting already.
There's a small number of easter eggs and little nods to other games (namely one to a very popular MMORPG) scattered in a few of the levels. There was enough variety in level design but I wish there were more wide open areas. Even the outdoor levels felt restrictive at times. I still glee with laughter as I enter an open area filled with baddies only to lunge all over the place from one dude to another dispatching them one by one.
Disappointed about some of the cutscenes though as there was considerable texture pop-in that was very noticeable. The general quality of the in-game cinematics was pretty poor which is unfortunate because they are nowhere near the quality that the intro had. And I did experience some slowdown in areas with a large number of enemies attacking you at once. It's also a good thing they didn't Ninja Blade this and made every cutscene into a ridiculous QTE-fest.
You fight a number of bosses in the game namely Sabretooth, Blob, Gambit, a Sentinel and Deadpool.
The Sentinel battle felt like a real missed opportunity. It certainly was the one of the few battles in the game that really had that epic GoW type grandeur and scale. I wish they could have worked in a Shadow of the Colossus type mechanic where you had to claw your way up to the top to inflict damage on certain points. Running around his slashing at his feet and hands (when he tries to strike) you, only to play a skydiving mini-game followed by a ending cinematic really makes the whole affair lose some of it's luster.
The remaining bosses have pretty simple patterns to decode and are made short work of by liberal use of lunging and your Rage attacks. The Blob battle was fun if nothing for the sheer silliness and amount of environmental carnage you could do in it's level.
The RPG-lite elements were a welcome diversion, but they didn't seem to add much, at least that I could see. The "Reflexes" for instance - I didn't really see any difference in the types of quick kills you could do or even a discernable amount of damage you could inflict to the different enemy types by upgrading them. The quick kills could have been made cooler if they gave you the ability to choose which to execute (like a direction + Y or X) and vary in brutality depending on the enemy type. The "Mutagens" were sort of fun to hunt down for and did seem to work as could custom augments to Wolvie's existing abilities.
It's safe to say without a doubt this was the best Wolverine game I've played. It has its moments of sheer unabashed fun in it's visceral and unapologetic combat system but still falls a bit short of my watermark for action adventure hack-n-slash which is still God of War (which may or may not be a valid comparison despite whether or not you're sick of the comparison even being brought up).
