X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged
X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn't have very much going for it at first glance. It's got the stigma of being both a movie tie-in game, which is enough to damn nearly anything to the abyss of things we shouldn't care about. It's also a super hero game, many of which in recent years have been underwhelming, at best. Providing maybe a few lackluster hours of entertainment with our favorite heroes. However, the prospect of playing a Wolverine centric game isn't all glum, by any means. The experience is that of a beat em' up, not really a genre that I come into contact with anymore, not since the mid-late 90s at any rate. This is an incredibly refreshing experience to someone who is just emerging from the claustrophobic halls of a Phobos lab, generic alien spacecraft or the trenches of WWII. Anyone who keeps close tabs on the beat em' up front may not be as wide eyed with glee at the pounding of foes.
Raven Interactive is at the helm of this adamantium clad ship, it's quite clear they never once meant to appeal to the same broad audience as the PG-13 film that has recently hit theaters. This isn't a game for the kiddies under any circumstances. During the pre-release marketing barrage of gameplay footage it was made quite clear that a selling point of the game is the ability to completely eviscerate your foes. Your bone, or adamantium claws (varying on where you are in the story) slice through the femurs, spines, necks, shoulders and shins of your enemies like my teeth through a fried candy bar. The game is absolutely and unapologetically brutal at all times. This appealed to my inner twelve year old Wolverine fan more than I'd like to admit.
One of the first things one notices about the game are the visuals. It takes full advantage of the UE3 technology, the crowning achievement is that you don't instantly recognize it as a UE3 game, like so many others before it. The aforementioned gore is rendered splendidly on our hero himself and the victims around him. Nearly all of the environments you track your enemies through are visually appealing, however, there's definitely a vast amount of recycled geometry within the levels. While the recycling isn't typically a problem, it did result in my getting turned around a couple of times. The snowy level looks snowy, the jungle levels look humid, wet, hot and dense. Overall the game pins what it seems they set out for on the visual front.
The mechanics are all there, they all feel solid and there really isn't a single move you'll feel inclined to abuse (discounting the awesome lunge ability). After the first hour of trouncing cannon fodder I felt at home with the combo system, which usually never happens in anything with the words combo or system. While it may not be as deep as some folk like, I always felt I had a wide range of savage attacks ready to stream from my clawed hands for any given situation. There's also many instances in which you can use the environment as a weapon, picking enemies up and handily hanging them from fork truck forks like a screaming holiday ornament. There are very few times in the game where the base mechanics will cause you frustration.
Our hero, Wolverine, sustains a substantial amount of damage in his efforts against those that wronged him. From animated statues in the sweltering jungles, to heavily armed and armored guards in the depths of the Alkali Lake facility you're facing a steady torrent of capable adversaries. When you fail a counter against a sword wielding opponent it's represented not only in your health bar, but on your person as well. The mutant healing factor fans of the comic were familiar with is a thing of the past. Wolverine is now able to withstand being reduced to a spinal cord, vital organs and exposed ribs and start sealing himself back up right after an encounter. It's a great aid to gameplay, you're able to tell when you need to pull back on the reigns for a moment without ever really having to look at how much health you've got. While not for the feint of heart, or those who just ate, it's a great mechanic.
In addition to the bevy of brutal blows, the freakish healing factor and tasty visuals is the experience system. This system allows for a fairly shallow amount of growth in your character, somewhat personalizing the players specific rendition of Wolverine, up until the point where everyone ends up with the same thing anyway. I was able to achieve level 30 while playing on the normal difficulty, this allowed me to just about max out all that was critical in my epic battle against limbs that were still attached to torsos. Also unlockable are three slots in which to place mutagens you discover throughout the game. These are passive abilities that do things ranging from giving you additional experience per kill, to causing you to do a greater amount of damage when you're nearing the river Styx. I must say it added a good amount of enjoyment to the game and increased the sense of accomplishment greatly. All the gushing aside, the game does suffer its' share of drawbacks, primarily in the form of length. The narrative, while never actually strong or even interesting, just doesn't hold up for the amount of time it takes to slice and dice through the game. Many times, the massively enjoyable action slams on the brakes to make way for a few minutes of mind numbingly boring, simple, and repetitive puzzle elements that, after the first few, serve no purpose but to delay you from seeing the credits roll.
Another issue I take with the game is the writing. It ranges from laughable to so bad it isn't laughable, it's just painful to listen to. Some lines are clearly ripped straight from the film script, while some seem to be from some really early version of the script, the one they shredded and vowed never to talk about. Hand in hand with the poor writing comes the voice acting, which fares somewhat better. Wolverine goes from sounding like Wolverine to sounding like voice actor guy, whereas Sabretooth for the most part sounds good. Most of the peripheral characters are voiced by fairly competent voice actors that didn't seem to have too much time to go over their lines. This area, overall, acts as a blemish on an otherwise enjoyable game.
My final complaint is that the game was obviously shoved out the door to coincide with the release of the film. Unfortunately, it suffers from this, though not nearly as much as the majority of movie tie-in games. This becomes most apparent in some of the CG cutscenes with all the sound being on the weak side, it became a distraction with everything else being so well polished. Many of the non CG cutscenes in the game come in the form of pre-rendered footage, which is washed out, grainy and unattractive. The in-game cinematics are, however, top notch. Which makes me wonder why they went with pre-rendered at all. The game is dotted with some textures that don't seem to be finished, even after giving plenty of time for all of them to stream in, which wasn't much of a problem compared to most UE3 games.
After all the bodies are piled up and the credits have come and gone, this is a game that overcame my extremely low expectations by providing seven or eight hours of a kind fun that's been hard to find outside of arcades, it's a very classic feeling game. While there's really no new ground being broken here, there's plenty of bones, barriers, walls and anything else you can break being thoroughly trashed.
