Summer blockbuster fun
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is by no means a perfect game. It has a large handful of problems, ones that range from small to medium in size. At times they make the game totally frustrating or even unplayable, and almost cause an otherwise good game to be generally unenjoyable. But the crazy thing about Wolverine is that even with all its problems, it still manages to be fun. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a blast in the simplest of ways, making it a great game for any and all action fans.
As mentioned, Wolverine's list of caveats is a long one. Combat is simplistic, button-mashy, and extremely repetitive. The random puzzle sequences are annoying at best, and the jumping controls are a bit wonky, leading to some awkward and frustrating platforming segments. The pacing is a little off, with some levels dragging on too long, and others flying by way too fast. But more than anything else, Wolverine is a really buggy game. I'm talking choppy frame rate, tons of clipping, and general freezing issues. A real time cutscene once lagged visually while the audio carried on, making the whole thing an out of sync mess. While fighting Gambit the guy randomly glitched out of existence, forcing me to restart my console (and therefore the fight). During a platforming sequence a moving platform didn't even come, causing me to fall to my death. This kind of stuff happened all during my play through Wolverine, and I was never happy to see such glitches.
But even as I trudged through all of Wolverine's frustrations and mediocrity, I still never wanted to stop playing it- perhaps the truest testament of a fun game. Combat is satisfying in its simplicity- the lunge attack for one never gets old, and neither does the brutal fashion in which Wolverine dispatches his foes (or the hilarious, terrified screams they unleash before you impale them). The visuals and audio do a great job at making the combat feel appropriately primal, which in turn makes ripping dudes to shreds remain satisfying even after doing it a hundred times. The game also goes pretty far with the source material, leading to some awesome, over-the-top set pieces and boss encounters. In fact, the entire game has a sort of joie de vivre about it that's pretty hard to resist. So many games take themselves uber seriously nowadays that it's nice to play a game that seems happy to exist. You can tell that the developers really got into the whole thing, which in turn makes it a lot easier for the player to get on board. So even when everything was bugging out, I really didn't care that much- I was Wolverine, and a bunch of glitches were not going to stand between me and wanton destruction!
In short, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not amazing. Even without all its bugs, most aspects of the game boil down to pretty basic stuff. It doesn't really go out of its way to reinvent the wheel, or even have any lasting impact on the player. What it does do, however, is try to be unabashedly fun in the most straightforward ways possible. It turns out that's something Wolverine does better than most games, making it easy to recommend to fans of the genre.
For additional information on my review style and scoring system, click here.
