X-Men Origins: Wolverine The Game, Reviewed!

What’s the best way to see your favorite superheroes come to life, in all their awesomeness, showcasing all of their powers against countless minions and obstacles? Why, imagination of course! IMAAAGINAAAAASSSHUUUNNN!!! The next best way is to play them in video games. Well, good ones, at least.

In my quest to play all Marvel/DC based video games, there are times when I come across movie property video games, and they don’t have a very good record. Admittedly, move versions of superheroes sometimes exercise too much creative freedom, and a lot of the video game versions of those movies are horrible or subpar, at least. The only notable exceptions I can think of are the Spider-Man games, especially SM2, and Tom Jane’s Punisher, where the games are tons better than the movies regardless of the difference from the source material. Will Wolverine join this list?

Performance:

First off, this game was played on my rig, which hasn’t changed since I last reviewed a video game. Specs are:

Core 2 Quad Q6600 (yeah, my dick ain’t that big no more)
4 Gig DDR2 RAM
GeForce 8600 GTS

Basically, those are the things you need to know about, as a benchmark, at least. Now, this game, for a current gen console port, was very well optimized. Running at high, at around 1152×720, everything animated smoothly apart from the occassional lag in frame refreshing, when moving the camera around.

The older Spider-Man game, which didn’t look as glossy, slowed down a lot during explosions and other effects. In Wolverine, the game plays very similar to the console versions. However, I tried cranking the resolution to 1680×1050, my monitor’s native, and everything slowed down to a point that was too much for me to tolerate. Maybe more powerful graphics cards can run it at that setting, but I sure as hell can’t. Didn’t matter though, the game still looked shiny and ran like a Kenyan on fire and steroids.

Graphics:

This being a current gen port and all, you’d expect the graphics to be bloody awesome. And bloody awesome it is.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle Hugh Jackman sleeps tonight

Textures load up quick and some of them a pretty high-res, except for those tiny details on walls and other mundane objects. Wolverine and his opponents all seem high-res models, with lots of normal mapping for depth.

The environments are all beautiful rendered, each with its own unique look and feel. The jungle has lots of objects flying and flapping around, from leaves to trees to monkeys in the background- all of which add to the overall depth of the this environment. You’d totally be surprised at the amount of detail and stuff packed into the jungle environment. The industrial places like the Weapon X facility aren’t as impressive, but they’re still loaded with stuff to gawk at.

Shiny glowy effects look great, even though they take away some of the realism, but I guess you can’t have it all. The blood effects are fantastic. It makes for a truly grusome game. And graphically, the best part of the game is when Wolvie takes damage and parts of his body get exposed, depending on where he gets hit.

Dude, your spleen is totally showing.

What’s awesome is that it regenerates, ever so slowly- well, just enough so that you see it in all its disgusting, bloody, fleshy glory. How it’s done, I have no flippin’ idea. I do hope, however, that future video games get that feature, showing damage where damage is dealt.

Everything is crip and fantastic.

Sound:

The voice acting was surprisingly good for Hugh Jackman, as he reprises his role in video game form. Dialogue was believable and his feral growls and screams were even better than the ones he did for the actual movie. Think Tom Jane for Punisher. Jackman’s performance is almost at Steve Blum level but not quite there. How fucking awesome would this game be if Steve Blum voiced Wolverine? Fucking awesome, that’s how.

Hugh Jackman: “Brrr… it’s cold in here, there must be Jackman in the atmosphere.”

There were some cheesy lines in the whole thing, like when Wolvie killed two soldiers in a cutscene but left one alive, only to pick him off afterwards, he goes “I bet you thought you were lucky.” Okay, admittedly not all that cheesy, but delivery was meh.

Sabertooth/ Victor Creed seems to have been voiced by Liev Schreiber. I didn’t watch the credits so I don’t know. His dialogue seems to be very stoic, so I can’t really judge whether he did a good job of it or not because I’m not entirely sure if he intended it that way, but it worked.

SFX worked great, from the soldier theats and bloody murderous gurgling before their demise, it all fit in perfectly. Each soldier/ enemy type has a unique voice. Unfortunately, if you get attacked by a group of the same soldier type, they’d all just share one voice and set of lines.

SNIKT sounds the same whether it be bone or adamantium. I’m just picking nits here, but yeah, that was weird. Each thud and slice is brutally like cutting through meat with a heavy meat cleaver. That said, I have no problem with the SFX whatsoever.

The music was militaristic, as far as I can tell. It didn’t do anything to ruin the experience, although it didn’t do much to enhance it either. Music, for me, was a non-factor.

Gamplay:

This is the meat of it all, where it all comes down to. Yes, the game play is very, very good, although it gets somewhat repetitive in terms of enemies. The combat system and the puzzles are a lot like God of War. Hell, even the way he climbs up shit is a whole lot like God of War.

In combat, just like God of War, Wolvie gets combos and has light attacks and heavy attacks, and yes, they do ground pound, too (just like Kratos). Holding down the heavy attack button makes him slash upwards and sends opponents into the sky where he can follow up with arial combos (just like Kratos). Pressing light attacks followed by one heavy attack makes for a combo with a heavy finish, such as a ground pound with splash damage (just like Kratos). Grabbing enemies then pressing buttons around would either result in beating it to death, an instant-kill, or just hurling it across the platform (sort of like Kratos). The major difference is Wolvie does it with claws instead of pussy-ass knives tied to his arms.

I killed you dead, like a god of war!

Wolvie has a lunge that is very useful against grunts and getting through puzzles, from platform to platform. It also has a sweet slow motion camera rotation thingy if you kill an enemy during the initial hit of the lunge.

Like I said, enemies tend to get a tad repetitve, because there are probably 6 enemy types, excluding bosses. Getting through the levels gets a bit tedious sometimes, but the game throws something new at you every so often, so you don’t get bored. Oh, and boss battles are fucking awesome. They’re not gimmicky at all.

Hello thar, Meester Sentinul!

There are numerous puzzles, so it isn’t at all 100% mindless killing. You have to solve areas where you have to cut ropes, push stone blocks around and rotate wheels that wouldn’t be there normally. You know, just like in God of War. And you do a lot of shimmying across thin boards and tight ropes and you do a lot of scaling up walls. You know, just like in God of War.

Oh, and when you’re stuck somewhere or just plain lost, just use the one unique thing about Wolverine that Kratos does not have, his feral senses. It pretty much tells you what environment things can kill, what are special objects and where to go next.

Wolvie has four special attacks, activated by pressing a shoulder button, RT, I think, then pressing one of the face buttons. This is something GoW doesn’t have, I think. Oh wait, yes it does. For magic and shit.

In terms of collectibles, you have get to retrieve dog tags from dead guys. In the 360 and PS3 versions, once you get halfway  and when you collect them all, you get achievements of gamerscore or whatever that system has. Each dog tag has experience points. There are also mutagens, which is a small bonus upgrade to Wolvie’s powers and skills, such as gaining experience quicker or dealing more damage during Fury. There’s also a matter of the bonus extra costumes. Scattered throughout the levels are action figures in different Wolvie costumes. Pick up two of the same, you get to fight the costume in the main menu. Take him out and you get the costume.

Here they are: Classic Wolverine: The yellow and blue X-Men suit, from the 90s.

You also get the Legendary brown and tan costume. This is sure to be a fan pleaser.

And the X-Force costume, which is my favorite one because of the cool red eyes.

Story:

If you liked the movie, then you might not like the changes they made for the video game. I don’t wanna give away anything spoiler-y, but if you like your brain, try not to think about the story so much. Just enjoy the mayhem.

Overall:

I think it’s a great game, if you like God of War-like games. It’s hack and slash at its very essence, but it’s really a great platformer and puzzle game in one, too. I give it:

Four out of five Kratoses.

This is an absolute must-play if you’re a Marvel fan. Rent this bad boy out, because once you complete everything, the replay value falls short.