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Finally, an X-Men game that does the character justice. Expectations are typically fairly low for movie-licensed games that don’t target children but fortunately Raven Software defied the odds. Their M-rated adaptation of the PG-13 film pulls no punches in delivering a truly powerful character and empowering you to step into his shoes.
As expected, you’ll play as Wolverine in a story that follows and expands on the events in the film through five chapters that should last 10-12 hours. The game’s story stands out as being less developed than the other aspects. It isn’t always clear why you are where you are or fighting someone, especially at the beginning, which moves you around different time periods in succession. This is probably to avoid spoiling too many details of the film and while a bit confusing doesn’t detract from the gameplay. While the game doesn’t have multiplayer, the 10-12 hour campaign and unlockable hard mode encourage a second play through.
It’s clear from playing X-Men Origins: Wolverine that Raven was inspired by other third-person action games, especially the God of War series. As such, Wolverine doesn’t really innovate as much as deliver an extremely refined and polished experience. This means that you’ll face off progressively stronger and well-armed enemies in larger numbers, take on mid-level bosses and special villains from the Marvel universe, as well as solve some relatively simple environmental puzzles. Wolverine has a two-part regenerative health system. If you take enough damage (and deplete the first health bar), you’ll start taking damage to your vitals, which regenerate more slowly. In practice, dying is a relatively rare experience since Wolverine’s regeneration kicks in after a few seconds of avoiding damage.
In a game where you’re spending most of your time fighting, it helps to have a really strong combat engine and here is where Wolverine shines. It’s the first game that makes you feel like you’re truly playing as Wolverine as you plow through enemies using Wolverine’s claws. The game has both light and heavy attacks that you mix to perform combos, very powerful fury attacks (that require you to fill a rage meter to unleash), and my favorite move, a lunge attack. The lunge attack serves as the game’s ranged attack and allows you to target an enemy and lunge towards them to finish them off. Once you’re on top of the enemy, you can combine the attack with one of Wolverine’s standard attacks for a truly satisfying finisher. The God of War influences are present not only in the combat but also in the fact that Wolverine gains levels, which allows you to increase some of his stats and attacks. You’ll even collect red orbs from defeated enemies.
Aside from the nearly endless possibilities of combos, the game’s combat is nuanced in other ways. As you progress through the game, you’ll be required to change your strategy since the same combos (or mindless button-mashing) aren’t the most effective methods for latter enemies. There are also environment- based attacks that you can execute such as impaling enemies into a spike or throwing them towards an exposed electrical charge box. You’ll also see finishing moves from time to time where Wolverine will kill the enemy in truly gruesome ways. You’ll see claws going into skulls, limbs and torsos being torn apart, heads going through blades, and more. The violence is well done and never over the top, but the sheer amount may surprise fans familiar with other superhero games, especially since the film is rated PG-13.
Visually, X-Men Origins: Wolverine looks pretty good. Wolverine himself is a faithful recreation of Hugh Jackman, with great animations and details, including real-time damage that exposes the character’s muscles and even skeleton as you take damage. The other Marvel characters all look great, as do the enemies you’ll take on, although the models become a bit repetitive after a while. The game’s environments are all technically competent but the indoor ones suffer from being plain-looking and nearly indistinguishable from one another. In terms of sound, Wolverine again is the highlight thanks to Jackman’s voice acting. The other sound effects are suitably strong, too. It’s clear that nailing Wolverine was Raven’s software, which makes sense given that the game bears his name.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a superb action game especially for fans of the character. This is the Wolverine game that fans have been waiting for. It’s not incredibly varied and a lesser game would have suffered because of this but Wolverine is just incredibly fun. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- May 1, 2009
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