Nerd Mentality

REVIEWS: X-Men Origins Wolverine (Xbox 360)

Posted May 10th 2009 by Adrian DeHerrera.

If there's one character in the Marvel Universe that's hard to screw up, it's Wolverine.  Look, the man is a killing machine with an unbreakable adamantium skeleton and razor-sharp claws that can cut through anything. He has the ability to immediately heal injuries and is adept at multiple martial arts fighting styles and murderous weaponry.  He also wears a tank top and smokes cigars while using said martial arts and murderous weaponry; I dare you to try and screw that up.

The downside to seeing Wolverine on TV or in games is that they can't really show just how gritty and dangerous the guy can be without traumatizing scores of impressionable children.  In shows like X-Men: The Animated Series and X-Men: Evolution, not to mention most video games and even films, you never really see Wolverine really get down to business.  There is mostly just innuendo that Wolvie will cut you to shreds if you get in his way and blood is kept to a family-friendly minimum. Well, bub, if you're looking for the most popular x-man  unleashed, you've come to the right place.

The story mostly parallels its cinematic counterpart; it tells the origin story of Logan a.k.a. James Howlett a.k.a Wolverine who, with the accompaniment of his brother, teams up in Africa with an elite force of mutants headed by Col. William Stryker.  The storyline itself is a condensed mish-mash of the most pivotal parts of the film with lots of over-the-top additions like giant molten rock monsters. The game flashes players back and forward through time, from Africa to places like Canada (where the Weapon X facility lies) and to the United States (where Wolverine tracks down former colleagues to unlock his past).

Regardless of the location, the game designers never pull punches when it comes to violence. Expect to see eviscerations, snapped bones, beheadings, impalings – the list goes on as Wolverine makes his way through level after level of gut-splattery action. Some people have compared the game to God of War, and that comparison has a lot of merit.  The game is a gritty bloodfest where the player can use light and heavy attacks as well as grabs which, depending on an enemy's weakness, can be used to pull off extremely gruesome finishing moves (for example, ripping a soldier's arm out of its socket and beating him to death with it).

There are also some other cool, unexpected aspects to the gameplay. While traveling, Wolverine has the ability to use his heightened senses to guide him where he needs to go; a new screen will pop up, displaying a ghostly blue trail in the direction of important locations. In the same screen, his senses also detect items in the room that can be destroyed to provide Wolverine with experience spheres.  This experience can later be used to "upgrade" his abilities or to customize which powers you want to utilize depending on the task at hand (like using an upgraded healing factor during especially tough boss fights).

The game also reminded me of EA's Lord of the Rings action games in that there seems to be a never-ending source of faceless enemies that pile on you, and not a lot of story to get in the way of taking down oncoming hordes.  The drawback of the linearity of your missions is eclipsed by the visceral excitement of having to constantly mash buttons and score experience to survive and progress through the game.  The only really negative thing I can say about the gameplay is that the type of enemies do eventually get repetitive (they sure hired a lot of soldiers to die for the Weapon X program) and sometimes there are mini-bosses that show up again and again that you've perfected defeating, but take an annoying amount of time to take down.

Fortunately, Raven Software knows how to make comic books translate well to video games.  I thoroughly enjoyed Raven's previous comic-inspired games like X-Men Legends and Legends 2 as well as Marvel Ultimate Alliance because, although the original storylines had to be dissected and sewn back together roughly, the overall magic of what makes comics fun came through because of the faithfulness to the original material.  The same can be said for this game. The graphics have been upgraded ten-fold versus Raven's previous X-Men undertakings with breathtaking backgrounds (the Africa missions are just stunning) and characters extremely fluid and well-rendered.  As with previous titles, Raven hits a home run with its pre-rendered CGI cutscenes, although the in-game cutscenes left me a little weirded out; is it just me or do the characters seem to have really bulgy eyeballs? Maybe I just have a phobia of eyeballs that look barely contained in eye sockets, but whatever the case, the pre-rendered stuff looks fantastic.

Similarly awesome are the details in the game that make you feel like the developers took the extra time and effort to really immerse you into the game.  Not only are the environments lovingly detailed, but so are the characters themselves.  Wolverine may be tough, but he gets torn up like anybody else, which means that after a few rounds with machete-wielding warriors, he should probably look like he's been dropped into a blender – and he does.  After taking damage, Wolvie's skin is tattered showing off his ribcage and insides, his nicely pressed uniform eventually falling completely off his body (except for his bottoms of course).  Not to worry, though, because his body also repairs itself in real-time. Another cool detail is seeing metal glow fire-red after striking it with your claws.  In fact, the entire game is chocked full of fun details that would take many times playing through to find them all.

Of course, nothing is perfect and X-Men Origins: Wolverine has a few issues which, interestingly enough, are the same types I noticed while playing Raven's previous X-Men outings. One of the most noticeable problems with the game are boundary glitches that sometimes force you to have to start the game over. One example of this is when, upon getting to the clearing before jumping aboard the gunboats, I encountered a blade-wielding maniac who I deftly picked up and tossed into the bushes.  Sadly, small foliage is a match for Wolverine as the enemy became "stuck" behind the bushes and no amount of special moves or attacks could wound him.  In addition, the camera also sometimes gets stuck in really awkward angles, and at one point I could see inside Wolverine's hollow digital skull case (which is more disturbing than you might think).  To be honest, these glitches and errors are few and far between, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, especially compared to how good the rest is.

In all, the game is spectacular – for a game that revolves around endless violence and mayhem.  Raven and Activision have put forth a game that totally blew away my expectations and kept me wanting to play more to unlock classic uniforms (which look really neat in action) and perfect my special fatalities.  Just remember, there is no real intellectualism to be had here and the standard X-Men theme of mutants versus humans bound together in a philosophically trepidacious coexistence has been replaced with Wolverine ripping the heads off stuff. 

Sometimes it's much more fun when Professor X isn't there to stop you from being the best there is at what you do.

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