X-Men UncagedLogan, Weapon X, James, Jimmy, Wolverine. Whatever you want to call him, there’s no denying he’s one of the biggest names in super-hero history. Then why has he been so hard to franchise for? Could it be that it’s hard to market a children’s video game where the main character is a raging animal? Could it be that with such a deep story line a game could never encompass everything that wolverine is? Could it be that it’s hard to have a game where players can die, when the character himself has survived bullets in the brain, being ripped in half, AND walking directly into the sun? For these reasons and more I feel there has never been a video game that has done wolverine justice… that is, until now.

With the increasing level of quality connected to licensed games (Spiderman: Web of Shadows and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Athena come to mind), X-Men: Origins: Wolverine raises the bar with this exceptional title. It could be because in the past only children played games, but as those children grew up, they required more adult oriented action. Enter Wolverine. This is by far one of the bloodiest, gruesome-ist, and most stylized carnage I have ever had the pleasure of controlling, and after the lack of blood found in the X-Men: Origins: Wolverine movie, I felt this was much needed.

Origins, like any other game based on a movie, follows the main character, Wolverine, as he progresses through the story, based on the movie, based on the comic. However, where the movie would zig, the game would zag, including much more action, fighting, character depth, super powered villains and dismemberment than the movie had. While I enjoyed the movie as both a comic geek and an action enthusiast, I feel it would have been a lot more enjoyable had it tied closer to what this game represented. As a single player story title, Origins is most comparable to the God of War franchise, same graphical style, same amount of gore (although I feel Origins wins out here a little), and same perspective. You control Wolverine, beginning in a jungle fighting off tribal locals you quickly understand why he’s ‘the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn’t very nice’. Utilizing your fighting knowledge, claws, mutant powers such as berserker mode, feral sense and other manoeuvres (such as combos similar to God of War) you make your way through the game, more or less along the same path as the movie.

Now, there are a couple of mechanics I feel must be explained before we go into the graphical aspect, feral sense is a little odd, the screen will go black and white for a little while in which time you will see explosive objects in red, environmental objects in green, and other objects of interest in orange allowing you to see exactly what is around you easily. As well, feral sense can help you figure out where you need to head to progress through the game via a weird Donny Darko style wormhole coming out of you (or by following footprints during specific parts of the game). There are mutagens spread throughout the game as well that can be upgraded three levels and give you various bonuses such as increased health, increased reflex learning and so on, you can also unlock three separate mutagens to use at the same time to make your perfect killing machine. Continuing on with reflexes, based on the different types of bad guys you fight (robots, gunner, knife wielders, etc) you gain experience from killing these people and begin to learn how to kill them much more efficiently, through reflexes, after killing enough of them, you ‘gain a level’ against those specific bad guys and can improve this up to three levels as well. For those who have tried the older Punisher game from a few years back will also be reminiscent of environmental kills. Throughout the game Wolverine has the ability to perform gruesome one hit kills by impaling bad guys on tree stumps, throwing them into electric grids and so on. Horrific and efficient. You gain experience much like God of War, and throughout the game you find special soldier corpses that hold dog tags, collect these tags for extra experience and achievement bonuses as well.

Throughout the game you will also find, hidden (of course) a number of action figures, collect enough and you can unlock one of three extra costumes from Wolverine’s history. So to recap the collectables throughout the game, we have dog tags for experience, mutagens to increase abilities, action figures to unlock costumes, and as well, there are health increase items to find. Finally the last aspect unique to Wolverine is that he’s nearly indestructible, adamantium skeleton and mutant healing means he takes a beating and keeps on going. So how did they fix this issue in game? By introducing two different health bars, the first is kind of like Wolverine’s mutant healing, your standard health bar, but if you don’t get a hit for a while, it heals up fairly quickly. The second is a circle with a heart in it, this essentially shows his vital organ status. After taking enough damage and having the first bar depleted, Wolverine’s REAL health starts to lessen and takes a longer time to replenish. Once both health bars are gone, Wolverine is ‘captured’ or his mission ‘fails’ and you have to restart from the last checkpoint, never once do they ever say he died, because well… if he was able to die so quickly, chances are he would have long ago.

Graphically I truly enjoyed Origins, there was a high level of detail to be found in every varying level (from jungle, to snowy lake for example) and while some games go over the edge to a point where it’s hard to see anything, Wolverine’s feral sense takes care by simplifying your view. Blood splatters, grainy sand and destroyable environments (as well as destructive environments) means you’ll always be able to appreciate your surroundings when taking a break to heal or relax. Wolverine’s visualization was by far one of my favourite aspects of the game. Any damage he takes is shown on his person. Bullets hit him, bullet wounds appear, shotgun to the chest, hole in chest until it heals up. And his tank top keeps getting torn apart. As realistic as an X-Men game can be! Animation styling is also high up there, as Wolverine gets smashed into the ground by a big bad guy or thrown across the room by Sabretooth, you see limbs flail and even want to flinch at the pain inflicted upon him, but you don’t, instead you smile and keep on playing.

Wolverine sounds like Hugh Jackman in the game, and Liev Schrieber sounds like Victor Creed in the game. How could they get such good voice actors for a video game based on a movie? Well the answer is simple, because the voices you hear in game are in fact, Hugh Jackman and and Liev Schrieber! Unlike most other video game movies in the past, they hired on most of the same people to voice their virtual counterparts throughout the entire game, making the production value for this title that much more prestigious. As well, when Logan pops radio headsets into his ear and you hear the surrounding chatter, it gives a little bit of an edge, having a little knowledge of what will pop out based on what the bad guys are saying. Otherwise your standard fare of screams, growls, artillery and metal scraping on metal balance out the rest of the audio entertainment in this game.

Over all I was surprised by two things in this title. First, I was surprised that I actually found it good! After the Iron Man game, I feared the worst, but this title was actually full of value and entertaining! The second surprise was that since it seemed like a lot of repetitive slashing and maiming, I thought I would bore quickly of this game, but really, I played it for a good long time before beating it and even after that I wanted to play again on hard mode! Not many games make me want to do that. As well, apparently if you pre-ordered this title, you received a code to download the Origins arena which (I’m told) gives you access to hours of impaling bad guys or cutting off limbs… not sure what else it offers. As well, watch out which version you get for X-Men: Origins: Wolverine as the PS3 and Xbox 360 have the un-caged edition (meaning you fight humans and there is a lot of blood) vs. the normal edition for PS2, Wii, DS, and PSP. These versions lack blood or humans to chop up… and in the end, that’s what makes this title so much better!

Gameplay: 5/5
Graphics: 4.5/5
Sound: 4/5
Replay Value: 4/5

andPOP 4.5 Stars out of 5






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