By Ned Jordan
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a surprising game. Surprising in that it's a game
based on a movie that's not flat-out awful. It's not a great game, suffering
from the typical repetitive gameplay that plagues action games of this nature,
but it's certainly not terrible and can downright fun in stretches. Wolverine
fans will simply love the chance to tear into countless enemies with those
adamantium claws and those who loved the movie will be happy with the chance to
play through the film's story. The rest of you? Well, let's see if this game's
of interest to you...
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The game's story sticks pretty much to the movie's, so you start out working
for Stryker before events very soon lead you to pursue your own agenda of
revenge. As is usually the case with these games, familiarity with the movie is
a big help in understanding what's going on story-wise and conversely it's
assumed that you do. While there is some extra back story in the game to help
round-out the movie/game experience, narrative is not the game's strong point.
What is that strong point is a brutally honest representation of what it
would be like to go at a horde of bad guys with a set of adamantium claws, and
let me tell you, it's not pretty. The game is, shall I say, a very visceral
experience, with buckets of blood and plenty of severed limbs. And when you want
to give those claws a rest, you can use various pointy things in the environment
to impale your enemies. There's even a point in the game where you give a guy
his final haircut with the aid of a helicopter's blades. While this is all cool
stuff to the major gamer, parents need to be cautioned that this is not the
Saturday morning cartoon version of Wolverine.
All of this damage is done with the aid of light and heavy attack buttons
that can be strung together into combos, but don't necessarily have to be. You
can do plenty of damage with the basic attacks, and when used in concert with
the block button are just fine for taking out a majority of the enemies you
face. There are also some special moves at your disposal, including a whirling
claw attack that's useful when you're surrounded by enemies and a lethal lunge
attack. The lunge attack is pretty cool – you line up a distant enemy and then
go flying through the air claws first. It's a lethal attack and also a good way
to cross a gap or chasm at the cost of an enemy's life, a check that Wolverine
is quite happy to cash. As if all of this wasn't enough, with a little skull in
timing you can grab a nearby enemy and perform a one-hit kill. There are not
your run of the mill one hit kills, either. Each one leads to a slow-mo sequence
in which your poor victim is sliced and taken apart in a manner that would turn
Sweeny Todd a little green.
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