X-men Origins: Wolverine

Review from Yug - Sunday, 03 May 2009 @ 4:51pm

I didn’t hate the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie.

I feel like I should have though. I read the most critical reviews and found myself agreeing with all of the issues and complaints ... and yet I didn’t hate it. Thing is, I didn’t like it either.

And that’s exactly how I feel about the X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game.

Initially I had no interest in this game at all, not surprising considering how difficult it is for movie tie in media to rise above their unfortunate stigma. A few cool trailers started popping up that looked pretty cool, and when I dug a little deeper I found out the developer was a company by the name of Raven Software.

These guys had created some titles over the years that I remember fondly – Heretic (and the sequel HeXen), Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Quake 4, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and the upcoming Wolfenstein game.

So when the game arrived in the mail on the same day I had tickets to see the movie, I figured I’d crack it open and give it a spin.

Now, I believe there’s three ways to go about making a video game based on a movie or franchise:

1. Mimic the plot and character progression scene for scene from the movie (e.g. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers)

2. Make the games narrative weave through the movie or franchise it’s based on (e.g. Enter the Matrix)

3. Expand on the game world using the same characters and/or environments (e.g. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine tries to do all three, and fails miserably on every level. The game features main characters from the movie, and yet the scenes and sequences are so completely out of sync with the theatrical experience it may as well be a completely different game. At the same time it introduces separate plot points that deal with the creation of the Sentinals (large mutant killing robot things that look eerily similar to the Iron Man outfit), and introduces other mutants from other X-Men movies and comics.

The weirdest thing is I’m not sure who this game is aimed at. People who haven’t seen the movie will have absolutely no fucking clue who anyone is or what the hell is going on, and people who have seen the movie will have absolutely no fucking clue why everything is so different to the movie. It’s like the developer was handed the movie script before it was finalised and told to make a game based on that (which, to be fair, is probably true). Characters say the exact same lines from the movie, but they’re in completely different locations with no relevance to the scene.

"People who haven’t seen the movie will have absolutely no fucking clue who anyone is or what the hell is going on"


This isn’t helped any by the time jumping storyline, that sends you back and forth between past, present, and future, as every level opens with ‘3 years previously’ or ‘6 months later’. It might not be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that every second level sends you back to ‘3 years previously’ during a mission in the jungle sans adamantium, that sees you completing similar objectives, climbing identical towers, and trudging through tomb raider block moving puzzles that have you doubling back more than a Christian with a drinking problem. Worse still, it’s the SAME level over and over ... same enemies, same trees, same environment and location. Sure, it’s a cool looking level the first time round, but after you’re sent back to play through it for the fifth time, you start to wonder why the hell you’re even playing the game in the first place.

And then something cool will happen.

You see, the game doesn’t suffer from the same tragic parental guidance rating that the movie does. No, when Wolverine goes to attack some woefully ill-equipped bad guy, you see those retractable claws skewer right through him before completely ripping his entire body in half, blood and limbs splattering everywhere. Then just when you think it can’t get any cooler, the whole attack will do a slow mo pan effect so you can see the damage from every angle.

Of course, all these violent moves would be nothing if not for the fact that the fighting mechanic is easy to grasp and slow to master. Initially all you’ll be doing is button mashing the light/heavy attack buttons, however as the game progresses and slowly levels you up with new moves, combos, and abilities, you start to use the new skills and powers in combat, finding different techniques to work against different enemies. It all winds down to a fairly straight forward rock/paper/scissors fighting system, but it comes off cleanly enough and, like I said before, it looks simply awesome.

Perhaps the most important move in the entire game is the ability to lock onto an enemy from a distance and lunge towards them. It’s so good that you’ll often find yourself using this attack exclusively, as you bunny hop all over the screen. It creeps into some of the level puzzles as well, sometimes the only way across a gap is to leap over to an enemy across the way.

"the game doesn’t suffer from the same tragic parental guidance rating that the movie does"


It’s a shame the levels don’t tend to stack up to the puzzles the developers have valiantly tried to incorporate into them. I can see the Prince of Persia influence there, climbing ledges, ropes and walls – the issue is that the range of objects you can interact with is so limited, the only way to see them is to switch into a special ‘Wolverine vision’ mode where the interactive objects glow bright green, and a blue Donnie Darko swirling tunnel spouts from your characters chest to point you in the direction you need to go next, which is a pretty bad mechanic to have in a game this linear.

That’s the conundrum though – for every stupid convoluted puzzle or ledge that stops me from going forward even though my character should be able to physically move past it, there will be an awesome fight that happens where I pick up an enemy and impale them on a forklift truck or slice both their arms off.

There is one final thing worth mentioning about the game – and that’s health. See, Wolverine can’t die. Right? I mean, he can heal instantly, which means he can’t be killed. How does a game get around that?

It’s a question that might be answered in another Wolverine game, since you can still die if your health bar reaches empty, it simply regenerates back if you stay out of combat long enough – think of it more like your shield in Halo.

The coolest part is that the game character displays the damage taken on the character model itself, and as your health bar fills up again, you can see the skin on Wolverine start to heal and patch itself up, moulding back together. It’s a clever effect that had me inflicting maximum damage so I could zoom in and watch the healing process quite a few times.

However, in keeping with the theme of love/hate this review has displayed so far, I didn’t quite understand how the characters jeans and shirt also managed to regenerate over time. I don’t remember that part from the movie.

Pros

Fun combat mechanics, bloody and violent the way a Wolverine game should be, sweet character regeneration system, decent graphics.

Cons

Confusing plot whether you’ve seen the movie or not, half the game takes place in the same fucking jungle level, aspires to Prince of Persia puzzles and fails, for every high point there is an equal low point.