Review: X-Men Origins Wolverine: Uncaged Edition (360)

It seems developers Raven Software also have a similar place in their hearts for the series because Wolverine is pretty much what you’d get if you replaced Kratos with Logan. That’s not a criticism as Wolverine is another one of those few film tie-ins that is actually well made, and only really falters due to a myriad of technical problems.

The film vaguely follows the plot of the terrible film, but it must be said this game is a lot more fun than that cinematic vomit. You control Wolverine through various film locations and some added ones to the ultimate goal of killing everyone on screen who isn’t you. It doesn’t need to be Shakespeare and it is limited to what it can do due to the film, but it does an all right job, although we’d love to see how genetically engineered prisoners who turn into giant albino giants would fit in to the film. The story is there but you won’t really be paying that much attention to it. Instead you should be paying attention to that statue who just stuck a bo staff through your chest.

Wolverine’s gameplay is, as mentioned, very similar to God of War, meaning there’s an almost complete focus on combat . There are a few platforming sections and minor environmental “puzzles” to solve, which are decent enough but it is the combat in the game really shines through. Using you claws you can slash, stab, decapitate, dismember, and launch yourself at enemies from across the room with a few button presses. At first, the game feels like a complete button-mashing affair, and for most of the enemies who are gun toting grunts, it is. These guys can be taken out with a few basic combos, or with the games signature lunge move, which allows Wolverine to pounce at opponents from (what feels like) 50 feet away, and then follow it up with a quick throw, stab, or multiple slashes depending on which buttons you use. You’ll probably find yourself using the lunge move on most of your basic enemies, but once his mates show up you actually have to use a bit of strategy. One particular melee enemy carries a giant shield  which can black all your attacks and prevents you from lunging at them. However, a quick uppercuts knocks the shield out of the way long enough to get in a few quick hits and possibly knock him in to the air where you can grab them and slam them in to the ground, get a few slashes in or do our personal favourite “the Bam Bam” where you grab their leg, slam them in to the ground, let them bounce, and do it again and again until their chest collapses. This is just one enemy and while nowhere near the variety of some games, including some who are just pallet swapped from living statues to four limbed ninjas, there’s enough different kinds of claw fodder and end bosses to keep you happily eviscerating towards the end. Grunts, robots, giant rock monster, naked blue girls, they’re all here.

The games graphics and sound are well done and keep you interested in the wanton murder. Music is interesting and doesn’t feel repetitive and we’ll never get tired of the old “knives going through meat” sound when hitting a fleshy enemy, complete with a nice trail of blood, which spurts from everywhere.  Decapitation and dismemberment look brutal and most enemies who take more than a few hits to take down actually retain the damage you inflict, often finding yourself taking on a couple of foes who have gashes in their chest, arms, and legs and still coming at you. Shame they don’t have Wolverine’s healing factor, which while is mainly represented by his dual health bars (one which covers his external damage, the other his internal organs are being damage once the former depletes), it also takes the form of horrific injuries being shown on his body and healing in real time. Every hit generates a wound of some kind, taking enough actually exposes Wolverines metal skeleton, which will heal as you continue playing. We often found ourselves finding a quiet corner and just watching this horribly mutilated zombie like figure heal up back to a rather nicely done , but probably more muscular than in real life, representation of Hugh Jackman (complete which bare chest in many levels, just for the ladies). The environments are fairly well done too, though to be honest in some of the longer levels you’ll get sick of dimly lit, grimy, underground corridors.

The only thing that really lets Wolverine down a lot is the glitches, because there’s quite a few of them of them. Rumour has it that Raven Software was developing a comic book Wolverine game, when demand for a movie tie-in forced it to be rushed, and with the amount of glitches, you can see why. The thing is, there’s not enough to make your stop playing the game, and most are fairly harmless, such as  enemies corpses staying in mid air, weird graphical effects, screen tearing, and our personal favourite where we saw a boss character we were chasing get stretched out along the catwalk he was supposed to be running along like he was being sucked into an off-screen Black Hole. They’re weird, and you’ll probably see them on more occasions than you’ll really want, but you’ll still play. However, during our three play through (twice on normal, once on Hard) we encountered one that caused us to reset the 360, and at least two that required a checkpoint reload for really dafter reasons. Once the game just froze, another time an enemy got trapped in  solid wall after being thrown at it, preventing us from attacking and having to reload a checkpoint, the other similar, but featuring a robot and a pit.

In truth Wolverine could have scored higher simply due to more time being allowed for bug testing, and possibly having no association with the terrible film. But that doesn’t prevent it from being a good solid, and ultimately, fun game.

Rating: 8 / 10

Words by Garry Webber