Should be interesting to see if kids end up playing this M-rated game after watching the PG-13 movie…
With both the movie and the game release this past weekend, I decided to check out the demo that was made available on Xbox Live recently. And from what I hear of the movie, it sounds like this may be another one of those rare cases where the video game is better than the movie! While Goldeneye was exceedingly awesome, the movie wasn’t too much of a slouch either but it looks like in the case of Wolverine, it’s a pretty decent game that’s better than what seems to be a lackluster movie. Read on for my thoughts on the demo.
The X-Men Origins: Wolverine game on home consoles was developed by Raven, the company behind the Marvel Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends games. They certainly have a lot of years of experience making superhero co-op action RPG games, but the developers were pretty excited to put together this game that focused on just one character. I’m guessing that it allowed them to be far less generic in the game’s storyline and premise than their other titles.
The Opening Cutscene
The demo opens with a pretty long cutscene of Wolverine taking out some enemies, and I was pretty shocked to see how gruesome it was. This is definitely an M-rated title, as the game seemingly spares no expense demonstrating the lethalness of his claws. I nearly jumped when I witnessed Wolverine skewering some guy’s head through a wall with his claws in the opening cutscene.
After the cutscene concludes, we see Logan/Wolverine jumping off a plane over some area in Africa, and as soon as he lands, he is met with a lot of resistance. His general skills and abilities make pretty well for videogame mechanics, as he has automatic healing and a pretty easy way to dispatch of enemies. The game felt a bit too floaty for me – I don’t know if it was because the graphics were too jaggy or what but it reminded me of Tomb Raider (and that’s not a good thing). When I compare this game to Ninja Gaiden II or even Devil May Cry 4, both of those games seem to be so much smoother. I’m not sure why but it could very well be due to the way the backgrounds and the character models are rendered. Still, I’m not a big stickler for graphics if the gameplay is deep and enjoyable, but I just wanted to note that the graphics weren’t as good as I was expecting.
Gameplay
Gameplay itself is not bad, as Logan can definitely do some damage and he seems to have a variety of moves. I would have liked to see less resistance from enemies, since each claw swipe should pretty much sever a limb or put any mortal out of commission. But I guess for the sake of game balance, enemies have to be somewhat resistant to those claws. I think people are already complaining that the game is too easy so maybe my suggestion of making it even easier isn’t exactly going to fly. I would have balanced that out by throwing more enemies at the player instead of the 3-4 you encounter at a time in the demo. Even if one swipe can kill you, if you have 10+ enemies shooting at you it’s not going to be super easy!
You can level up in the game, allowing you to unlock new abilities and moves. There’s also a fair amount of customization in the game based on how you want to play since you have upgrade slots you can fill. There wasn’t enough gameplay in the demo or unlocks to really highlight it, but it’s nice that the game isn’t just a straight up “what you start with at the beginning of the game is what you have at the end” type deal.
The combo system is pretty simplistic, but then again, I feel like in most games of this style when you find a particular move or combo that works, you pretty much use that same thing to get through the entire game. For my time with the demo, it was the lunge. This move was really impressive the first time I tried it – you’re able to target an enemy from really far away, and if you just hit the lunge button, Logan will leap through the air and land on the enemy, pinning him down so you can sit on him and swipe him to death before fighting other enemies. There’s a range limitation on it though, in that you can’t be too close to an enemy to lunge at them. Still, I felt like it was relatively overpowered, as I was able to do that throughout the game, and I delt with the stronger “lava spawn” enemies by lunging at them, attacking them while they were down, running off, and lunging again. I didn’t even take any damage so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
One potential issue I may see is that the game can be a bit repetitive. Most of the time in the demo was spent fighting the same generic enemies over and over as I went down a pretty linear path. I guess most action/adventure games boil down to this when simplified enough, but I feel like Wolverine’s combat mechanic’s aren’t satisfying enough like in Ninja Gaiden II or Devil May Cry 4 where the fighting is the main highlight of the game. I guess it’s not fair since traditionally, Western developers don’t generally make action/adventure games that focus on hardcore fighting gameplay mechanics, and maybe that’s why I end up getting let down a bit with Western action-adventure games.
To this end, I’m not sure what the highlight of playing this game would be – maybe just being Wolverine and tearing through enemies? Maybe for some, the licensed character is a fair substitute for deeper gameplay, but I’m more interested in playing an original title like Bayonetta where I can expect the combat mechanics to be a bit more interesting. But then again, this is a hardcore gamer’s blog giving impressions on a licensed product and treating it with the same scrutiny as any other game. Take it with a grain of salt I guess.
Parting Thoughts
Ramblings aside, I thought the demo was favorable and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get into, and that it doesn’t seem like all of the other licensed crap out there. I think $60 for the title is far too high though, as it doesn’t have any multiplayer and its single player experience can probably be beaten in a rental. I’d wait for a price drop on this one (in the meantime, I’ll probably be playing Conan since I notice some similarities between the two) but I feel like this is a game I’d eventually want to play through. If you can’t wait since you just saw the movie, there’s other games out there that you could do worse spending $60 on, but for me $60 is still a bit too much to pay for the gaming equivalent of a “popcorn flick”: relatively entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying.
