X-Men Origins: Wolverine Game

As far as movie tie-ins are concerned, Wolverine exceeds expectations. The prerendered cutscenes are both stunningly epic, and the in-game cutscenes, while not as spectacular, are also good looking. The battle damage on the Wolverine model especially fun, showing metal bones through giant holes, while gallons of blood gush from the severed heads and limbs of his enemies creating a wonderful gore fest from start to finish.

Game Play

You have two main attacks that can be strung into a fairly familiar set of combinations, as well as a grab function that can be combined to great effect with the main attacks. The targeting system is very easy to use, which is great since many third person hack-and-slash games suffer in that area. The lunge attack, which allows jumping outlandishly far, gives you a great long range attack which allows for jumping right into combat with a group of opponents.

Wolverine features environment killing features including statues/floors with spikes and plates for smashing enemies into. These are a great addition but are difficult to take advantage of at times. I found myself standing next to a spike trying to grab an enemy and just throwing him across the room two or three times before I could actually impale him on the ground next to me.

Rage attacks are unlocked depending on how you upgrade your characters as you level up and are your bread and butter for fast killing.

• Claw Spin : a ground attack that spins you around hitting multiple targets.




• Berserk: makes you heal faster, do more damage, and is a way to panic enemies into not attacking you.




• Claw Drill: an air attack that sends you flying into an enemy.




• Claw Cyclone: an over handed attack that does a great deal of damage to one enemy.

I found the Claw spin to be the most used attack in my repertoire and, when combined with Berserk, is endlessly deadly.

The leveling system works in a few different ways. You are able to upgrade your damage, health, and rage. You can also upgrade your rage attacks to not only do more damage, but extend the use of each to gain more bang for your buck. The mutigen system is fun and easy to use, but I wished it didn’t depend solely on finding hidden coins to unlock them. Reflex was supposed to increase the ease of killing of certain types of enemies as you kill more of them, but I didn’t really notice any change.

Extras

Costumes

You can unlock alternate costumes in the game by finding action-figure holograms hidden throughout. They are “Legendary Wolverine” (his brown and yellow togs), “Classic Wolverine” (the standard yellow and blue uniform), and ” X-force Wolverine” (which is the more modern black and gray uniform from the X-force comics). I prefer the “Classic Wolverine” costume, but they all look great and are fun to see modeled.

Weapon X Arena

I didn’t get to try this having not preordered from Gamestop and look forward to it as downloadable content. I will update my review if and when it drops.

Overall I really liked Wolverine and had only a few gripes with the repetitiveness, but what do you expect from a hack-and-slash puzzle platformer? Speaking of which, the puzzles were fun and mostly self-explanatory. I tried the game on the hard setting after beating it on normal, and found that you are pretty safe from dying either way. It is a bit more tricky on hard, but I still never died unless I fell off the map or just hit a wrong button. The boss fights weren’t really much of a challenge, which was kind of sad, but I could just be really good at this game. The fun factor is a solid 10 but due to the lack of difficulty I’m dropping it to a 7. It was a great first run and I hope they make more Wolverine games. I would love for the leveling up and enhancements to get a little more attention and maybe see a multiplayer co-op or an online Killzone type of thing.