Oh how I love Wolverine, how I adore everything about his very being from his "gut first disembowel later" manifesto to his aspiration to be an unlicensed, adamantium claw wielding proctologist.
He is by far the most entertaining of the x-men not least for his timeless sideburns and blatant poor hygiene, but mostly for his raw animal blood lust. So imagine my dismay at the casting of the much toned down Wolverine in the largely disappointing X-men films and most recently the overly bland X-men origins film. With the game shortly following, forgive me for not getting to excited about the prospect of another slap dash comic to film to game conversion.
Having downloaded the demo (and immediately bought the game after) I was ready to be disappointed, my eyelids were just itching to drop to "glaze" level and my nostrils were widening to let through a big sighing breath. But upon witness of the opening cut scene I was seriously impressed with the graphics, which I thought were on par with MGS. I was enthralled, I was completely taken in by some stunning cut scene graphics and what seem to be a set up to a decent story line. Is this it? Am I witnessing the funeral of half baked film game graphical turds? NOPE.It quickly became clear that the budget was spent on that opening scene because what followed induced the fastest "glaze and sigh" this year.
The in-game graphics are starkly different to the cut scene graphics - I thought these days ended with driver on the PS2?
Wolverine has been blown out of a helicopter and is hurtling towards the earth at an alarming rate, unfortunately this alarming rate is too much for the frame rate and in the first 10 seconds of the game there's a graphical fuck up.
Disappointing? Yes, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the game. That sort of instant disappointment is usually enough to condemn a game to the back of a dusty draw. However playing on was the only option, mostly becuase I had no physical copy to point and laugh at, plus it took a while to download so I wanted to get my bandwidth worth.
Post helicopter explosion, Wolverines' dismount onto land sees him plunging his claws into a random African dude, Which, I have to admit is pretty cool and instantly changes your expectations of what is to come. The scene is a flash back of Wolverine's past in the military, you are dropped in Africa and you have to find the other members of your team.
To do so you have to battle through swarms of AK47 carrying enemies, hacking and slashing at will.
Controlling Wolverine is fairly straight forward, no overtly confusing controls and the tutorial is in game, which I prefer as I like to learn as I play. The mechanics behind using his claws are actually really good, utalising an informal locking system which means you can unleash your button bashing fury on one enemy or several without getting caught into an air slashing furor.
Enemies at a distance can be lunged at, which makes up for Wolverine's lack of a gun. This really is a great feature and a stroke of genius by the developers because it can be used to gain entry to parts of the game that are too far away to jump, or have no platform to help you along the way.
There are a variety of moves available in Wolverine's arsenal, all very easy to execute, all devilishly gory. If you're pressed for time you can perform a quick kill by grabbing an enemy and doing a heavy attack, which looks similar to a Mortal Kombat finisher and will be different depending on the type of enemy. It's not possible to kill off every enemy like this, some will need a good beating before you can split them in half, which is absolutely fine with me.
How you kill your opponent becomes the focal point of the game, throughout you will see tips on how to perform a certain type of kill and it will flash "success!!" once you heed the instruction, this keeps the game interesting and not repetitive. Keeping your killing different is recorded in the statistics menu, you can see how many enemies you've thrown over an edge or killed in rage mode. Once you have killed so many in a certain way you will be given a shit load of experience points.
The experience point system is based on your kills and how many dog tags you collect throughout the game, these points are then used to level up. The higher your level, the more powerful you are, the quicker you dissect. You will gain extra points for using mutagens, these are skills you collect over the course of the game which can be used as a way to improve aspects of your offensive/defensive repertoire. You can only use 3 mutagens at any one time, so you can swap them out in replacement for another depending on the situation. For example in the 5th Chapter of the game you will be battling a sky scraper sized robot who servers no purpose other than to kill mutants, naturally dieing is not on your agenda so you will need to make use of all the healing and regeneration mutagens you have.
For all the hacking and slashing fun, (which really is a lot of fun) this game is by far no way polished. There are a lot of glitches which need to be addressed, most notably the anti aliasing is particularly bad, lines aren't straight and flat ground looks like jagged rocks. Wolverine also has a tendency to walk through mid air getting caught between objects, unfortunately this occurs throughout the game and begins to grow tiresome.
Some of the fuck ups are just comedy. About half way through the game you'll do battle with robots, the only difference between them and human enemies is the way they look and their dodgy voice overs. For some strange reason these robots bleed like their human counterparts. Wolverine will rip their limbs off and blood will pour out or they will make a gargling sound as they fall to the ground, as if they are choking on their own blood....that's just lazy and it begs the question, how on earth did it make it past testing?
Before Wolverine gets his Adamantium bone transplant surgery, his claws are simple, back to basics, bone. This however is not reflected in the flash back scenes and Wolverine has his Adamantium claws even before his revolutionary surgery - how? Fast approaching deadline is how.
There are a few other things to get your back up about; dodgy frame rates, game crashes, inconsistent jumping and pointless flash backs to mention a few. But something that really takes the mutated biscuit is having to voluntarily restart at the last saved checkpoint because the game fucks up.
Oh how irritating this is. There's a particular level during the flash back where you have to walk into a cave fronted as a skull mouth, once you enter the cave you are faced with fighting two "shifters". After defeating them Wolverine must then make his way around the maze and out the other side, simple enough right? Well, after tearing up the shifters I was disorientated and came out the same way I went in, unfortunately the game had no contingency plan for this and would not let me back into the cave, I had to restart from my last saved checkpoint and leave the correct way.
Overall despite the obvious unfinished parts of the game, it's a hell of a lot of fun. I've thoroughly enjoyed culling hundreds of bad guys and I relish the opportunity to do more in a possible follow up game. This is by far the most entertaining game I've played in a while it's just a shame they failed on so, so many points. I hope (and doubt) they will release a patch to solve some of the fuck ups, but without it's still bloody good fun.
McGregortron
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