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X-Men Origins: Wolverine PC Review May 07, 2009 Tom YodaBlues Colarusso |
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Summary: Considering their success with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, we had high hopes for Raven's latest release: X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Fortunately, they didn't disappoint -- this is definitely the most violent Wolverine depiction yet. But does maximum carnage lead to a better game? Find out in Tom's latest review.
 X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review | Page:: ( 1 / 5 ) |
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Actually, it's not too bad.
Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised; Wolverine was developed by the veterans over at Raven Software who are no strangers to the Marvel Universe or 3rd party intellectual properties. Raven is the driving force behind the excellent X-Men Legends series, as well Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Raven also seems to have developed a knack for taking other companies IP's and making some excellent games based on the corresponding mythologies, such as Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Star Trek: Elite Force.
Now Raven has unleashed their latest game set in the Marvel Universe, and it is a no-holds-barred cornucopia of ultra-violence, insane bloodshed, and prominently features a shirtless Hugh Jackman.
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Story
The story in X-Men Origins: Wolverine follows the movie fairly closely, although it does deviate in some ways to flesh out the length. You start the game already a member of Team X, on your way to Africa in pursuit of Lago's rebels. As the sole survivor of a chopper crash, you fight your way through hordes of enemies to attempt to destroy a beacon that is jamming communications between you and the rest of your team.
Throughout the remainder of the game, the player swaps between flashbacks of your mission in Africa and the action going on after your infusion of adamantium during the Weapon X program. The writing can be humorous in areas, albeit sometimes unintentionally. For the most part, the game plays as an excuse for Wolverine to go from area to area, eviscerating enemies in new and interesting ways. And in this regard, the game does not disappoint.
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| Gameplay | Page:: ( 2 / 5 ) |
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Adding to the carnage is Logan's ability to use the environment around him to dispatch enemies in new, exciting ways. In Africa, enemies can be impaled on random tree stumps, while later on, a cement mixer becomes an interesting way to ensure your bad guys insides are properly mixed before serving. Grabbing an enemy near these objects will initiate the animation; however, you still retain the ability to throw an enemy on them from a distance.
Combat controls consist of a heavy attack, light attack, grab, and jump. The game can be played with a keyboard, although we preferred using a gamepad since for all intents and purposes, the game is very console-heavy in its design. The game is essentially a button masher, although you will eventually master a few key attacks such as the lunge move.
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For the most part, we button mashed our way through the game, attacking everything and everyone with great vigor. Normally, this type and style of gameplay would wear thin pretty quickly, but the excellent damage modeling on the characters and uniquely hilarious environmental kills help keep things fresh. Wolverine does seem to borrow heavily from previous hack’n’slash games, especially regulars like God of War with its inclusion of quick time events and huge enemies that can be climbed upon to finish them off.
In an attempt to add a little depth, X-Men Origins: Wolverine features an RPG-lite system of leveling that allows you increase special fury attacks, claw damage, health, and your rage meter. You level fairly quickly throughout the game and on our play through we easily reach level 34. By the time we had reached around 20, our healing factor and health were so high, it was actually extremely difficult for us to die. This made the game a bit on the easy side, even on the hard difficulty setting.
Furthermore, the game suffers from a serious lack of replayability as each level is pretty linear, leaving little to explore once you beat Weapon XI, the final boss. Aside from collecting statues which unlocks 3 alternate costumes, there really isn’t too much to do once the game is done. Beating it on the first play through took us around 10 hours on normal mode, a decent amount by today’s standards.
The bosses, some of which end up becoming mini-bosses once you’ve leveled up enough, are extremely repetitious however. W.E.N.D.I.G.O. and Leviathan for instance rely too heavily on the lunge mechanic to be of any challenge. Also, a few of the puzzles elements don’t make much sense for the character: Why does Wolverine need to find a power cell for a door, when the preceding cut scene shows him cutting through a door? It would’ve been better had they just left these mechanics on the cutting room floor, but then the game would’ve only been about 6 hours long since you spend so much time figuring them out.
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| Graphics and Audio | Page:: ( 3 / 5 ) |
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Wolverine uses the latest Unreal graphics engine, and visuals are excellent thanks to this fact. Character models are highly detailed and animated, while environments look great and have that customary sheen and light bloom that we’ve come to expect from this engine. Textures are crisp and clear and texture streaming, something that still tends to plague console games running UE3, was barely noticeable on the PC version we played. Raven has made some modifications to the engine to suit their vision, the most impressive of which is the character damage modeling.
As Logan gets hit and shot, you will see him receive bullet wounds, slashes, and even loses missing sections of his torso. Enemies also take the kind of damage you would expect if they were on the receiving end of six 12-inch long metal blades swung with the fury of a 5 foot tall Canadian with an emotional complex. Most impressive is Logan himself though, who loses chunks of flesh from grenades and slashes, but visually heals over time.
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As he receives damage, Wolvie’s clothes, skin, and muscle get peeled away to reveal his gooey insides, all the way down to his adamantium skeleton. For those who are interested, this does mean you will be seeing a lot of a shirtless Hugh Jackman being blown to bits. As combat ends, you simply sit and watch the visual marks of combat heal away. The effect is neat and really works wonderfully to bring the classic comic character to life.
Audio is well done and suits the game fine. Projectile impacts impart a sense of damage, as does the sound of claws slicing through bad guys. Positional audio is used pretty well, although we didn’t get as much surround audio as we would’ve liked. It had the tendency to sound muted or mixed lower than the rest of the audio track. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Wolverine for the voice work and does a notable job for the most part, as does Liev Schreiber with Sabretooth. The rest of the cast does a decent job as well.
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| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 4 / 5 ) |
Pros
Damage Modeling: The amount of damage you will be able to see on Wolverine is amazing, whether it’s the long gashes from swords or the explosive blasts of grenades. And to top it off, you get to watch it impressively heal right before your eyes. Aided by the excellent UE3 engine, you can be rest assured that it looks as good as you think it would. It gets to the point where you want to let yourself take damage, just to see how bad it can get.
Satisfying Combat: While it can be a little on the repetitive side since it all boils down to button mashing, the interesting environmental kills helps keep things fresh. Lunging into a pack of enemies, then quickly dispatching them one by one is very satisfying, especially if you are a Wolverine fan. The combat here is a perfect representation of what how we’d think Wolverine would fight.
Cons
Repetitive Boss Fights: Each boss has a pattern and once you nail it down, they become almost laughably easy to defeat. Mighty foes like Leviathan and W.E.N.D.I.G.O., who can easily give Wolverine a run for his money, become a monotonous game of lunge, slash, jump away, and then repeat. The helicopter sequences are a joke and pretty much have you doing the exact same thing every time you encounter them. It isn’t fun at this point and makes you tend to get it over with as quickly as possible so you can get back to throwing the generic foot soldiers into concrete mixers.
No Replay Value: Once you’ve beaten the game, your only options are to go back through on hard difficulty. Since you’ve already solved the puzzles and figured out the enemy’s patterns, there’s no real incentive to do this however. The Uncaged Version of the console game apparently includes a Danger Room-type setting with infinitely spawning enemies; however to play this mode you have to pre-order the game. Activision has not stated whether they intend to release this gameplay mode to the PC.
Lack of Innovation: The game pretty much tows the line of modern action/hack’n’slash games, with your character fighting wave after of enemies and then fighting mini-bosses that require quick-time execution events. While this isn’t a bad thing, Raven has never been known to make a game without at least trying something different. The RPG-Lite aspects are interesting, but hardly worth getting excited over.
The puzzles are ridiculously easy to solve and many of them make no sense given the context of the character. Wolverine doesn’t need a key; Wolverine IS a key.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 5 / 5 ) |