Pretty obvious how I spent the past few days eh?

After watching the Wolverine flick Thurs/Fri night, I decided to see if I could get my claws hands on a PS3 version of the tie-in video game which is cleverly named “X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Uncaged Edition”. Normally I stay as far away as I can from video games that try to tie in a movie. The reason is simple – the vast majority are absolute poo. In this case, I had seen a review about the game intimating that the game designers were true fans and that the game carried a Mature rating. So, after not being wowed by the film (I still liked it), why not give the game a chance?

Glad I did. This game totally throws away any pretense about the character that the movies have shown us. Wolverine is a bad-ass, and the developers knew that’s what I wanted to play as. The game’s rating is not a gimmick either. Unlike the un-bloody film, this game is extremely violent (notice I didn’t say excessive). When you have the ability to finish someone off by ripping off his arm and beating him to death with it (not kidding), well, the game deserves an adult audience. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great depiction of the character – before he was an X-Man, he was an assassin. If you are a parent considering this game as good choice for your own little mutant, look carefully at the game play videos online. In fact, I am struggling hard to come up with a game I have played that is as brutal as this.

While the game play  is mostly hack and slash type moves, there are some elements of stealth and simple puzzle solving. The pacing is fast, the attack moves are varied and there are systems in place for upgrading your character. You are also able to unlock bonus modes in which you fight yourself for rights to wear other costume choices. Damage is dealt with in a way that makes sense. Wolverine can, of course, heal himself quickly, but you actually get to see skin and muscle torn away to reveal his vital organs and skeleton. What’s cool about this is you also get to watch it grow back. Neat.

I have only 2 main problems with the game. The first can be summed up in one word – repetition. When fighting with most of the characters, it never really got boring to lunge from bad guy to bad guy, serving up whatever sort of death I wanted to deal. This is easy when hacking up sword-wielding ninjas, but got a bit harder with machine gun toting soldiers. Even with the healing ability, you can easily get torn up against overwhelming odds. The problem starts when dealing with boss fights. They aren’t hard, but they are very samey. Not only does the game have one-on-ones with same bosses again and again, different bosses have the same weaknesses. That’s called “grinding” and it started to get a little stale.

The other issue is one of opinion but this game screams for an open sand-box type enviroment. I kept thinking about Altair in Assassin’s Creed and wishing I had the same flexibility with Wolverine. With his feral sense, you already have a guidance system and that type of play would allow for using stealth and environmental elements more seemlessly. Perhaps the next version Raven?

All-in-all, this game is alot of fun. You really feel like you are Wolverine and the main issues I had with the movie are completely wiped from my mind after an evening slicing soldiers in half.  However, I usually only buy new games if I can see a good repay value. Here, I don’t think I would keep going back in, just to slay guys in single story mode.  I would rate it a rent, perhaps even purchase used. If you need a number, I would give it a 7.5 of 10.