This is a game I was really looking forward to earlier in the year before its release. Games based on superheroes, comic book superheroes in particular, have a long history of sucking. Wolverine did look the business during the pre-release hype machine and it did look like it might live up to the developers claim of “best superhero game ever”. Unfortunately the game garnered nothing better than fairly average reviews all round and I decided it wasn’t worth the new game price-tag, so I shoved it on my GamesTracker list, set a £15 limit on it and largely forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago when GamesTracker alerted me that the game could be got for <£15 and I decided to go for it.
So, lets see how it stacked up.
Likey
Wolverine – The look and story of the game is based on the dreadful movie of the same name released at the same time, however the movement, actions and moves of the in-game Wolverine are all classic comic book/animated series Wolverine. You are Wolverine, it really feels like you’re playing as Wolverine, when you fight everything looks and feels Wolverine. When it comes right down to the feel, the weighting, the abilities and the power the devs done it good and they done it right.
Combat – It’s pretty basic really, regular combat is limited to the light attack/heavy attack/throw model supplemented with a variety of special (or Rage) moves that has essentially become the mainstay since the PS2 era. It works as well here as it does for God of War and the various other titles that utilise a similar system. Visually the combat is very impressive and the counter system leads to some very impressive (and gory) kill animations. One of the unique features of the Wolverine combat system is the Lunge. This is a move that feely very Wolverine, Wolverine launches himself at targets claws first and tears into them. It looks great and is a cool mechanism – although it is easy to overuse the move, particularly against weaker opponents who can be one-hit-killed by it.
Upgrades – I like to really feel like I’m in control of my characters destiny when I play a game, and that to me involves a bit more than just pointing them at the next dude to kill and hitting the kill button until they’re killed and repeating for the next dude. So when there’s an upgrade system in place that lets the player make choices rather than just doling out new goodies at set points I’m a happy chappy. Wolverine has such a system – albeit a limited one. Killing dudes grants you experience, levelling up grants you skill points and you use those to build your Wolverine the way you please. If you prefer basic attacks you can invest more in those, if there are certain Rage skills you dislike you can ignore them in favour of the ones you prefer etc etc.
Mutagens – You get (up to) three Mutagen slots to play with during the game (starting with one), the mutagens themselves are scattered around the game with three levels of each. Mutagens are sort of like bonus multipliers, each has a different effect and may give bonuses to damage dealt/taken or health based on certain criteria or may boost the levels of experience/rage/combat reflexes received for a kill. They’re a nice little enhancement that further allow you to customise your Wolverine based on the criteria you prize highest.
No Likey
Combat – Yup, it’s another double edged sword. When fighting against melee enemies Wolverines combat is great fun, the melee enemies can defend themselves and some of them can put up a pretty decent fight – particularly the “Beauties” from the Gambit level, however the gunner enemies that populate most of the early levels are really dull to fight. Most of them die really really easily and there’s no challenge, lunge, heavy attack, repeat. Too easy basically. The game also features a couple of types of large hulking enemies that do massive damage if they manage to clock you one. Unfortunately they’re mind-numbingly easy to beat and the game will insist on throwing them at you frequently. You can boil it down to a science: stand, dodge, lunge, X button 7 times, jump, repeat. No challenge.
Story – It’s unfortunate that this had to be a movie tie-in, Hollywood really fucked up the Wolverine story, and unfortunately you can’t polish a turd. The devs did make a decent effort at enhancing the story by expanding on the Africa operation that led to Wolverine’s departure from Strykers team and brining the Sentinels and Mystique into the fray. The epilogue cutscene is very suggestive of a potential sequel set in a world post-mutant registration act. But despite their best efforts the story is still a bit stinky.
Sentinel Fight – This really was ass. It’s so un-Wolverine. The “Wolverine” thing to do would be to scale the thing with his claws then rip its head off, what the game makes you do is destroy its hands and feet, following that it decides to blast-off into the sky (in a cut-scene where it has magically regained its hands and feet) where Wolverine then proceeds to destroy various other Sentinel bits in a free-fall section the length of which stretches believability to a fine thread.
A far more satisfying and Wolverine-like execution would have been a God Of War like quick-time event. They used quick-time events and GoW style button bashing tricks elsewhere in the game, strikes me as odd they didn’t use the concepts more effectively here.
Length/Difficulty/Replayability – It’s too short. It’s too easy. It isn’t particularly replayable. Your average gamer will play on the Normal/Medium difficulty setting to ease themselves in to a new title, this game is too easy on Normal. None of the bosses pose much of a challenge, even the final boss and unfortunately the only way to increase the difficulty is to play through the entire game on Normal to unlock Hard… If you can do and see pretty much everything in one play-through then there’s very little motivation to replay the game if all it can offer you is a slightly stiffer challenge, and with so many great games on the market, why waste my time playing the same thing over again if there’s nothing new to see or do, or no bonuses to earn? This is an entirely linear game, this doesn’t lend well to replayability in the first place, the devs could have put more effort in to adding incentive to replay the game.
Achievements – Presumably the 360 and PS3 versions of the game have Achievements and Trophies (respectively), pretty much all new games on these systems do. Microsoft allow PC games under the Games For Windows LIVE branding to contribute achievements and gamerscore to a Live ID/gamertag. Raven decided not to bother going the whole hog and cut off the LIVE part, so no achievements. Fair enough, but they still track the criteria for many of the 360 achievements under the banner “Statistics”. It just seems pretty lazy to me not to go the extra step and actually integrate into the Live system.
DLC – The PC version of the game (which I bought) doesn’t have the DLC pack afforded the PS3 and 360 versions of the game. This is becoming a trend for multiplatform games that make it to the PC and is quite frankly bullshit.
Conclusionados
Despite its failings it’s still a decent play-through, best superhero game ever? It might actually have been back in May when it was released, but it has definitively been shafted by the superb Batman: Arkham Asylum released a few months later in August/September which raised the bar for superhero games henceforth.
Should you buy Wolverine? Why not, but I’d probably reduce the value of the game to more like <£10. Maybe a rental then.
freedoms_stain, Rwwwarraaaarrrr, out.
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