Blood splattered across the screen, severed heads flying through the air and dismembered limbs strewn about the environment.
It’s a scene often repeated in the recently released movie tie-in video game, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition.”
Although it is released for every videogame platform, this review focuses on the Xbox 360 version of the game.
The defining feature of this most recent attempt to capture Wolverine in video game form is gore.
With blood, guts, and claws, “X-Men Origins Uncaged Edition” aims to take full advantage of its M rating, distancing itself from the very PG-13 movie.
Raven Software, the developers of the game, has attempted to make the most faithful Wolverine game to date.
In large part they have succeeded.
To achieve game play suitable for a character like Wolverine, Raven essentially copied verbatim the game design of the God of War titles, sprinkling the brew with the gore of the Ninja Gaiden series.
That doesn’t mean this game is anywhere near the quality of the aforementioned titles, but it is fun in its own right.
As Wolverine, players can literally tear their opponents in half.
The simplistic combo system in the game can lead to arms, legs, and heads being sliced on the fly, but the shining stars of the combat are the lunge ability that wolverine possesses, allowing him to lunge into enemies from long distances and plunge his claws into their chest, as well as the quick kill ability, which shows Wolverine brutally ending the lives of his foes in a very cinematic fashion.
Visually, the game is a very mixed bag. The Wolverine character looks fantastic, with severe damage to Wolverine’s body being rendered in real time; at times the play will even be able to see Wolverine’s spine and rib cage, if the player has sustained enough damage.
The environments, and the non-CG cinematic; however, reek of a lack of polish, graphical glitches and muddy looking textures abound.
For better or worse, the game follows the story line presented in the movie, albeit with a few tweaks.
Because of the game’s length, which clocks in at around 8 to 10 hours, many brief events from the movie are completely revamped into long levels within the game, specifically, the operation in Africa and the fight with Gambit.
There are a few original levels in the game taking inspiration from the comics, and these levels are sure to please fans, with an incredible boss encounter to top off the experience.
In general, the game benefits from its tie to the movie, allowing players to reenact key fight scenes from the movie, which are highlights of the somewhat, monotonous experiences.
Given enough time, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition” could’ve been one of the stand out hits of the year, but due to deadline for the game being the release of the movie, the development team clearly didn’t have enough time to make a game that could be considered AAA, still, it is a very above average movie game, well worth the time of anyone interested in action games or X-Men.
Gamers can look forward to the game in Playstation 3, NintendoDS and Wii format. For more information, interested persons may visit the Web site www.Marvel.com and stay tuned for more updates.
