X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Raven Software must be nervous right about now. There’s been a pressure-cooker of hype bubbling under their latest action game, the tie in for the upcoming flick X-Men Origins: Wolverine – the reason being, of course, that they’ve developed a game based on a movie, and unlike most games based on movies (with a couple of begrudgingly granted above-average exceptions), it looks good. Ridiculously over the top, maybe, but good.

Much of this can be attributed to the approach they’ve taken with Wolverine himself; no longer just ‘the X-Man with the claws’, Raven’s Logan is a wild, hostile beast, a big leap from his days as a Sega sprite (discernible as Wolverine only by the mandatory ‘snickt!’ sound-bite.) Indeed, it seems that Raven could have almost over-delivered in the aggression department, for Logan is violent to the point of psychopathic, spilling buckets of bright red enemy blood all over the screen in a series of over-bloodthirsty God-of-War type melee attacks.

The gore factor is a surprising – and rather confronting - feature of the game, and one has to wonder whether Raven’s gratuitous addition may lose them half their audience, for they’ve pushed the envelope far enough into a no-brainer R-rating. Wolverine himself disintegrates and regenerates like a regular B-movie zombie, shedding chunks of flesh to expose muscle and organs beneath, whereas enemies are token flesh-bags, arms and legs disposable pixels screaming to be lopped off with one of his many dynamic combos. Not one for the kids, then.

Based on a set of light moves, heavy moves and grabs, these combos are pick up and play easy, strung together using intuitive context-sensitive button mashing familiar to anyone who’s played a God of War or Devil May Cry title. As you progress through the game, Wolvie’s move-set progresses with you, your experience points unlocking deadlier, more dramatic flourishes and some truly wince-inducing finishing moves. At a guess, his most utilized skill will be his launch attack that lets him lock onto enemies far beyond his immediate reach, firing that tight little Hugh Jackman-modeled bod at an unsuspecting henchman with alarming ferocity.

Logan can also use his environment as a weapon, with trees, sticks and bits of context-sensitive machinery utilized for some particularly splatterific moments; think helicopter blades and you get the idea. If he gets cut up to hell himself (a regular occurrence), his healing ability will kick in and his wounds will slowly close up. Of course there’s no fun with complete invulnerability, and Raven have split his health into two bars: immediate health – that fills up quickly – and the more gradual re-filling ‘vitals’ which represents overall well-being. Take too much damage to those precious ‘vitals’, and it’s mission failure.

To complete the beast, and perhaps accelerate him into the near-invulnerable killing machine he always was in the later X-Men comics, Wolverine has a ‘feral sense’ that dulls his environment bar immediate enemies, interactive objects and pathways, highlighted in green. Enemy weaknesses, too, can occasionally be highlighted, particularly in boss battles, which reach such truly gargantuan proportions you’ll be glad you’ve got the neat little tool.

If this level of freedom with one of Marvel Comics’ poster-boys sounds a little too good to be true, fear not. Thanks to an unusual twist of fate, Raven began the game as a generic Wolverine title before the film was announced, giving them the ability to flesh out the most non-exec friendly fare in initial development and generally avoid the strict studio interference such movie tie-ins generally invite. That’s not to say there’s no relation to the upcoming Hugh Jackman film, on the contrary; the narrative follows the movie’s story very closely, it's highly cinematic thanks to flawlessly integrated cut-scenes, and Wolverine is voiced by Jackman himself. It’s simply that Raven have catered to gamers, not fans. And that’s highly refreshing.