After finishing Ninja Gaiden Sigma, I needed more bloodshed, so I went straight into Activision’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine game that loosely follows the events of the movies and adds a little extra for a nice touch. Now, I’m a huge Wolverine fan. I have every issue of the ongoing comic series, I own Hulk 180 (his first appearance, but not his first full issue appearance), and the mini-series. I don’t buy every comic with ol’ Logan in it, but I admit, I like the character.
I’ve played The Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine on NES, X-Men on Sega Genesis and on Game Gear, I played X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse on SNES, Wolverine: Adamantium Rage game on SNES (also available on Sega Genesis), X-Men Legends I & II, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, X2: Wolverine’s Revenge, and even the X3: X-Men United game. I think I’m pretty well versed in Wolverine’s gaming appearances at this point, so I like to think I’m warranted to say that X-Men Origins: Wolverine Unleashed is a pretty good game for the character. It may not be one of the best games created, but it definitely climbs fairly high on the list for movie-based games.
The game flips you between flash back sequences to Logan’s past and the present timeline of the movie. As such, we see more of Wolverine’s mission in Africa where he and his team, led by Stryker, were on the hunt for a rare metal (the adamantium later bonded to Wolverine’s skeleton). The game walks a closer balance between the movie and the comic books, giving Wolvie some pretty crazy action sequences in destroying helicoptors or being thrown off of giant towers to survive the fall. Still, it keeps the movie’s fairly realistic look with Logan in combat fatigues and an undershirt to start off in the jungles of Africa and later replacing that with a tank top and blue jeans or his leather jacket. The thing that caught me from the opening cinematic was that this game would be holding very true to Wolverine’s classic catch phrase of “I’m the best there is at what I do, and what I do isn’t very nice.” The opening CG cinematic does show Logan pop those adamantium claws, but that’s the last you see their silver glint. After a few seconds, they pretty much turn red and stay red for the rest of the intro as he maims and slaughters soldiers out to get him.
I thought the intro was fairly cool, but when the game started, I admit I was shocked by the brutality of Logan’s first attacks as they removed a man’s entire arm, another’s legs, and gutted a third before beheading my final opponent. Limbs remained on the ground, though sometimes wound up pretty far away from the site of the carnage. I thought it was a bit shocking at first, but that’s what Wolverine does, especially back when he had less moral ground and did his missions to the best of his deadly ability. Besides, they attack you first. The other thing I noticed in this first little fight was that the game was true to form for Wolverine’s fighting style. Not the slashing and spinning of claws. No, I started the fight in camo fatigue pants and a white tank top. I ended the fight with no shirt remaining and noticed that it deteriorates as you take damage, getting torn and shreded until there’s nothing left. Once your shirt’s gone, you’ll notice bullet holes in Logan’s back or chest or huge gouges across his flesh where he’s slashed open by machetes. Once the fight’s over and you want to stand there and watch, you can see the wounds close up, watching that healing factor go to work. And you don’t have to wait until out of a fight for it to kick in. You can run around and avoid enemy fire during the fight to heal up too. This does get a little extreme at some points with missiles taking out a chunk of your stomach to show the adamantium ribcage later on. I took enough damage at some points that even comic Wolvie would be down for the count until the healing factor kicked in later.
As you progress through the game, you can pick up figurines of Wolverine for experience towards leveling and to unlock three different costumes: 80s Tan/Brown costume, Classic Yellow/Blue costume, and the X-Force black/gray costume. Normally, I love unlocking the costumes and changing into the classic look, but with the more realistic environment and feel of the movies, they don’t quite seem to fit the game as well. However, when I unlocked the X-Force costume, I thought it actually did fit in great. If I were choosing costumes for a live action movie, I’d highly recommend an X-Force inspired design for Wolverine.
The controls are easy to get used to and combos aren’t hard to pull off. The only complaint I had with the game was how easy it was, though that does give me motivation to play through the game on a harder difficulty now, which I intend to do. The modification to the movie’s story is rather enjoyable as well, giving a few added locations and information. The story would be far too long in movie form, but it works well in the game. Mystique makes an appearance and plays a part in some of the game, an addition I actually liked to the story. The only thing I didn’t like about this was that Raven is noted to be pregnant with John Wraith’s baby, him asking her at their last scene in the game what she thought of the name Kurt, implying John Wraith is Nightcrawler’s father in the movie timeline. This doesn’t really work too well since Scott is in high school as of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Nightcrawler is an adult just a few years later in X2: X-Men United. The only other comic characters to appear, in a well done fashion, are Dr. Trask and the Sentinels.
The difficulty being too easy being my only complaint largely comes from how easy it is to take out enemies with an insanely long range for a lunge attack. This could partially be since I just got done with Ninja Gaiden Sigma so this game seems easier than it really is, but I stand by the position that it could be a bit harder. We’ll see how difficult hard mode is, but if you’re an X-Men fan, I recommend this one as a fun rental.
