Snikt!
You won’t find that word in a dictionary, yet it’s instantly recognizable to comic book fans. It’s the sound adamantium claws make when they extend from the hands of Wolverine and it’s the last thing his enemies will ever hear. It’s also something you will hear throughout X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the latest game from developer Raven Software and publisher Activision.
In this latest attempt to craft a first-class game for one of Marvel Comics’ flagship characters, Raven Software is tasked with appeasing two separate audiences: the comic book fans that can be overly critical of liberties that are taken with characters that they have followed for years, and movie fans who are connecting with a character for the first time. Of course, while satisfying those two crowds you also have to make a game that will provide an entertaining and compelling experience. With X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the team over at Raven Software has crafted the best Wolverine game to date – but is it first-class?
Any fan of comic books will tell you that the true origin of Wolverine is a long and complex tale that cannot be easily told in a two hour movie or a ten hour game. Instead, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is yet another re-imagining of his origins, this time focusing on his relationship with his brother, Victor Creed, and William Stryker, the man responsible for the adamantium grafted to Wolverine’s skeleton. The movie and the game share some similar plot points, however, the game expands on events that are only touched on in the movie and adds additional story elements to expand the experience. Players will find themselves jumping back and forth through time as they search for Victor Creed in the present, and play through the events that took place in Africa, which led to Wolverine leaving Team X a few years earlier. Your quest for vengeance against Creed will lead you through a variety of locales, including some not seen or mentioned in the movie such as a facility in the southwest that’s building Sentinels. As you play through the parts set in Africa you will work alongside members of Team X while you search for a rare metal that Stryker is desperate to get his hands on. The story takes Wolverine to six unique locales and multiple missions that will challenge him in ways both familiar and unfamiliar to fans.
“I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn’t very nice.” Truer words have never been spoken about Wolverine; he is, in fact, the best at what he does and when the game remembers this it’s also at its best. When you are in control of Logan, adamantium unsheathed, lunging towards a squad of enemies, separating limb from torso, blood gushing from wounds, the game is astonishingly fun. Combat is visceral and the controls are responsive so even when you’re cleaving through your 2000th enemy it still feels fun; just not so fresh. The game does feature a level system so Wolverine’s skills will grow as you progress through the story. There are also mutagens which can be used to customize Wolverine’s mutant abilities (increased healing factor, added health, more damage resistance, etc.) that can be changed at any time via the Pause menu. It’s when X-Men Origins: Wolverine inserts traditional video game cliches, like key fetching, minor puzzle solving, and repetitive boss encounters, that the game starts to falter. It’s not that they aren’t well done; it’s just that those elements pop up too often and for a character who is indestructible and equipped with claws that can cut through nearly any material, it doesn’t feel right that he’d take the time to locate a power cell to open a door, or move statues onto weighted platforms to lower a wooden gate. Still these moments are well done and backtracking is kept to a minimum in most cases so it’s easy to forgive, unlike the boss battles.
Outside of the fight with Gambit, the boss battles are uninspired and consist mainly of dodging, lunging and counter-attacks that are fun the first time you encounter them but quickly grow repetitive and then finally become stale after 20 or so fights. The repetitive nature of the boss battles in compounded by the fact that while there are 20+ boss encounters in the game there are only 9 different bosses, so several of them will show up multiple times. Overall, the gameplay delivers a satisfying experience but it’s not going to inspire you to play through it multiple times.
Taking the world of Wolverine off of the printed page and putting it into a video game or a movie is a hard thing to do; the work of many talented artists have gone into crafting a world and a character that is this iconic and defined. While X-Men Origins: Wolverine gets its inspiration from the movie, the levels that Raven Software have crafted would be right at home in an issue of the comic. With each of the games six locales playing host to several mission, it’s important that those locales be visually appealing and, more often than not, they are. Although the interior levels do suffer from a smaller color palette and tend to be less interesting to look at, (the Sentinel Factory being the exception) they still deliver a pleasing backdrop for the missions. The character models however are a mixed bag, while Wolverine and Victor Creed look good and are modeled after the actors that played them in the film, (Hugh Jackman, and Liev Schreiber) other characters only bear a passing resemblance to the actors that played them (Wraith and Gambit) and others have been changed completely (Wade Wilson and Agent Zero). A few technical glitches are present in the game, mainly with textures popping in and out on character models and portions of the level, but they don’t occur enough to bring the overall experience down. Graphically, the game holds up well to other action games currently on the market but it doesn’t try to surpass them in anyway, which is a bit disappointing considering that the game was delayed a year to coincide with the release of the film.
It’s hard to imagine that a word can be an iconic sound but that’s exactly what Snikt! is. Even before fans heard it for the first time in the 1992 X-Men animated series on Fox, everybody knew exactly how it would sound. Origins faithfully replicates this sound as well as the guttural noises that Wolverine is known to make in the midst of a fight. The voice acting is well done and again many of the stars of the film lend their vocal talent to the game with the glaring and almost unforgivable exception of Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson. The few lines that he got to deliver in the movie were some of the film’s most memorable lines and the game would have benefited from his comedic timing and sarcastic delivery. Overall, the sound design of the game suffers from a flaw that I found to be a hindrance while playing through it. I had to keep my TV remote within easy reach as the sounds of battle were often too loud, while the characters often seemed to be whispering to each other which forced me to lower and raise the volume when needed.It’s not a huge deal but again, with the game being delayed an entire year, it’s a problem that should have been fixed with the extra development time.
With X-Men Origins: Wolverine Raven Software has raised the bar for comic book/movie inspired video games but a few flaws hold it back from being a first-rate title. The relatively short length of the game along with the repetitive boss battles knocks this title out of the realm of “must buy” to “must rent”.
—————
Things We Liked: Visceral Combat. Precise Controls. Unlockable Costumes. Skill and Mutagen System,
Things We Disliked: Repetitive Boss Battles. Relatively short length. Little Replay Value.
Target Audience: Action game fans. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (The Movie) fans. Understanding fans of the comic.
(X-Men Origins: Wolverine – Available on PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii and Xbox 360. PlayStation 3 version reviewed. New to CFD’s reviews? Read our explanation here.)
[Editor's Note: The version reviewed above, developed by Raven Software, is the PS3, PC and 360 version of the game. The DS and PSP versions, as well as the PS2 and Wii versions were produced by different developers - Griptonite Games and Amaze Entertainment respectively - and do not conform exactly to the gameplay descriptions noted above.]
