Gameplay

Combat in Wolverine is some of the bloodiest seen in an X-Men title yet. This is a welcome change from previous incarnations of the character, where the action is sanitized and family friendly, so as not to earn an M rating. Violent, bloody combat is something one would expect considering Logan's entire repertoire revolves around his ability to slap chop the bones from his enemies without breaking a sweat.

Adding to the carnage is Logan's ability to use the environment around him to dispatch enemies in new, exciting ways. In Africa, enemies can be impaled on random tree stumps, while later on, a cement mixer becomes an interesting way to ensure your bad guys insides are properly mixed before serving. Grabbing an enemy near these objects will initiate the animation; however, you still retain the ability to throw an enemy on them from a distance.

Combat controls consist of a heavy attack, light attack, grab, and jump. The game can be played with a keyboard, although we preferred using a gamepad since for all intents and purposes, the game is very console-heavy in its design. The game is essentially a button masher, although you will eventually master a few key attacks such as the lunge move.


For the most part, we button mashed our way through the game, attacking everything and everyone with great vigor. Normally, this type and style of gameplay would wear thin pretty quickly, but the excellent damage modeling on the characters and uniquely hilarious environmental kills help keep things fresh. Wolverine does seem to borrow heavily from previous hack’n’slash games, especially regulars like God of War with its inclusion of quick time events and huge enemies that can be climbed upon to finish them off.

In an attempt to add a little depth, X-Men Origins: Wolverine features an RPG-lite system of leveling that allows you increase special fury attacks, claw damage, health, and your rage meter. You level fairly quickly throughout the game and on our play through we easily reach level 34. By the time we had reached around 20, our healing factor and health were so high, it was actually extremely difficult for us to die. This made the game a bit on the easy side, even on the hard difficulty setting.

Furthermore, the game suffers from a serious lack of replayability as each level is pretty linear, leaving little to explore once you beat Weapon XI, the final boss. Aside from collecting statues which unlocks 3 alternate costumes, there really isn’t too much to do once the game is done. Beating it on the first play through took us around 10 hours on normal mode, a decent amount by today’s standards.

The bosses, some of which end up becoming mini-bosses once you’ve leveled up enough, are extremely repetitious however. W.E.N.D.I.G.O. and Leviathan for instance rely too heavily on the lunge mechanic to be of any challenge. Also, a few of the puzzles elements don’t make much sense for the character: Why does Wolverine need to find a power cell for a door, when the preceding cut scene shows him cutting through a door? It would’ve been better had they just left these mechanics on the cutting room floor, but then the game would’ve only been about 6 hours long since you spend so much time figuring them out.