X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I started this one in December last year when I was looking for something new to play that was quick to complete. It was certainly new to me but wasn’t quick and this was partly do to with Xbox One commitments but mainly due to the fact that I just couldn’t get in to it. More on that later.

So X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a movie tie in but it’s different to most in that it’s actually good. Or better than the movie as most people perceived it. You play as Wolverine – or Logan – Or James Howlett as he is known in the game as you run through the jungle murdering tons of dudes… and then run through facilities and buildings murdering tons of dudes. And some robots.

When I first played the game, I could see why it got a lot of praise. Imagine the first two X-Men Movies were R rated and it’s basically that. Wolverine gets chopped to shit all the time and just gets back up dripping blood everywhere and carrying on. But the main part of the game comes with the blasé nature with which Wolverine dismembers everybody, the most out-there part being where he sticks someone’s head in helicopter blades for a decapitation.

While a lot of people have raved about the game, I was left bored and disappointed. At its heart, it’s an uncomplicated hack and slash where 90% of the enemies provide you with a minor annoyance rather than any kind of challenge and while I’m not averse to an unchallenging game, I am averse to a boring one.

The game was released in 2009 and it definitely looks its age. On top of that I found the level design to be less intuitive than Clive Barker’s Clive Barker’s Jericho. I will borrow from Yahtzee of the Escapist’s line here and ask which X-Men Origins Wolverine level did you enjoy most? Brown Jungle, Grey Complex, White Complex, or revenge of the Brown Jungle?

Musically its forgettable but repetitive so offers even less in this area that the graphics, but at least it doesn’t interfere and overstep.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

Despite me failing to get into the game and taking nearly 5 months to complete it, a lot of the achievements are easy to get and some of the larger ones are easily grindable by replaying checkpoints. You get 8 for playing through the main story but it will probably be closer to 30 after completing one playthrough.

Some of the more grindy ones involve using Wolverine’s rage attacks. Using Claw Spin to kill 200 enemies was a ball ache because Claw Spin is shit and doesn’t do much damage to enemies late on. The only one of these special moves you will want to use is the Berserk mode which has another kill achievement. The rest are pretty much redundant.

Speaking of redundant, Wolverine also has to kill a load of dudes while in feral sense which is wolverine’s equivalent of Eagle Vision from Assassin’s Creed or Detective Vision from the Batman Arkham series. There is no cost to using it but for some reason, it times out after a while and you need to reactivate it again. Totally pointless.

Looking at the more in-depth grinding ones, there are only two worth mentioning. The first is for collecting all the dog tags but this actually didn’t prove too difficult. There was also quite clearly a point where I got so fed up with the game that I tried to reduce my play time by collecting all of them and looking everywhere. I only missed 3 tags from the end of chapter 3 onwards to avoid me having to replay the later part of the game.

The other one is for getting all your combat reflexes up to the max level and this was totally fucking stupid. You have to replay two checkpoints over and over again to do it so you are never going to get the maximum benefit from doing so because the game is unchallenging. It just adds an unnecessary grind to an already boring game.

The last one I earned is one of my personal favourites. You have to play it through on hard. It’s almost no different from normal and certainly didn’t add any extra challenge. On top of that, the game wants you to complete it on normal first before it lets you play on hard. This aspect of games can fuck off.

The last fight on this mode was a total cunt though. As it’s not difficult, it makes up for it by being cheap. Deadpool can shoot out the ground you walk on and then shoot you in the air when you jump over the gaps. The only way I found to avoid this was to let him shoot me a few times, then jump. Totally benign and not well thought out gameplay.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Despite the hype before I played it, I found it a resoundingly average game. It’s not bad but I am wondering if the hype comes from it not being total garbage while also being a movie spin off? Anyway, the long and short of it is that it’s a very unmemorable 12 to 15 hour completion in terms of achievements. And you will most likely be bored at the end.