X-men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition

If Kratos and Wolverine had a lovechild, it would probably end up being X-men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition. (Also, biologically impossible... and while I'm in a parenthetical, can I mention how unwieldy the name of the game is? My hand cramps up just thinking about typing the title.) Wolverine manages to beat the odds and far surpass any expectations for a movie game.

The opening cinematic promises the Wolverine game you've always wanted. Wolverine mercilessly hacks and slashes his way through a group of mercenaries with enough blood to make Taranino blush. The gameplay delivers on that promise. From the opening, you're dismembering people with a flash of style, impaling them on trees and generally doing what you'd imagine Logan would do with six razor sharp claws. The combat is highly satisfying, although unlike it's spiritual predecessor, God of War, Wolverine only has one weapon which leads to a lack of variety in the move set. Also unlike Kratos, Wolverine has been given a lunge move, where you can leap onto a targeted enemy from a good distance away. This allows your fights to flow from one opponent to another without the hassle of actually running up to an enemy. Wolverine also has a "feral sense" which you can use to spot your next objective or find climbable or breakable objects.

You can also slightly customize your Wolverine with upgrades and mutagens as you gain experience from striking down your opponents. You can choose to spend points on upgrading various aspects of your character, from the attack strength to modifying your special moves. The mutagens found throughout the game allow you to further modify how your character gains experience or attack bonuses, etc. Although, it doesn't seem to matter much since by the end of the game you've gained enough experience to just about max out everything.

The game roughly follows the plot of the movie, so if you don't want to be spoiled, you might want to watch the movie first. Or if you want to play the game as a substitute for the movie, that's ok too. Not only does the game feature most of the characters from the movie, it also adds characters from the X-men mythos. So if you're a long time reader of X-men, you'll probably recognize a few of the cameos. You'll also find other pop culture cameos in the game, from Lost to Portal to World of Warcraft.

This attention to detail is also apparent in the graphics. The game is just stunning. The Wolverine model is made up of four different layers, skeleton, muscle, skin and clothing. As you take damage, each layer is blown away revealing the layer underneath. Then, true to the character, those layers regenerate over time. From the snowy forests of Canada to the jungle climate of Africa, the environments also hold up well.

But the game isn't perfect. For the most part, the game runs smoothly but I did encounter some slowdown in one particular section as well as a few showstopping glitches. The glitches prevented me from moving forward in the game but reloading from a checkpoint a couple of times corrected the glitches. It's not a major issue, but a little disappointing considering the high quality of pretty much everything else in the game.

Rating

I would especially recommend this game to all of you out there who own an Xbox 360 (or have owned an Xbox) and were curious about the Playstation exclusive game, God of War. Sure, the God of War games are slightly more polished but this is about as close as you'll probably get to a God of War game on a Microsoft console.

Recommendations

Spider-Man 2, Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction - Like I mentioned above, these two games are the definitive interactive representations of their respective title characters much like X-men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged edition is to our favorite X-man.