Game Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine [Uncaged Edition]

With the summer blockbusters making their appearances on the big screen the line up of naff movie tie-in games drag themselves onto the shelves, as developers try to cash in on six months of half hearted work by slapping a license on the cover. You'd be forgiven for dismissing most of them without a second thought - such as the upcoming and inevitably poor Gears of War rip-off Terminator Salvation - but then there's a chance you'll miss out of one of the rare gems that the franchise flogging produces. It's the first of the summer blockbusters, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, that has surprisingly spawned one of the better movie tie-in games - specifically it's Uncaged Edition.

Wasting absolutely no time throwing you into the fray, X-Men Origins: Wolverine begins as Wolverine's helicopter is shot down over Africa and you're forced to skydive sans parachute through a barrage of gunfire and oncoming missiles, before slamming into the jungle below miraculously unscathed and unsheathing the iconic metal (well, bone at the moment) claws. It's a fantastic opening, instantly grabbing you by the balls and launching you straight into the nitty gritty - the combat.

Combat revolves around the three familiar moves - light, heavy and grab attacks - and chaining them for different combos. It's fairly simple, mostly just a case of mashing the light attack button before finishing with a heavy attack, but it's incredibly stylish and flows brilliantly, and with the gradual addition of Lunge and Rage attacks the combat remains surprisingly varied throughout. If you have fond memories of playing through the likes of Ninja Gaiden II, then you'll feel right at home.

Then X-Men Origins: Wolverine puts a dark, blood red cherry on top. The game's Uncaged Edition boasts the kind of brutality and gore unheard of in the typical, family friendly movie tie-ins, and it's absolutely brilliant. Watching as Wolverine mercilessly tears his enemy in two is incredibly satisfying, and with cinematic camera angles and excellently timed slow-motion sequences it's rarely going to become boring. So with it's flowing, satisfying and shamelessly brutal combat, X-Men Origins will genuinely make you feel like iconic mutant. And it's a brilliant feeling.

Well, it's a brilliant feeling when you're against the variety of standard enemies the game will throw at you, but once you come up to a boss fight everything comes crashing back down into typical tie-in mediocrity. They're mind numbingly repetitive, with every boss fight playing out exactly the same way - dodge, lunge, hack, repeat - and with each boss boasting massive health you'll probably spend a good five minutes using that same combination of moves over and over again. Because dealing with bosses is a more a test of graft than skill, when they finally do buckle there's no sense of accomplishment whatsoever, just the disappointment of knowing that the five or ten minutes you spent lunging onto that thing's back could have been better spent cutting someone's face off.

While the boss fights will always be repetitive, there's enough of other elements in X-Me Origins: Wolverine to keep the rest of the gameplay relatively fresh. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to have been as much effort put into these sections as there was into the combat.

The big secondary elements is the Tomb Raider style platforming and puzzle solving, which mostly takes place during the Africa-based missions. It's competent, but that's it. There's just nothing exciting about it; the puzzles are very simple and Wolverine's movement - in stark contrast to his fighting style - lacks the kind of flair that made other platformers more enjoyable. It's fairly bland and the puzzles and challenges are blatantly replicated, but it helps to keep the combat fresh. It's just a shame they couldn't put a little more effort into it.

Not wanting to undermine the mediocre reputation of movie tie-ins by making something decent, X-Men Origins then throws quick time events and even a dodgy vehicle section into the mix. Fortunately the vehicle section is only a few minutes long, although that just asked questions of why it was included in the first place as it's not necessary for the development and it's barely challenging or even fun, it's as if they threw it in just to kill time before unleashing you on some more hapless soldiers. The quick time events, while visually impressive, feel even more restrictive than usual after experiencing the game's free-flowing combat.

There are a couple of unlockables in X-Men: Origins, but they're not the kind that will keep you coming back for more. With the storyline being so linear (and also fairly short) the hard mode you'll unlock on completion probably isn't going to encourage another play through. Neither are the costumes to unlock, as expectedly the novelty for them wears of very quickly.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine will go down as one of the better movie tie-ins, but even then it's still barely rising above average. The combat is the only real plus point with everything else feeling half-arsed and tedious by comparison, and combined with it's linearity and lack of replayability this is a rental at most. Still, if you want the sensation of being Wolverine, this is definitely the best place to get it.

Summary: While pretty much everything is fairly lacklustre, the combat in X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Uncaged Edition makes what would otherwise be a bland movie tie-in an enjoyable, dynamic and highly brutal experience.