X-Men Origins: Wolverine

For those of you looking for a chance to be Wolverine, this is definitely the game for you. I'm a shooter player more than anything but I'd heard good things about this game and I like Wolverine since he's the best X-Men character.

You take control of Wolverine from a third-person and do what Wolverine does best. You can brandish your claws or use a sort of "animal sense" that highlights hints on how to get out of where you are. The story follows the movie and the maps are VERY linear. Keep that in mind. This is a rollercoaster ride, not GTA or anything open-ended.

Your attacks are based on a combination of keypresses and movement. It's very consoley but you can definitely play with WASD + Mouse. You'll swipe, leap, grab, slam and toss your way through baddies. As you learn the combos and progress, you'll just cut through the enemies...up until you hit the bosses. Yup, bosses. And the boss fights are just stupid. Your first one, the leviathan exemplifies this. Here are the problems:

1) The camera forces you to look at the boss so you end up getting killed sometimes because you're trying to dodge AWAY from the boss but the camera spins you right at him.

2) After about 2/3 of the boss's heath bar is gone, he transforms into something harder. In the case of the leviathan, his skin hardens and leaves only a small part exposed that you can damage. You have to jump on to him and attack him to make any more progress...not easy considering he gets to slam you with a huge boulder regardless of where you are in the little arena you're fighting it. It's ridiculous.

3) Once you do get the hang of what you need to do, you'll spend a lot of time just doing it: leap on, mash the attack keys until the boss is about to grab you, jump off, dodge, dodge, leap on, repeat.

It's stupid considering how much fun the rest of the fighting is. Not all bosses play out exactly like this but they're pretty similar.

As you progress, you'll get to upgrade your abilities and unlock new ones. You'll fuel a lot of these abilities with Rage...which is like Mana in a fantasy game. I started to feel like I was playing Diablo again...killing enemies and smashing everything to get some Rage.

Outside of the bosses, the only other downside are the stupid cut scenes. I'm sorry but the inability to skip a cutscene is just dumb especially for replayability.

Overall, I'd recommend getting this and having some fun but be prepared for some nonsense along the way. It distracts from a great game but fortunately only represents a small part of the game, not the whole thing.

X-Men Origins- Wolverine is a third person action game that follows the events of the recent film. This game may be the best licensed movie game ever made. The game is all out action, but you can build up your character with experience points gained by defeating enemies. Upgrades include more damage, increased health, and special rage powers. The game is very gory as Wolvie evicerates and decapitates his enemies with wild abandon. Executing all of Wolvie's moves are very easy to do with keyboard and mouse set up, and every action button makes Wolvie do something very cool. Graphics are terrific, and the game runs very well on my system (specs to follow). I highly recommend this game to fans of action titles that aren't afraid of a little (ALOT!) blood.

My system specs:
OS: Win XP sp3
AMD Athlon 64 x 2 dual core processor 2.00 Ghz (running at 5.70 speed)
GeForce 8600GT 512Mb graphics card (single card)
2 Gig of RAM

I know this doesn't sound like a killer system, but I can run Bioshock, STALKER, Fallout 3, Crysis, Hellgate, The Witcher, Assassin's Creed, FEAR 2, Cryostasis, etc. all on high or maximum settings with hardly a hiccup.

Very well made, kept me up all night the first day I got it. Very graphic, and fast paced. Controls are easy to pick up and special attacks are quick to learn. Highly recommended for anyone seeking a fast-paced action adventure.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 16 reviews  4.6 out of 5 stars