You can constantly upgrade your strength and stamina, but the enemies always seem to take the same amount of punishment. While it adds a sense of purpose to the slaughter, it's also a bit misleading. Boss encounters, while they force you to change up your battle strategy a little, are simple exercises in running around in circles, leaping on your opponent's back, and slowly whittling away at their health bar.īut to ease the grind of fighting the game's endless parade of cloned grunts, Origins incorporates a few adventure-like qualities (leveling up, equipping new powers, choosing which skills to power up). How many blade-wielding, four-armed dancers exist in Wolverine's world? Apparently several hundred. It's even more off-putting when you start fighting mutants. Both the "past" jungle levels and "present" facility chapters pit you against the exact same enemies, reskinned to fit their surroundings. The guys you're killing, however, get old pretty fast. But the game always makes you feel like an effective killing machine. The combos are simple, and button-mashing usually works just as well as any type of strategy. And almost every enemy can succumb to getting ripped apart at the torso or a messy decapitation. The camera cinematically sweeps around the battlefield, and the game throws the action into slow motion whenever you execute an especially violent decapitation. By the end, the game has set up so many loose plot threads that it leaves no choice but to try and wrap them up in a confusing mishmash of explosions and overlong battles.īut you're playing this game for one reason and it's not for a Dickensian retelling of Logan's history it's to do what "he does best": tear people in half with reckless, bloody abandon. Other popular mutants, like Gambit and the Blob, make brief appearances, but their cameos only confuse the tale of flashbacks further. After act three, however, things start to get weird for every question the game answers, it brings up two more.
Regardless, Origins' five-chapter tale alternates between the present (mostly the Weapon X facility) and three years in the past (in an African jungle), setting up a frame story that slowly but surely drives the narrative forward. The character's true origin began in the 1800s.
Like the title indicates, Origins details Wolverine's beginnings.well more of the origin of his name and adamantium frame. Wolverine's latest adventure X-Men Origins: Wolverine, does a great job of making you feel like the nearly invincible mutant, but it doesn't quite provide a story to match. But what about nearly immortal characters, like Superman? The Man of Steel has kryptonite to make him a little more "human," but Marvel's undying bundle of anger, Wolverine, can survive almost anything (or at least put himself back together after being torn to shreds). Some guys, like Batman, are just regular people with lots of money and awesome gadgets, and they can still die. Making certain superhero videogames must be difficult.