X2: Wolverine's Revenge

"Metal Gear Stupid"

Sometimes a beloved comic book character cannot catch a break in the video game world. Batman has laid many an egg and Superman just cannot seem to get his cape in the air (I wonder if they make a pill for that). Anyway, the X-men have had more success with a few good games from the days of the NES and on and with the 3D capabilities of the PS2, GameCube, PC, and xBox it seemed like a good time to throw the X-Men, or at least the most popular member of the team into a non-fighting game. Sadly, the game is an as stinky as one of Batman's aforementioned eggs and cannot get off the ground like good ol' Supes.

Conceptually, who wouldn't want to play a game based on Wolverine? Wolverine's a reformed anti-hero with the ability to heal himself and adamantium claws that he can retract at will, that being said I think we can put a big check next to concept. Graphically, the game looks really good and has decent animations. Wolverine is visually in his feral prime and the worlds are fairly well fleshed out. Also, the voice work is stellar with Mark Hammill as the titular be-clawed one, Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Charles Xavier, game and cartoon vet Jennifer Hale lending her voice to Rogue, and hell even Mayim Bialik from Blossom does a couple of characters. The story is decent and basically apes the film it's tied to with Wolverine trying to recover his past with the twist of being infected with a virus that will kill him in 2 days (oh, how designers love a ticking clock). So far so good, so what can go wrong? Sadly the biggest problem the game has is what makes most games good, gameplay.

The game designers decided to jump on the stealth bandwagon and have a character know for running full boar into a fight sneaking around and dispatching his enemies silently. Now if this was implemented better it might work but basically you just need to memorize enemy movement to proceed. The enemy AI basically allows you to kill guards in pretty much the same way every time you play, much of the game is spent in trial and error, this can get frustrating. The stealth aspect really just doesn't fit the character. I wanted a game where Wolverine just kicked butt and possibly solved a few puzzles, however, this game rewards you for stealth kills. This brings us to the combat, which should be the best part but instead falls flat like a 500-pound crowd surfer.

Stealth kills and boss fights reward you with dog tags, which can be used to purchase combo strings, sounds cool right? Wrong. You do not really control Wolverine while he is doing a combo, it's more like you punch in a code and watch him do all the work. This makes the combat seem like more of a cutscene than anything else. It's like watching a friend play when you really want to get your hands on the controller. The boss fights are not much better. Again one wants to run full boar into Sabretooth or Wendigo and have a good old-fashioned throwdown but the designers turn it into a puzzle. They might as well put claws on Tetris blocks and called it a day. Beyond the fighting we get simple 'throw-the-switch-to-open-the-door' style puzzles without much differentiation.

On top of all this there is the "Hightened Senses" mode that is supposed to ape Wolverine's ability to hear, smell, and track like an animal. Oddly, this mode also seems to give him precognition in that you can see the routes you should take to dispatch an enemy completely taking thought out of the game which is just plain weird (it's Wolverine's Revenge not Jean Grey's Revenge). HS also allows you to see trip lasers and mines which I didn't know Wolvie could smell or hear. This HS mode just seems goofy, rushed, and seems like it could have been implemented much better.

Overall, there isn't much to get you into the game and which equals little to no replay value. Sure there were bonus costumes and comics to collect but that would require replaying the game, that isn't an option. For the time being, Wolverine joins Batman and Superman on the video game disabled list and gamers will have to wait for another chance to take control of the feral one.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/04