X-Men Origins: Wolverine on the Nintendo Wii is a below average beat-’em-up that features repetitive button mashing gameplay, sub-par visuals and an absurdly disjointed story which lacks any real character development or motivation. It also lacks any real fun factor and the game quickly becomes a real chore to play.

As the name implies, the story explores Wolverine’s origins before he became a part of the X-Men. It becomes immediately obvious that character development and motivations are not going to be an important part of the overall plot. In the opening scene, Wolverine is set upon by two lumberjacks that are annoyed that he is making them look bad. They attempt to kill him with axes, so Wolverine slaughters them quick smart. That sets off an orgy of killing with hordes of nameless, faceless lumberjacks trying to kill an unkillable enemy. Oh...and somewhere during all this killing, Wolverine’s wife is murdered, he is transformed into a metal-infused killing machine and some other such rubbish happens which motivates more killing of more nameless and faceless enemies. It’s more than a little absurd, and surely after Wolverine has killed his hundredth or so enemy and recovered from his hundredth or so bullet wound, the others should have got the message that this is not the kind of person that they should be messing with...but on they come, like lambs to the slaughter. Surely after more than 30 years of video games, the industry should be able to come up with some better motivations for its characters than this?

The game is controlled with the Wii-remote and nunchuk combination and, thankfully, the developers have not attempted to use the motion controls for general attacks. Instead, most of Wolverine’s moves are controlled with traditional button combinations, which makes the game far more user friendly and far more able to correctly interpret the input of the player.

Sadly, the controls are just uninspired and add very little to the game. Button mashing is the order of the day, and even though the developers have attempted to deliver a little depth to the gameplay by implementing a bunch of different combos to pull off, there really is little benefit to learning how they work. Each combo has the same effect as the others and the enemies don’t react any differently. Even when fighting the harder enemies, there is little strategy involved other than blocking at the right moments and counter attacking.

The motion controls that are used work reasonably well, with contextual controls for things like leaping through the air to predetermined points, ripping open doors and dodging quick time event-like attacks. It works because it is not intrusive and does not result in frustration when motions are misinterpreted.

The gameplay varies little from the multitude of superhero video games that are out there right now. Players will steer Wolverine through three dimensional environments with hordes of enemies ready to attack. Occasionally a boss will appear and require some more astute combat, and Wolverine will acquire more and more power as the game goes on. But this increased power is offset by the increasingly powerful enemies that make up the general fodder to be dispatched. There are the occasional puzzles to sort out, but nothing more complicated than finding the right path or the correct switch to press. It is such standard 3D-beat-’em-up gameplay that it feels old before the end of the first stage.

The game looks poor and runs at an inconsistent frame rate, and there is nothing inspiring about the audio-visual design. Like the gameplay, the brown and grey environments could have been recycled from any other number of 3D-beat-’em-ups and the same two or three enemy types are reused throughout each stage. The audio is poorly used and does nothing to add to the atmosphere and the voice work is repetitive and silly.

Technically the game has plenty of flaws too, with game-breaking glitches causing plenty of problems throughout. The enemy artificial intelligence is awful and results in enemies getting stuck, Wolverine can fall through floors and the audio crackles and pops.

The game is over and done with soon enough, but there is very little reason to even stick with the game until the end. There is no multiplayer mode and no reason to go back to the game once the story mode is finished.

Personal thoughts

For a game that features a character that can’t be killed, I certainly ran into plenty of game over screens. Since when is water fatal to a well trained killing machine that has the ability to regenerate from any injury he sustains? A poor use of the licence, if I must say so.

This is poor stuff and a waste of one of the year’s biggest licences.