X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- Uncaged Edition

X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- Uncaged Edition would be storming the streets alongside the Hugh Jackman talkie, my eyes involuntarily rolled and a sigh escaped my lips. Would this be another botched gaming opportunity for one of comic books' greatest heroes?
The answer is a definitive "no," accented by an adamantium claw to the face. X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- Uncaged Edition is some of the most violent fun I've had in a long, long time. It's far from perfect, but it's going to be a bloody blast for Wolvie fans.


X-Men Origins takes the events of the movie, adds a bunch of back story and tosses you in into the tattered white tank top of the one and only Weapon X. Set before the X-Men films, this game chronicles the time when Logan was running with his commanding officer Stryker and Sabertooth and doing all sorts of disturbing missions, his break from the group, and his one-man mission for revenge. I'm a respectful geek myself, so I'll leave the story elements at that; no need to ruin any of the movie for those of you who have been avoiding the early reviews like the plague.

Luckily, even if I did detail the story, I won't have much to say. This game is all about guttural, disturbing action. Rather than neuter Wolverine like so many games have and leave him with claws that just tickle bad guys, Raven Software has created the most spot-on version of the character we've probably ever seen in a videogame. The title opens with a dramatic movie where Wolverine stabs a guy in the head through a wall, lifts a dude in the air and skewers him over and over again and impales another enemy on an exposed pipe. All of those sick kills are part of your in-game repertoire.

If you've checked out my previews in the past and have seen the occasional screenshot now and again, you need to stop reading and check out the video review above and then the video montage on the next page because you really don't know what X-Men Origins is all about. Until now, Activision has kept the true scope of this game hidden from the public, but with the game on shelves, the cat is out of the bag.

This is one of the most graphically violent games around.

In this game, you're going to behead bad guys, tear people in half with your claws, hack off arms at the shoulders, gut soldiers and shove a man's head into the moving blades of a helicopter. For fans who have scoffed at the number of slices it has taken to drop a bad guy in previous Wolverine games, this is the holy grail. What makes all of these moves impressive is the fact that you can do them pretty much at any time. Sure, there are Rage moves such as a claw spin and temporary damage boost, but you could go the whole game, not use those garnishes and still get the same amount of blood and destruction.

See, X-Men Origins sticks with a pretty simple control scheme. You have a light attack, heavy attack, block and jump at the game's core and then the aforementioned Rage moves as a supplement. There are combos for the light and heavy attacks if you want to learn them, but you can literally run into a room full of baddies, alternate buttons to your heart's content and be lopping off arms and legs without a problem. Add to this the streams of blood your screaming opponents are giving off and the nifty visual of Wolverine's claws leaving a trail of red plasma in midair and you've got pretty entertaining "light" and "heavy" attacks. Another sweet move is Wolverine's Lunge. From a distance, you can target enemies and then have Logan leap through the air and crash down on top of them. For the hundreds of low-level baddies, this is an instant kill, but for bigger dudes and bosses, this will be the key to victory.

However, above all of these moves on the "Frickin' Awesome Scale" are Logan's Quick Kills. Here, you grab one of your enemies and hit a button. Wolverine will lift the foe into the air, draw back his free hand and when his claw glints in the light, you hit your button again for an instant kill. Those words can't do this process justice. There are a couple of these kills for every type of villain in the game and they're all insane. There's the basic stuff such as Wolverine yanking the dude's head back and burying his claws in the bad guy's throat before yanking down to gut him sternum to scrotum; then there's cooler stuff such as you having to tap a button as Wolverine pushes a bad guy's own shotgun under his chin and pulls the trigger; and then there's the awesome stuff such as when Wolverine goes up against this half-robot looking dude and cuts off his giant metal arm before beating the guard to death with it.

For years, Wolverine has become more and more "kid friendly." This game is a direct attack on that image and it's a totally welcome one.

Adding to the "Holy crap, I'm really Wolverine this time" vibe is how our main character's health works. Once you get past the claws and indestructible skeleton, the one thing everyone knows about Wolverine is that he can heal from pretty much anything. In the past, this has led to crappy games because developers either ignore the fact and give him a health bar or come up with some goofy reason for him not to be able to heal. Here, there are two health bars, but both make sense and were never really an issue in my playthroughs. Basically, the first bar represents Wolverine's exterior. If you can grab some cover when it has been whittled down, it will begin to refill. However, if that bar is completely drained, it means Wolverine has taken enough damage to expose his vital organs. Now, a second meter with a heart on it will begin to take damage. If that one is exhausted, Logan's dead.