X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition: I had been sort of 'tricked' into playing this as I'd heard it was better than the movie, but I haven't seen the movie. I've come to learn that doesn't necessarily mean the game is worth your time, it merely means the movie is really bad.

This game is basically a lousy God of War (PS2) clone in both gameplay and tone, though fortunately far fewer QTEs. Similar to how Kratos may fly from beast to beast in battles, cutscenes will have Logan flying from one helicopter to another, swiping at their engines, tail rotors, or the pilots themselves. Think “over-the-top action movie” vibes throughout. It's sort of enjoyable, but there's not a lot of accompanying charm, here.
The gameplay runs into that same issue the recent Jedi games ran into where the only way to make it a good “game” is to weaken the character and their weapons a bit. Logan probably should be cutting every single enemy in half with a single swipe, just as a lightsaber should, but he has been weakened so he's barely a level above random grunts dual-wielding machetes. But if you really love the character and hearing him say “School's in, bub,” then congrats: you've got your game, bub.

The game looks okay (except for Logan's model, which I think looks very good for the time), though you'll run into resolution issues should you want to play it on 1440p. Some .ini changes can help you with that, in addition to other graphical settings not offered in the game's options menu. You can't change the mouse sensitivity, which sucks. But you'll probably be impressed by 2009's real-time healing of Logan's wounds: bullet holes amassing in his body as you're fired upon, explosions taking out chunks of flesh so you see distinct muscle or even bones. It's kind of neat.
Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber are here reprising their roles, unfortunately. I mean it's a paycheck, but at what cost, fellas? Neither one sounds especially thrilled to be in the booth. Will.i.am is here too but nobody, including him, cares.

The game plays simply: Logan heals automatically and you will very rarely even come close to death, you'll learn simple combos of light and heavy attacks, and most importantly you can grab and throw enemies. If you play this game (which I don't recommend), throw every single enemy you can off of cliffs. This game is too long and repetitive to waste time on the lame combos and doesn't give you enough rage to spam the cooler attacks, so trust me: it's tossin' time.
There are collectibles in the campaign which are pretty nice. They'll give experience bonuses, mutagens (stat boosters you can choose between and equip), or figurines that'll give you experience and help unlock challenges in the main menu. These challenges are insanely easy and when you complete them, you get a new costume. None of the costumes look very good, but I applaud the effort.

Unless you're a die-hard Wolverine fan, I don't think anybody should be checking this game out. Doesn't help that you can't get it anywhere digitally and you have to buy a disc (which I totally did, of course, officer). Other than some cutscenes looking extremely good for the time (not all of them, though), I'd say you're better off playing God of War (PS2). It'll do a better job of scratching your hack-and-slash itch than this could.

I’ve had this almost completely wiped off my memory since playing it for the first time years ago and it still holds up as a damn fun superhero game. Although it’s certainly not without its obvious but still unfortunate limitations. The story (if you can even call it that) is very superfluous with some rather bizarrely structured and paced flashback segments that always seem to interject at the most awkward times. The writing itself is also decidedly not the best (a residual byproduct of the utterly atrocious licensed material that the game is based on) as certain plot beats seemingly feel either too rushed or needlessly drawn out. However these quibbles really just allow those qualities that this game truly excels at to shine that much more. The animations are butter smooth and impactful, the level design is highly linear but it helps retain the game’s intended high octane pacing, and the hack and slash combat feels both immensely visceral and immediately satisfying, the game always providing you with a solid amount of unique enemy types and new abilities which keeps the moment to moment gameplay experience consistently fresh, thrilling, and addicting. The boss fights are quite fun too despite feeling very repetitive at points and not containing a great deal of mechanical depth or even requiring all that much skill to fight. The scripted action set pieces conversely are also very well utilized and they help add a ton of memorable flavor and variety to individual chapters. The occasional puzzles (while being rudimentarily simple to solve and mostly bereft of challenge) also get the job done pretty effectively. I certainly get why this game didn’t exactly set the world on fire when it released but i had an awesome time revisiting it nonetheless. If nothing else it has only galvanized my excitement for insomniac games upcoming Wolverine game.

Goddamn this was a fun motherfucker. While I was playing through all those Spider-Man games, a few people in chat mentioned this game to me as a good game to play involving comicbook heroes. Yup they were right.

Combat is so satisfying. Love the dismemberment, love the impact that a lot of your moves have. It's so fucking fun just drilling and cutting and slicing into dudes. Definitely makes you feel like you're Wolverine. Lot of cool ways to kill enemies with the environment, too.

Most of the locales are cool, with the entire Senitnel area being my favorite part of the game, as a huge X-men fan. Wish there were more X-men peeps but I guess they were limited to whatever was in the movie. I haven't seen the movie, for whatever that's worth.

Some of the areas, basically all of Africa, I got so sick of by the 4th time going back there. That and the entire final chapter kinda sours my opinion of an otherwise amazing action game. A lot of the design choices are hard for me to criticize, like the final boss and Sabretooth's designs, because they were forced to tie it into the movie.

9/10. Essential action game.

They absolutely nailed the visceral, violently satisfying combat - this is the ultimate Wolverine experience in a video game as of this writing in 2024.

This has the pitfalls you would expect; some repetitive levels and sub-bosses, and ho-hum objectives - especially in the first half. But there's a lot of fun set pieces in the second half and overall you can tell they really tried to make this a rip-roaring campaign despite time and money constraints; with mostly great results!

[Steam Deck notes: some hoops need to be jumped through, but once up and running this is an excellent Deck game]

8

Clearing My Backlog #5

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is like any other tie-in game that came out around the same time; it’s lazy, tedious, bloated (even with its short playtime of 7 hours), and doesn’t try to do anything interesting. I will say that like with most of these tie-in games, the first 40 or so minutes are fun because of how fresh it feels, but they always fail to introduce anything new after those first 40 minutes, leading to the game becoming stale and a chore to get through.

The combat has some thought put into it, but none of it is really interesting; you can get upgrades, equip mutagens (which act as perks) but I’ve noticed that none of these things really impact gameplay? throughout the entire game I was getting health pickups and upgrading everything, but literally NONE of it made any difference, apart from some minor damage improvements. It was astounding as to how badly they fucked up the progression in here, it’s overall just terrible implementation. There are some combos that you can do, but again, they’re not fun to execute, mostly because of the scarce enemy variety.

The boss fights are some of the worst I’ve ever had to play — especially the mini-bosses — with the game only giving you a single way of approaching them which is lunging onto their backs, hitting them a few times, falling off, then doing that exact process six more times FOR A SINGLE MINI-BOSS, like why? The main boss fights, with the exception of one, can be done in under a minute by simply parrying their attacks — which is insanely easy to do — and makes those sections laughable.

The story — as expected, is a dumpster fire, but that was always going to be the case seeing as the movie it’s based off is also a complete mess. The movie’s opening credits are stretched into an entire mission — and even act as the backdrop for everything that’s going on in the game, and man… what a weird creative decision, I got SO tired of coming back to the same environment over and over again for the entire game (I hate jungles).

I really like the cutscenes, they look old — mostly because of the resolution, but are still impressive, especially for the time. One of the things I undoubtedly love about this game though, are Wolverine’s awesome regenerative abilities, I love seeing his body get ripped to shreds and then heal in real time, it’s so fucking cool! and it’s something Insomniac absolutely has to do for their upcoming Wolverine game! along with the brutality of the combat of course.

Playtime: 7.5 hours

Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Superhero Games - Ranked
Clearing My Backlog
2009 - Ranked

Achei um jogo bem mediocre, gameplay e boa, historia eu achei bem marromeno pra fraquinha ate, dificuldade foi praticamente 0 pois sempre dava pra agarrar um inimigo e jogar num abismo que era hit kill(aos que davam opção de agarrar), e um jogo bem repetitivo, na questão das fases quase não tem diferença, os tipos de inimigos se repetem a exaustão, batalhas de boss são bem bobinhas, se salva uma ou outra mas no geral a maioria e completamente esquecivel. Enfim, o começo e bem divertido porém depois desse começo o meu animo foi sumindo ate perder por completo a vontade de jogar e terminar por terminar mesmo.

Rock Wins Wolverine - Uncaged Edition

Jogo pode ser bem divertido com o combate e o gore que é esperado pro Wolverine (alguns momentos acaba sendo meio brega mas levo em conta por jogo ser de 2009), porém cai em mesmice e uma falta de variedade de combate pq tudo leva a lutar com 1 a 4 Wendigo, quando joga o flashback dessa vez muda pra um re-skin do Wendigo que os dois são derrotado da mesma forma.

Bom pra jogar numa tarde só pra passar tempo.

nota: Toda vez que o Wolverine upa ele ganha uma regata nova.

Really good action game, one of the best movie tie-ins made cuz they just made a really damn good product. Lots of gore, a really cool damage system, really fun skills to use, environmental kills, lots of badass animations, the game has everything. Hell, it has like 3 really great rival fights, too, it's genuinely amazing. Story is basically just a way to get you to the cool parts, but it's pretty worth it. So much enemy variety, too, and they all have their own ways of fighting that make it so you have to interact with them in completely different ways, and then they come in pretty big waves with usually 3 or more enemy types to keep the encounters interesting. It's great, highly recommend it to anyone who likes enjoying themselves and doing things that make them happy (aka everyone).