Warning: The following is an in-depth review/analysis of the Deadpool game. If you've not played this game, I suggest you do so before reading this review, as spoilers (minor as they are) exist here.
Deadpool was a game I was really excited for when announcements started fluttering around the Internet. I've been a fan of this character since about midway through his Joe Kelly run (otherwise known as one of the best Deadpool runs) in the comics. Everything from the design to the humor of this character worked for me, and at its core, Deadpool is a fairly tragic story. His cancerous origin isn't a cheerful tale. The work he does in the comics sits somewhere between the dark and violent tone of Punisher all the way to straight up physical, yet mostly dark comedy. It's a weird mix, to be sure, but as schizophrenic as Deadpool's writing in the comics can get, at least in the Joe Kelly comics, there was always a driving force and a plot behind this character. The fourth-wall breaks and obnoxious humor certainly come up throughout it, but in those comics they're more of just a weird character trait that helps Deadpool to stand out amongst his peers and they're not really the focus.
I bring all of this up because this is precisely where High Moon's Deadpool drops the ball. As opposed to the humor and fourth-wall breaks being an aspect of this character here, they're presented as the only aspect of this character. We no longer have this mercenary with a tragic back-story, instead we have Bugs Bunny with dick jokes. The writing of this character in this game does not work for me at all. Mainly because it's supposed to be funny, and in the good comics it honestly can be. There's a certain sense of self-deprecation, utter madness, and depression you find in those simply doesn't exist in this game. It's not dark comedy here, it's straight up farce. Here, Deadpool's writing is something you can look past, at best, and obnoxious, loud, and annoying at worst. Unfortunately, it's mostly obnoxious, loud, and annoying.
Far worse is the fact that there's no actual plot here, at least none beyond Deadpool realizing he's in a video game. There's stuff going on with Mr Sinister and the X-Men, which probably could have made for an entertaining story if every character weren't written in such a one-dimensional, lazy manner. What is Mr Sinister's villain plot in this game? To clone himself, I suppose, since through most of the game you're fighting his clones. For what reason? I can only assume to take over the world, because the game certainly doesn't bother to give Deadpool or the player any reason to care whatsoever. In fact, Deadpool will outright refuse to listen to any reason why anything is happening, when given the opportunity. It's clear where this game's writing focus is at, and it certainly isn't on respecting or representing this character well.
How do the X-Men fit into this? To stop Mr Sinister. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. There may be more to it than that, but since we, as an audience, are never privy to that information, it's as bare bones and as lazy as it gets. As mentioned, good Deadpool stories have existed before. Stories with interesting character development, solid narrative pacing, an uncomfortable degree of violence and tense situations. We don't get any of that here. Again, we get straight up Looney Toons. Even the violence is played for comedy.
Barely anything about the story here works for me since the game actually goes out of its way to make sure you don't care about the story. It's as if it's hoping on this poorly written, Bugs Bunny version of Deadpool will be more than enough to carry itself. It isn't. It becomes grating pretty quickly, between all of the extroverted, overtly confident bravado and meme-spouting. Humor is a subjective thing and all, but no matter if you find this version of Deadpool funny or not, it's hard to admit that it isn't a lazy effort. I don't think anyone is really willing to admit that placing Xzibit memes in your video game qualifies as "good writing."
So needless to say, the writing doesn't work for me. Like at all. But how does the gameplay hold up? Well, it's OK. It plays like a cheap 3D brawler, because that's more or less exactly what Deadpool is. You have a few melee weapons, a few firearms, and you go to town on enemies. To start with the melee, you have the typical fare of light and heavy attacks, but there's no nuance to it. You hack and slash away without much thought. There's a counter system here but it's far too forgiving and nowhere near as precise as it should be to feel anything but boring. The most the game will require from you in terms of strategy is to break an enemy's guard by switching between light and heavy attacks, a strategy you're already going to be using anyway so it's a total waste of a mechanic.
There also doesn't seem to be much of a point to the different sets of melee weapons. You can use swords, sais, or large hammers, and they function about how you'd expect. The swords are the average weapons, a balance between power and speed. Hammers are heavy. Powerful, but slow, and bad for building combos. The sais are quick but deal out weak damage, There's virtually no difference in range between any of these weapons, since Deadpool will automatically lock to the nearest enemy you're either attacking or pointing toward. Considering there's an experience and upgrade system dependent on your combo string, it really doesn't make sense to use anything but the sais, if you're worried about leveling. You by far get the highest combos with it, and all the weaker damage means is that already damage spongey enemies become more absorbent sponges. And it's not like the enemies are really a threat, either. So trust me, just stick with the sais. It may be less fun to use than the other weapons, but if you want to upgrade a little quicker, this is the way to go.
Beyond this, the melee weapons become completely useless once you've upgraded your firearms enough. Something that's definitely not a problem until you reach the end of your first play through, but it breaks sequential new games since you'll never find yourself using these melee weapons ever. The firearms become incredibly overpowered once fully upgraded, even on the hardest difficulty, and it turns the game's difficulty into a joke. There's an extremely sticky auto-aim here, so all you have to do is spam the fine aim button, fire away, and you'll likely never lose an encounter, as long as you're moving around and dodging a little bit. It just isn't all that fun or well thought out.
There are a number of different enemies types, from flying guys that shoot lighting at you, to kamikaze enemies that rush you in groups, to quick mutants wielding swords. The variety is appreciated, but the problem is none of these enemies require any different tactics beyond point and shoot. I get the sense that they really tried to spice the gameplay up with these enemies, but the problem is the combat is just as bare bones as it is that not much could have really saved it without some serious degree of overhaul.
It's not a total wash, however. Leveling Deadpool up gives just enough (and I mean just enough) incentive to keep playing, as you do end up feeling far more powerful as the game progresses. The combat animation can be a lot of fun, with a mix of "gun-kata", fun counter animations, and the like. There's a lot of personality in the animation and it does feel fairly accurate to how Deadpool should probably move in a fight, when comparing to the comics. It doesn't automatically make the bland combat any better, but it's fun to look at.
The level design isn't much better here. You'll see lots of sewers and office buildings. Even when on Genosha, where a majority of the game takes place, you'll mostly be fighting through bland office buildings. Deadpool will even make reference to the level design being bad, or comment on how he hates sewer levels. Yet the game spends far too much time in areas like this. It's not fun to look at, it's not fun to play through. The environments, much like the story and combat, are ultimately bland and end up feeling lazy.
Thankfully there are some decent set-piece moments throughout it all. Ranging from some puzzles involving Sentinel hands (lifted directly from the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game - something I'll come back to later) to retro inspired 2D or top-down segments. You find sections like this in just about every level of the game, and they thankfully help to break up what would otherwise be an incredibly monotonous pacing, but the problem with these sections is that they both lack depth and heart. Instead of the 2D sections actually being animated in 2D with pixel art, we instead just get a camera shift and the game turns into a really poor, really easy, 2.5D platformer. Only made worse by the fact that Deadpool will exclaim things like "Ah! I love old 8-bit games!" Then why not actually make it look or feel 8-bit? Again, it just comes off as lazy.
Speaking of lazy, the visuals here have never impressed me. The texture work is good enough and the models largely look OK, and despite praising the animation and its personality earlier, Deadpool's walk/run cycle feels janky. His movement speed is too fast for what the animation is actually doing. Mix this with a fairly bland, not-great-feeling camera system, a lack of good shader effects, and we're left with a game that ends up looking like a remastered PS2 action game, and feeling about the same. You've probably noticed by now that blandness is becoming a theme, here.
Sound-wise the game fares OK. Nolan North's performance as Deadpool's 3 different voices (a bad idea that should have been scrapped) is decent enough, yet like I previously detailed, the writing here is obnoxious and the performance definitely reflects that. Firearms end up sounding fine, if a little whimpy. The sound of melee weapons works well enough, I have no complaints there. What I do have complaints with, however, is this game's soundtrack. It's some of the most unmemorable butt rock I've ever heard in a game. Even something like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which absolutely reveled in butt rock songs, had enough charm and personality through its over-the-top lyrics, and its dynamic elements really heightened the experience. It made combat encounters and boss fights feel amazing. With Deadpool, we get some lame, distorted, drop-D guitar riffs laid over the depressing sounds of some kid in his basement with a turntable trying to make the next X-ecutioners record. It's boring, reeks of early 00's nu-metal, and simply put, it isn't very good.
Speaking of boss fights, they're also not very good. All of the boss fights here mostly function as regular enemies do, just with one or two extra attacks and being far more bullet spongey. Instead of crafting fun and memorable encounters, it's as if High Moon Studios were hoping to get by solely on including some less-famous characters from the comics they were hoping audiences would be happy to see. And yes, I am happy to see characters like Vertigo and Arclight, but character wise they're completely glossed over, and the encounters themselves are as bland as the rest of the combat.
I mentioned the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game earlier in this review, and there's good reason for that; Deadpool feels like a poor sequel to that game. There's so much overlap in both titles in terms of set-pieces and gameplay that I find it hard to believe that High Moon didn't look to Wolverine as a heavy form of direct inspiration. You can expect some sort of overlap between two characters that are so functionally similar and so closely related, but I believe this goes a good deal beyond that.
For instance, both games largely feature the same health regeneration mechanic and visual effect. It looked good in Wolverine and it looks good here. Simple enough, these characters share similar healing factors, so this is expected. However, Deadpool goes much further than just a healing factor. There's a fairly extensive laundry list of similarities, a few of which I'll list now. Both games feature:
- A turret shooting section which takes place on a boat
- The aforementioned Sentinel hand puzzle
- Character upgrades earned through experience
- Virtually the same, simple, optional stealth mechanics
- Machete wielding enemies seemingly made of rocks and lava
- 4 special attacks tied to a regenerating meter, performed by using a combination of a shoulder button and face button
And this is just to name a few. I'm sure if you really spent time combing through both games, you could easily find more similarities than this. The point I want to make though is that both games feel very similar to each other in terms of design, and it looks to have been a very deliberate move. Honestly I don't blame High Moon for wanting to go this route with Deadpool. Wolverine was a fantastic game, and it makes total sense why you would want both games to be so similar. On top of that it's a fun detail for fans to pick up on. The problem is, Deadpool certainly takes elements from Wolverine, and certainly enough to be noticeable if you've played them both, but it leaves behind most of the elements that made Wolverine a truly great video game.
The thing about Wolverine, and what made it so great, is that it clearly had a reverence and adoration of its titular character. For all intents and purposes, it was the game that a lot of Wolverine fans had been wanting for a long time. It was a game in development before the movie it's tied to was even attached to it, and it manages to be a superior product to that movie because it gets the character right. In terms of gameplay it feels like Wolverine's fighting style was taken straight from the comics. It's gory as all get out, it feels visceral and legitimately brutal, and overall it plays and feels the way you'd really want a Wolverine game to feel, again, both in gameplay and tone.
Where Deadpool misses the mark is with its tone. This just isn't the character I love, and I certainly think it's an utterly poor representation of him. Furthermore, Wolverine had a fairly solid 10-12 hour length on its side, rounded out by fairly great pacing, boss encounters that were more than just your typical enemy with more health, incredibly solid, extensive, and tight feeling combat mechanics, and a legitimately enjoyable story that manages to improve on its source material by adding things taken directly from the comics, while also creating wholly new and interesting encounters.
This is where Deadpool ends up feeling like poor sequel to Wolverine. It's about half as long, its even more repetitive than a game already criticized for being repetitive, its bosses are far more bland, its combat mechanics aren't solid or extensive enough to feel like anything more than a discount Devil May Cry, and its writing has no reverence for the character. It simply doesn't respect Deadpool as a character, and instead turns him into a foul-mouthed, meme-spouting, completely cartoon-ish interpretation. I keep coming back to the problems with the writing, because the writing is the biggest problem here. I would have been perfectly ready and willing to accept the underwhelming combat mechanics, the bland level design, the boring boss fights, etc., if only we had gotten a solid representation of this character. That would have made it mostly worth it.
That seems to be the problem with adapting a character that has had so many interpretations, though. Certainly, this Deadpool falls in line with a lot of his recent comic book adaptations that take him equally as not-seriously and turn him into nothing more than a bad joke factory for adolescents. And hey, if you're into that, then more power to you. I'm sure if I had been 12 years old at the time this game had released, I would have thought it was amazing. But as someone that grew up reading this character's stories that end up taking him more seriously as a character, and more importantly, actually bother to tell a story, this is neither the Deadpool I expected or wanted.
I'm still holding out for the day that we get a truly unsettling, violent, dark take on this character in video game form. But most importantly I hope we end up getting a legitimately enjoyable story out of it. I'm not saying I want it to be completely devoid of humor, either. Humor is a big part of who Deadpool is as a character, and to scrap that completely would be a huge mistake. It shouldn't be the only aspect of the character, though, and it should at least be done faithfully to his more admired interpretations. I may sound like a broken record at this point, but I can't stress enough that there's simply a lot more to this character than what we get in High Moon's Deadpool.
All things considered, I look at this as a poor interpretation, but depending on what you personally want out of the character, you could find yourself having a good time with it. It's not outright awful, it's just poorly written and too bland to be considered anything above average. But it is a very playable game with mechanics that, while flawed, won't exactly break the game entirely. What really brings the score down here is just how far it came from reaching its potential and how unfaithful an adaptation I see it as. Simply disappointing.