It may surprise you, but X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a fun game despite some mediocre elements.

User Rating: 7 | X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Uncaged Edition) X360
There are few comic book characters that are more known and loved than Wolverine, so creating a game that actually keeps his fans happy is a daunting task. Double that when it's a movie tie-in game where everyone expects it to suck because it's going to have the same problems that plague every movie tie-in game: a complete lack of polish, wasted potential, and a game disc that you'd just as soon use as a drink coaster as put it in your favorite console and play it.

So prepare to be surprised, because Raven software took the time necessary to create a game that is fun to play and actually worth your time. Every aspect of the ranges from decent to excellent, and there are even some areas where it just flat-out excels.

It's also the first time that someone had to guts to make a game where Wolverine isn't a total wuss. Every other game has always downplayed his claws, but here he uses them on everything, including people. And be assured you'll be tittering with delight as the vast number of ways he dispatches his enemies, including (but not limited to) impaling them on spikes, tearing them in half, stuffing them in cement mixers, and throwing them off buildings (complete with your victim yelling "Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!" all the way down). This is truly a visceral game, and the well-animated gore is a stand-out feature.

This isn't to say it's the only thing good about the game. Tight controls allow you to move Wolverine around with ease, and it employs a lot of very useful mechanics to help you along the way. Your feral sense, which allows to see where you're supposed to go, identify specific enemies, and helps you find various environmental hazards, is as handy as it sounds, and you'll truly appreciate the ability to lunge from one enemy to another, which helps keep the battles fast-paced.

What will throw some gamers off is that there are some areas where the game is merely average. Visually speaking, the game isn't fugly but the environments are nothing to write home about either, and there are some nasty dips in the frame rate at times. In terms of sound, the voice acting is good, but everything else is just mediocre. Wolverine can be injured, but there's not much challenge because of his regenerating health. While the storyline is at least coherent, it only loosely ties everything together and is on the weak side as if they're trying to not give the movie away. Even the boss battles are a mixed bag: Some of them are spectacular and fun while others are too repetitive or loaded with cheap deaths. The point is that there's a lot of "average" thrown in with the "outstanding," and it unfortunately drags the game down.

Still, the game is a lot of fun and shouldn't be missed by anyone who's a fan of Wolverine, or of action games for that matter. It has some weaker points, but nothing that destroys the game throughout the 10 hours or so it will take you to play through. And seeing as the game is now old enough to carry a reduced price, there's definitely enough value there to make it worth the purchase.