X-Men Origins: Wolverine is one of those rare games that are better than the movie it's based on.
Instead of strictly following the story of the movie, the game explores a little deeper into Wolverine's past by taking you into Africa three years earlier. Wolverine and his team, which included the teleporting Wraith and Victor Creed, aka Sabretooth, got split up after their helicopter was taken out during a mission. The game ping pongs back and forth between the events in Africa and the current day, with Wolverine connecting his past memories with the present to hunt down Colonel William Stryker. Stryker was responsible for the experimentation done to him, and Wolverine intends to get his revenge, even it means slicing and dicing through hundreds of enemies to do so.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a violent, visceral, vicious hack-and-slash game. Wolverine is armed with an arsenal of moves comprising of simple slashes, grappling and stabbing, powerful Rage moves that hit multiple enemies at once, and one-hit executions called Quick Kills. After you grab an enemy, hitting Y will cause the camera to zoom in on you and your prey, and then Wolverine will slowly extend one of his claws. When you see a flash, hit Y again and he'll brutally dismember, disembowel or decapitate his foe. Not all enemies can be dispatched this way. Some are tougher, and require a thorough beating before you can pull off a Quick Kill.
The one feature of Wolverine's combat that is as useful as it is fun is his Lunge ability. Hitting the RB button targets an enemy, which you're able to change targets with a flick of the stick, and hitting LB will make Wolverine leap into the air and pounce on his enemy. At this point, you can either repeatably stab them to death, jump into the air for a pulverizing plunge, or flip over their shoulders and toss them away. Lunge is also handy to cross the battlefield in an instant to take out enemies who are more of a threat to you, as well as reach areas you wouldn't be able to access otherwise.
Another part of Wolverine's offensive repertoire is the environment. He can pick up enemies and throw them into wooden spikes, swords being held by statues, fork lifts, electrified plates, even cement mixers. There are also stakes that Wolverine will slam opponents onto if he's close enough to them. Also, a great way to get rid of a lot of baddies is to simply throw them off the environments altogether.
To make these environmental weapons easy to spot, you can use Wolverine's Feral Senses. When doing so, it sends him into a heightened state of awareness, and the color of his surroundings becomes muted. Environmental weapons, ledges he can grab onto and objects he can move become highlighted green. Objects dangerous to Wolverine are red. There are also soldiers later on the game that use stealth, and using Feral Senses make them stand out like bright as day. If you're lost, Feral Senses throws up a blue trail pointing you to your next objective.
Every enemy you kill earns you experience points, and later you'll unlock the ability to chain kills and use multipliers to increase the amount you receive. Collecting dog tags will also net you bonus experience points, so always keep an eye open for those. After collecting enough points, you'll level up and will be given upgrade points. You spend these on basic stats, such as damage, health and Rage, and you can also spend them on your Rage abilities to make them more effective and efficient.
You can improve yourself in other areas, such as Mutagens and Reflexes. Mutagens are enhancements you can equip that give you more health or rage, or improve your healing factor, and you find these hidden throughout the levels. Reflexes determine how well you fight against certain enemy types. For instance, the more you fight machete-wielding enemies, the more damage you'll deal to them.
As fun as Wolverine is, it's unfortunately marred with enough problems to keep it from excelling in its genre. The most common issue is gameplay glitches. There are collision detection problems that will cause Wolverine to miss a lunge, or start spazzing out during a Quick Kill sequence. He can be unintentionally dumped off of a stage during the middle of a boss fight. The camera's also an annoyance, because it makes fighting in corners nigh impossible, and your Lunge ability can also fail to activate, forcing you to let go of the RB button and try again. There are also several platforming segments that aren't very fun thanks to Wolverine's stiff and unresponsive jumping and bad camera angles.
Visually, the game's pretty decent as far as movie tie-in games go. The textures aren't anything to drool over, but they're far from repulsive. The level designs are hit or miss ranging from anything to bland uninspired labs to gorgeous lush jungles. The real graphical delight, though, is all on Wolverine. As he takes damage, flesh is shot and torn off of him, exposing his muscle tissue and adamantium skeleton. If you can avoid taking damage for a few seconds, his wounds heal quickly in real time. Get really beat up, and he'll continue to heal during the next cutscene. It's an awesome effect, but it's kind of ruined by the fact that his jeans miraculously repair themselves. The only major drawbacks to the game's visuals, though, are the constant visual glitches, such as enemies being stuck in mid-air, and nasty dips in the frame rate.
The game's sound design is better than your average movie-based game as well. The sound effects do a great job of portraying the savagery of Wolverine from the "SCHNIKT" of his blades to the ripping apart of his enemies to the fear-inducing roar when he goes berserk. Explosions, gunfire, crumbling debris and body slamming opponents all sound terrific. The soundtrack is composed well, using many of the same pieces from the film, so it helps compliment the mood of the game and give it that blockbuster movie feel. Most of the film's cast, such as Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Will.i.am as Wraith, reprise their roles in the game, so the voice acting in general is pretty good.
As petty as it may sound, the greatest appeal of X-Men Origins: Wolverine for any Wolverine fan is the blood and gore found in the Uncaged Edition of the game (all other editions are rated T and censored). The very nature of the character calls for a high level of graphic violence, and the game delivers making Wolverine feel more real than any of the 20th Century Fox films could do. Add in a strong combat engine, stashed collectibles, and some incredibly over-the-top action sequences (Wolverine takes down a sentinel as it's free falling back to Earth is one such sequence), and you got a solid licensed game that any comic book fan should at least rent. Too many glitches and some derivative gameplay elements keep it from being worth more than 30 bucks, though.