The X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie took more than a few liberties with Wolverine’s past. The young comic nerd in me shivers at the thought, but what I find more egregious is how one of Marvel’s most violent and beloved anti-heroes has been so neutered whenever he steps out of the pages - even in his own movie. Raven, thankfully, has gone a long way to rectifying Wolverine’s digital representation by embracing his animalistic nature with an action title that fans and non-fans alike can appreciate. To where as cartoon Wolverine’s wailing rage resulted in him being punched back; movie Wolverine’s rage resulted in him punching a few guys, maybe clawing a few with some amazingly dry results; but game Wolverine’s rage results in beheadings, guttings, and bloody mayhem. If the latter take is surprising to anyone, then you should check out what he did in the ‘80s.

The gore itself only partially distinguishes X-Men Origins: Wolverine from past games - my experience going all the way back to a 286 PC - but what it represents is much more. Blood isn’t needed for an action title to be good, of course, but there is a noticeable dissonance whenever a film or game portrays a blade going into a body and nothing happening. Plenty of movie battles completely lose their impact whenever someone simply grabs the spear sticking out of their chest and gives a ‘Guuuh!” as they fall down. Now put a character renown for his violent nature, from slicing through security guards and scientists as Weapon X to having the adamantium ripped out of him by Magneto as a member of the X-Men, and kick robots and punch soldiers. The older games simply don't address the rage, skill, or nature of the character. Raven seems to have understood where past titles came up short, and attempted to rectify with gusto. It’s rare for a PG-13 movie to receive an M-rated game counterpart, but in this case the game is all the better for it.

The game follows Logan throughout his life, jumping back and forth from his time in Africa as part of the Weapon X program to the Alkali facilities where he received his adamantium. The plot loosely follows that of the movie, so you’ll also encounter Gambit in New Orleans and see a few familiar cutscenes, but there a healthy amount of material that was also added to flesh out the experience.  The quantum leaps, aside from being jarring, result in a strange side effect of Wolverine suddenly becoming stronger due to the light role-playing elements that allow for him to level up his skills, reflexes, and mutagens.

Experience from combat and completing areas goes toward a leveling system. Whenever Wolverine levels up, he earns additional health and rage while also netting a few points that can be used towards increasing the damage done by his claws, additional health, and powering-up one of his four special abilities: claw spin, claw drill, claw cyclone, and berserk mode. Aside from the moves doing more damage and lasting longer, Wolverine also becomes more adapt during combat and has reflex boosts after taking out so many of an enemy type that allows him to dispatch the enemies quicker. Mutagens, an unlockable set of three, are scattered throughout the levels and further increase his abilities, from accruing reflex experience faster to gaining health from doing damage. With all of these goodies and his regenerative abilities (complete with visual damage – hello, ribcage), Wolverine quickly becomes an efficient killer.

Jumping back into the past after advancing so much means Logan suddenly becomes exponentially more dangerous. He went from doing moderate damage and dodging attacks one second to flipping out into extended berserk rages and gaining health as he tears his enemies apart the next. As strange as it is, though, it’s also extremely satisfying; to go back and dispatch waves of machete-wielding maniacs or lava creatures after having given you so much grief is some sweet justice.

The advantage of experience doesn’t last too long. While never overly difficult, the game does constantly throw in deadlier enemies and amps up the contact count to maintain a level of challenge.  The most versatile move in Wolverine’s arsenal has to be his lunge, which allows him to follow up a pouncing with furious light, heavy, and grab attacks that trounce lower enemies. Just as you begin to rely too heavily on lunging, a new enemy will appear that simply brushes Wolverine off, requiring an all-new strategy. Enemies range from strange shape shifters that multiply with beams of light or explosions of fire to invisible shotgun-wielding special op soldiers. Aside from hand-to-hand combat, the environment also plays a large role in dispatching enemies by way of hot spots that allow for them to be impaled on spikes, crammed into cement mixers, or just knocked off the side of a building. The deadliest move is the quick kill; timed correctly, weaker enemies will die and stronger enemies suffer heavy damage as backs are snapped and guts removed. Some of the enemies initiate quick-time events whenever you attempt a quick kill: the invisible soldiers have their shotguns turned against them and their heads blown off – ala Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy.  It seems as though there is always something new to see, all the way up to the end.

As thrilling as it is to cause mayhem by lunging and spinning, dismembering hordes at a time, the boss battles actually drag things down. The minor boss battles fall into a rigid routine of dodging an attack or two before lunging onto their backs and wailing away. This takes a while to do, even after leveling up, and it quickly becomes boring having to do the same three or four moves over and over; and sometimes this is compounded by having to fight three or four such enemies at a time. The encounters aren’t challenging, either, just time-consuming and a way to pad the levels.

The actual boss battles with Sabretooth, Gambit, the Blob, and Deadpool don’t fare much better. Sabretooth is rarely a problem, and he only wins through knocking Wolverine out during a cutscene in the beginning. The Blob battle is made enjoyable primarily through the hilarious attack of riding him around a grocery store, smashing through all of the aisles and goods. The Gambit encounter…ugh. Fighting Gambit took way too long and was just a bore. Aside from Gambit having the absolutely worst accent this Louisianan has ever heard - Chris Edgerly, please do not do that ever again – the encounter is a mess that goes on across several areas, with Gambit launching cheap attacks and recovering from severe poundings. Even the final fight with Deadpool is anticlimactic. The boss encounters are shoehorned into the story as well, giving you little reason to care about the fights. The matches you fight against other Wolverines to unlock bonus costumes were actually more challenging and exciting, which just shows the wasted potential.

Plaguing the game are numerous glitches and camera problems. The camera manages to do a good job keeping up whenever fighting a small group, even in smaller areas, thanks to objects becoming transparent once they get in the camera’s way. It’s when going through cleared areas or spots with obstacles to surmount that it gets jerky and confused. Wolverine’s feral sense, an ability that highlights spots of interest, not only saves time but also lessens many of the camera’s shortcomings. The glitches, however, are a different story.

It was common for body parts, or entire bodies, to get stuck in the air. Wolverine himself would stand or grab thin air inches away from a nearest ledge. One of the more annoying examples I experienced was when a robot was knocked into a hole but got stuck in mid air, standing around and watching me while I ran around for 20 minutes, swinging away at it. I was lucky when I went for a grab and somehow Jedi force pulled the robot to me from several feet away, otherwise I would've been stuck in that room with no way to progress. The ending even had small snippets of a random guitar riff blast in for a split second between scenes before the actual audio kicked in. Despite the game looking good and sounding decent, it is incredibly unpolished and screams for another month or two of tweaks.

Whenever the camera plays nice, though, navigation and combat is handled very well. The controls are responsive and combat maneuvers are easy to pull off. Jumping can be a little troublesome, but a generous auto grab helps to smooth things out. The only problem I noticed was that it often seemed as if Wolverine was skating across the surface rather than running on it, which didn’t negatively affect the controls but did break the immersion. For the hundreds of goons I dispatched, though, I have to say that the controls performed above my expectations and were a large reason why the fighting was so satisfying.

There are also a handful of puzzles scattered throughout, which aren't quite as fulfilling as the combat. In the same vein but largely simpler than those found in Uncharted and God of War, the puzzles serve the same purpose of trying to spice things up but will mainly have you wondering ‘You have to haul a giant statue over that pressure plate every time you want to open the door?’ Despite not being terribly inventive, they often provided an excuse to show sweeping jungle vistas and ratchet up the tension. Then again, having to backtrack through an area to use a crate to reach a hanging cage to set fire to a skull statue’s eye socket to lower a spiked gate isn’t terribly exciting either. All told, the puzzles are average for the genre and infrequent enough to keep from slowing things down too much.

Despite its problems, I still had an absolute blast playing through the game. The action and gore is so ridiculous that you can’t help but have fun, lunging from soldier to soldier, twisting in slow motion to slam a claw into a head or pummel a chest into ground meat. I heard someone describe the game in a few “Graaa!” and “Aahhh!” noises, and they were right; the game made me feel like I was 10 years old again, shifting in my seat as I crept over a ledge and grunted and cheered after a particularly theatric kill. Every time the combat began to get repetitive, and it will, the game quickly jerked itself out by offering a new set piece to fight in and enemies to take down. The bosses might be a bore, the puzzles so-so, but the abundant combat is fantastic.

Overall: 7.5/10

Toss a dash of Uncharted into a heavy base of God of War and you have the foundation for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Being reminded of some of the best games of the past decade while hauling off on four animated statues in the middle of a jungle with bone claws is far from a bad thing. In fact, the few dull or repetitious moments are largely alleviated by the awesome combat, upgrades, unlockable costumes, and the fantastic ending. The bugs, however, do a number on the game, providing for an experience that is the very definition of unpolished. Fans of Wolverine might as well snatch this up: it’s highly playable, vicious, and finally seeing Wolverine be Wolverine will go a long way in overlooking the problems. Action fans would be well served checking it out as well, because the game has a lot to offer, but just know that it comes with some caveats.