WOLVERINE'S REVENGE (PS2, XBOX, PC)


Sideburns + adamantium = win win

By MARTIN KINGSLEY

Who thinks Hugh Jackman looks like Eddie Munster? Me. Look at those sideburns! *swoon*.

Seriously though, the sideburns count in this game is truly unbelievable. How many sideburns are there in Wolverine's Revenge (WR)? Plenty.

But how many, you ask? Well, two, actually, but they're big enough that they deserve their own credits in the title sequence, and probably had separate agents to negotiate their appearance in both X-Men 2 and its spinoff, Wolverine's Revenge.

By the way, would you like a stick of chalk? No? I thought so.

Anyway, for WR, Activision have pulled off the impossible and not roped in Hugh Jackman to voice-over the role of Wolverine, instead opting to call in their favourite and ours, Luke Skywalker--I mean, Mark Hamill.

Reason? Well, Jackman was hosting an awards ceremony and Hamill once sported a goatee on the set of Wing Commander, so that pretty much settled that.

I must say, however, that for someone who was once snogging B-grade porn stars on a blue screen to comply with a contract with Origin Inc, Marky does a particularly good job of being the rough and tough Wolvie we all know and…know.

I might also add, on a purely nostalgic note, that Hamill has provided the voice-overs for numerous computer game villains over the years, including Ripburger from Lucasarts' cult classic adventure Full Throttle and Aaron Hanson from Soldier of Fortune 2 (an Activision production, surprise surprise), and that this is his first role as a goodie in a long while.

Now, a point I'd like to make is that is the PC version is converted from the Xbox game, and not a particularly excellent one at that, although it does have mouse support.

In the world of console conversions, mouse support of any kind is always appreciated, even if it's not well implemented, as is the case here.

Button presses during gameplay can take nigh on an actual second to have any effect which, in a world of three nano-second response times and optical mice, is not very heartening to see, and even less fun to experience first hand.

Oddly enough though, this problem only occurs during actual gameplay, and not at the menu level of operation, indicating…something. I don't know what, but it must indicate something. We'll state that it indicates chalk for the sake of it, mmkay?

Anyway, calcified rock and "Marky" Mark Hamill aside, let's get down to the nitty gritty of it, shall we?

The nitty gritty of it, I'm sad to say, is that Wolverine's Revenge feels like an extremely mediocre cash-in on the X-Men movie franchise, so standard in both design and implementation that it's a wonder someone bothered to give it a title.

Maybe they should have just slapped down a barcode reading "Product #44521b" and saved their marketing department the trouble of having to come up with a trendy box design.

Wolverine's Revenge attempts to make up for this by being a mildly pretty game, but nearly seventy percent of that prettiness of the PC version is lost due to the fact that there's basically no graphics card on the market besides the ultra high-end ATI Radeons that takes advantage of what the Xbox has inside, whereas Wolverine's Revenge has been designed from the ground up with the Xbox's advanced NVIDIA chipset in mind, a fact that's painfully obvious from the word go on the PC iteration.

So we can discard the prettiness factor for now, and concentrate on the gameplay.

Basically, you are cast in the role of Wolverine. Beginning during the mid 70s, in the top-secret Weapon X facility, and jumping years up until the approximate date of the X-Men 2 film, the action gets hot and heavy fairly quickly, as you are constantly facing off against multiple opponents and have no other course of action than to beat them to a pulp.

While this is mildly amusing to begin with, it can get slightly dull after about the fourth level, the same formula applied time after time after time, namely: "Brawl with soldiers at point A, run to point B, press button at point C, rinse and repeat as necessary."

The monotony is broken up by boss fights between a few of your favourite Marvel Universe villians, including Magneto and Juggernaut, as well as having to face off against Sabertooth, who's making his annual "kill Wolverine" pilgrimage.

On the more pointless end of the scale, you get the opportunity to fight, of all characters, Wendigo, who hasn't been seen for yonks in most of the comics and has absolutely zilch to do with either of the films. Tres weird, no?

While the console versions fare well, as I mentioned before the controls for brawling on the PC are…badly implemented, at worst, and poorly designed at best.

It's really quite irritating to get the crap kicked out of you by some big dumb marine, despite the fact that you've been clicking the mouse close to twenty times with no response. I theorize that this also has something to do with the engine that handles Wolverine's Revenge, specifically the way in which it handles collision detection.

What I mean by this is that you can't seem to attack once an enemy has started his or her attack animation, and the only way you'll actually win a fight is by either hammering buttons like you were born to do it, to the general bemusement of spectators, or slide tackling everything that moves, which sort of takes the fun of fighting in the first place.

Points should be awarded for the programmers implementing reasonable interpretations of Wolverine's enhanced senses, allowing you to see mines, body heat and lots of other usually undetectable things, as well as filtering the whole screen in fluorescent yellow, which can be seen as either very 1970s kitsch or as a definite cause of photosensitive seizures.

Again, this is prettier on Xbox.

Sound-wise…Well, other than Hamill's suitably gruff voice work, the other actors are pretty much bog standard, as is the usually orchestral music…sort of like the game, really. Pretty much bog standard.

If you really must own every single piece of X-Men memorabilia on the face of the Earth, then please, by all means, buy Wolverine's Revenge.

Otherwise, unless you're really, really masochistic, I'd suggest this to you as a rental only, as, all things considered, I found WR to be somewhat short, and most veteran gamers will find themselves watching the end credits roll within 72 hours. Not exactly tiny, but then not exactly large, either.

ORIGINALITY 70%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 75%
PLAYABILITY 70%
ENJOYMENT 65%
OVERALL 70%