I’ve owned X-Men Origins: Wolverine for several years, and have had a small soft spot for it due to my love of Raven Software and it’s other titles like Singularity. But when it comes down to it, I’m not the biggest Wolverine fan, and I for sure did not love the movie this game is based on. However, Wolverine became relevant in gaming once again with the reveal of the Insomniac game based on the character. I was initially incredibly hyped for the game, which was evident in my reaction to it’s reveal trailer. My initial hype began to melt away as I eventually played Spider-Man 2, and discovered how mixed I was on it ultimately. Plus, the fact that I have nowhere near the love for Logan that I have for Peter, or especially Miles, was another point against it. But I didn’t wanna leave that distaste there to linger, I wanted to try out another game to maybe preview how this upcoming one would play. So, I finally played X-Men Origins Wolverine.

The game is…fine. It’s combat is satisfying, though it can be hard to find a flow. There are some light puzzles and platforming, and they can feel awkward as the game is not designed around them directly. The game looks like a launch era PS360 game despite releasing 3 and 4 years after the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 released, respectfully. There is a story and it is just as bad as the infamously terrible movie the game adapts. There are even some light RPG elements and unlockable costumes, that are actually pretty cool. But the game just doesn’t have that X-factor that would make it a true classic.

But let’s break all of that down, starting with the combat. It’s a game from 2009, a year before God of War III and solidly in the middle of the era of action games that were defined by that franchise, so you can guess exactly the kind of game this is. You will be pressing square thousands of times, triangle occasionally, and using special abilities sporadically. A rage meter depletes whenever a special ability is used, but you gain more from killing enemies and destroying items in levels, so you are rarely without at least a bit of rage. For 90% of the game, you will be alternating between these light, heavy, and special attacks, but the other 10% is what actually makes the game a bit more interesting. You can parry, which slows down time and allows you to trigger a counter animation for massive damage. You can also grab enemies when they are open to it, which can lead to an environmental kill if you are near an interactable hazard, or can throw them into one. Grabbing can also activate a quick kill system which can only be triggered once an enemy is flashing red and is near death. Once this is the case, grabbing an enemy will allow you to hit them with a perfectly timed instant kill attack. Unfortunately, the requirements for quick kills are so hard to meet regularly that I only ever pulled one off throughout my whole playthrough. Parries, and deflects, are much more forgiving, and therefore frequent, which makes one on one duels where you can properly predict the movements of foes feel especially satisfying.

The game squeezes out a bit more engagement thanks to it’s RPG mechanics. Slicing up enemies earns XP, and earning enough lets you level up, which earns skill points. Logan can also collect perks hidden throughout the game, and minor health upgrades as well. There a bit of fun to be had deciding which skills to unlock, and which perks to equip, but the buildcraftring here is extremely limited. The skills system exists less to let you make your own Wolverine, but to let you unlock a small list of stat boosts in an order of your choosing. The perks, or Mutagens, give you a bit more customization, but there are clear “correct” answers to which perks are most worth while. For example, choosing perks that extend your rage meter and boost damage when near death are more than serviceable, but those that give you higher rates of XP gain and let you earn back health from killing enemies are obviously more immedately and continuously useful.

Graphically the game looks like it’s from 2009, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. Most of the character models are some of the best the PS2 could possibly render, just done so on the Cell processor. Will.i.am’s John Wrath looked especially bad, nearly unrecognizable if I didn’t already know he starred in the movie. With exception of the Gambit boss fight, the environments on display in these levels are some of the most generic I’ve ever seen, on par with B-game classics like Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death. But the look of the titular character is actually incredibly solid. Sure, Wolverine has a fairly faithful, though perhaps legally distinct, resemblance to, Hugh Jackman, but the gore system is what really impresses. As he takes damage, Logan’s skin and flesh peels away dynamically in real time, and heals back in the same way. This leads to moments where you can see his silver rib cage gleaming through holes in his belly and other gnarly imagery. This system also applies to whatever shirt Logan is wearing as well, outside of alternate costumes. This can lead to some jank, like when fragments of his t-shirt still hanging from his body despite not being connected to the rest of the shirt or the fact that Logan’s pants always regenerate alongside the rest of him. Enemies also lose limbs and bleed buckets, but their slow-motion decapitations just are not as impressive as the flesh wounds of our protagonist. The gore system manages to impress all these years later, but everything else about this game is rarely anything more than serviceable.

This story is…well it’s complicated. The story itself feels simple when you remove the fluff, but that fluff complicated the entire plot and makes it all feel inconsistent as well. Sometimes a side character will be introduced in one scene, only to reappear hours later with new aspects of their personality that were never even telegraphed or hinted at earlier. The whole tale is meant to be an origin story, but half the game takes place in an extended flashback, which makes the present day plot feel disconnected. But then, with two bookending cutscenes at the very start and end of the game, the time frames in which the story is told is stretched even further into the future, and that further complicates not only this story’s relation to the film, but also the stakes of the core story most of the game is centered on. There are some cool boss fights and setpieces, but they often seem to pop off out of nowhere and with extremely thin plot justifications. It’s the kind of plot that fits a “videogame ass videogame”, but that phrase implies a fun, campy quality that this story just doesn’t have. There is one extra bit of novelty I had, however. I initially experienced X-Men Origins Wolverine, the movie, through the leaked cut that was missing some scenes and most of its special effects. While the final film is still infamously bad, that cut especially just felt like 100 minutes of just shit happening. This game’s pacing feels a lot like that cut of the film, which I do find novel, but does not make for a story I will ever think about ever again, outside of the laughably bad ending that is nearly unchanged from the film.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not a classic, but I understand why people like me think back to it as if it is. It’s one of those “Nintendo, hire this man” games. Not because it runs in Unreal engine, or has frequent walk and talk segments, but because it is a game that a lowly gamer like me can easily imagine. I see a character like Wolverine, someone with a built-in lethal weapon in his hands and a healing factor, and I can easily conceptualize a rough outline of a game for him that looks a lot like this game. There is nothing wrong with that, but ultimately, I can only be so moved by a reflection of my own imagination. I have more than enough affection for middling action games like these, a look at my physical games collection and my personal top 100 games list will show that. But they are ultimately empty calories, the deliciousness of which I forget the moment the savoriness of the salt or the sweetness of the sugar is no longer felt on my tongue. I can easily talk about these games on a mechanical level, but I find them hard to speak on deeply as art due to how shallow of a connection I have with them. I’m not upset at this fact, as plenty of art is made for consumption more than analysis, this is a tie-in game to a major franchise movie afterall. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still look deeper at this work and wish there was more to say about it than I already have said up to this point of the page, which honestly is not very much.

I started playing this game well before the reviews dropped for Insomniac’s Wolverine game, but I already looked down upon it somewhat. Before I ever picked up the sticks, I could tell that Insomniac’s latest would be familiar and tedious. The game does the smart thing that I with other AAA studios do, and reuses mechanics and elements from their earlier games, like Spider-Man. But in this case, the prospect of similar combat, but with most of the traversal mechanics I loved from Spider-Man removed, didn’t fill me with excitement, or even despair, it just filled me with…apathy. From what those early reviews have told me, it seems the game is indeed familiar and tedious, which is unfortunate to hear, but puts it right in line with this 2009 game. I remember wondering, as we learned more about Insomniac’s Wolverine in the last few months, if the game would be redundant when put next to this title. Well, the answer seems to be yes, but almost no one would be enough of a sicko to actually put them next to each other. But unfortunately, you are reading the words of a sicko.

Like 90% of the PS3 library is still unplayable on consoles, with only enthusiasts like me caring enough to dig up disks or emulate elsewhere. Unlike film, TV, or music, video games often only need to stand in context with contemporary titles due to this perceived lack of availability of older games, unless your play on PC of course. I feel like this fact makes it easy for companies to run back to old ideas. Why not remake Shadow of the Colossus, or Demons Souls, or even Medievil, you can’t even play them on modern hardware anymore! Why not make another 3rd person brawler based on Wolverine, most people don’t even remember the last time someone did that! Well, I do remember, and better yet, I have modern experience with it, free of the rosey tints of nostalgia. I’d say that the modern gaming market no longer cares to cater to enthusiasts like me, but with console and subscription prices soaring, only those with enough money or passion to continue to pay will remain. So, if this is the case, I have to ask, will we continue to get prettier versions of ideas we’ve seen 15 years ago, or will those in charge of AAA studios dare to innovate? Well, we are still in the middle of an industry crash the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 80s, so perhaps we can answer that question once the turbulence has ceased. But in the meantime, I will continue to look to indies for that taste of innovation, and to the AAA games of the past for the earliest versions of what is being released today. But as the grownup version of the toddler in the 2000s who first picked up a game controller to move around a little purple dragon on a green plain, I still have hope that the house that Spyro, Ratchet, Nathan Hale, Fizzie and now Spider-Man built can deliver something magical again.