X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review

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These days, games based on films can go a lot of ways, but if there is one constant - one inviolable law of adaptation - it's that they agree on age ratings. You can't send the kids to see a film and then miss out on selling them the merchandise. Not so X-Men Origins: Wolverine. If you're 12 years old, you can go and see the film in the UK. And then you'll have to wait six more years to go home and play the game.

That's because Raven's Wolverine isn't just a bit violent; it's relentlessly, unapologetically, 18-rated vicious. From the very first cut-scene onwards, Hugh Jackman's Logan rips people apart. He cuts off legs and arms, and when he's not cutting off heads, he's rending them to slush. When one of his captors thinks he's dead a third of the way through and mocks him, lifting up his hanging head by the hair to pose for a picture, he gets a claw through his neck and face. This is Wolverine at his most bone-splittingly, limb-severingly diabolical.

It's not just the cut-scenes, either. The combat system isn't so much geared towards ultraviolence as avoiding restraint. Your basic light and heavy attacks are a merciless whirlwind; the charged Rage attacks, which unlock at intervals when you level up, are spinning adamantium tops and flying Sideous drill assaults; ground strikes are repeated stab attacks to the face and chest. By comparison, the counters, throws and dodge-based reversals are relatively benign: all you do is break arms at the elbow and impale enemies on standing spikes, eagerly identified by the game's kill-them-with-this! feral sniffovision filter. When it comes to the last guy in the room, the game goes into slow motion so you can savour the carnage. It rarely warrants anything less.

So that's unusual. And now that every hero, superhero and comic book game has gone open-world, it's also rather refreshing to come across a linear, level-by-level hackandslash. Following the twin stories of Wolverine's Team X mission to Africa, and his decision to volunteer for adamantium infusion at Alkali Lake and subsequent escape and vengeance, developer Raven prefers corridors, arenas and set enemy groups: a dozen soldiers here, a few commandos here, a mini-boss here. Occasionally you stop and do a bit of platforming, puzzle-solving or mild exploration, but you're rarely in any doubt where to go. If you are, it's mostly because the environments look the same, and you've got turned around. Sniffovision points the way.

The Rage attacks (trigger plus action-button) are powerful, but they pale next to the lunge.

It sounds regressive, but on some level it makes sense. Wolverine is overpowered against regular enemies, but despite his indestructible claws and regeneration, he's always had a lingering fragility. Hit him hard enough and he won't get up - at least not for a while. Bury him in a research facility and he can't just blast his way out. As a former lab rat, he still belongs in a maze. Dial down the Unreal Engine 3 graphics, which are mostly bland but certainly aren't afraid of depth and scale, and you could be playing that other Wolverine game circa 2003.

The headline feature, largely by dint of its authority, is the lunge attack. Facing off against a crowd of enemies with machineguns, your best option is to hold the right bumper to target one of them and then tap the left bumper to spring through the air - often as far as 20 metres - to drive your claws heat-seekingly into their chest. A follow-up heavy attack, which sends Wolverine up and then down again in a crushing finisher, is enough to deal with most enemies. Repetition is enough to deal with most of the others.

Climb up and grab the pilot through the windscreen and you automatically decapitate him using the rotary blades. Hence the 18. And some laughter.

The good thing about it is that it's intuitive, fast and ferocious. It's the fury that Victor Creed, Wolvie's brother, is desperate for him to unleash - and since you're not saddled with the movie script's lashings of moderation, it's the perfect answer to everyone else's aggression. Protectors of the canon can even rest relatively easy: Logan can't exactly reason his way out of the crosshairs.

For the first few hours, the lunge is jarringly effective, shortcutting 90 per cent of the combat system, but as the game throws up commandos, Ghost marines, Wendigos and others, you are at least forced to make use of sideways rolls and more elaborate combination attacks to expose your foes to the all-conquering lunge. And when you do, it seals the deal rather spectacularly.

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