All right it’s time to jump in for some Wolverine adventures. This game plays out a lot differently than what I would have expected though. The focus isn’t really on the action and slashing the foes in front of you. Instead it is mainly a stealth game where you have to be nimble and hide in the shadows like Carmen Sandiego. When you find an opening, then you strike but otherwise you are taken out of the game real quick. The shots just do too much damage.

The basic plot though is that Wolverine has been poisoned and is slowly dying. He needs to find a cure and fast or it’s all over for him. The X-Men would help but they’re all rather busy which isn’t a great excuse but hey it’s something. So Wolverine will have to travel around the globe to find the cure and that means tangling with old enemies like Sabertooth and the whole Weapon X group. If anyone could handle this though, it would be Wolverine. He’s been through a lot over the year and isn’t about to throw in the towel just yet. No way!

So the stealth is my main issue with the game though mainly because of how it’s executed. You could absolutely pull off a stealth Wolverine game where it’s like he’s going back to his wild side and you’re picking everyone off one by one. Yes it may be a bit of an odd decision but not necessarily a bad one. No, the real problem here is how the levels are really long so if you make one mistake then you have to go all the way back to the beginning. That part is absolutely brutal because some of these levels are 15-20 minutes long. You’re losing so much every time and of course it makes you a bit impatient so then you end up losing again and now you’re in a rather rough cycle.

The easiest fix here would have absolutely been to add more checkpoints. That’s all you have to do. Add in those checkpoints and you are really set for anything. Then you can stomach the stealth a lot better and losing isn’t as bad since you can quickly get back to where you were at. I guess the game was really intentionally trying to be difficult but this was the wrong way to do it. Give me a challenge but don’t make me keep on replaying large parts of a game. I’m trying to progress as much as possible.

Then the few times we do get a boss fight with actual combat, there is always a gimmick around. For Magneto you have to chase him a lot while getting hit by objects and then if he runs over to his generator for a few seconds you lose by default. The final boss has unlimited health so you actually can’t beat her in hand to hand combat and are forced to go use some background objects. Likewise when you fight Sabertooth you have to throw him into a train. He can’t be beaten normally.

See a pattern here? Again that doesn’t have to be a bad thing but it felt like the game absolutely did not want to let you fight any of the opponents straight up. Even fighting the minions would usually get a little dicey because their guns deal so much damage. So what you have to do with those is hide behind a wall for a while as your health very slowly starts to recover. Have a book or your phone handy because the game is not kidding for this part. They actually want you to just slowly get the health back. Cmonnnnnnnnn

The actual combat gameplay isn’t too bad but it’s a bit sloppy. The hitboxes don’t always match the character models so a lot of times you are hitting the opponent but he doesn’t feel it and then he misses and so the two of you keep on taking shot at each other but neither one is making much headway. Eventually you connect and he goes down but it doesn’t feel very polished at all. The budget for this game was not nearly as high as it should have been and the game knows it.

As you get deeper into the game you will learn how to work around this and get a win. It takes time but you won’t be stuck. Some parts are just really hard to guess like the final phase of the final boss. For reasons unknown that boss is completely invincible so you have to go to the edge and wait for her to be in position to fall off. Why is this so bad? Because it’s the 4th phase of the fight so most likely you’re going to try and attack her since that makes sense and then you die. I don’t see how you could possibly guess on the first go around and so that means the game is dooming you to lose at least one life there. Not cool if you ask me.

It’s like an invisible block that makes you die in Mario Maker. It’s just not a fair way to go out and so you end up blaming the devs. This game has quite a few moments like that and each time it makes you shake your head. You know that you did not deserve to lose like that and so you’re wondering why the game had to mess with you. Okay so I had a lot of issues with the game design but on the positive side I’d say the graphics are fairly good. All of the characters and their costumes stand out pretty well. They look very classic all the way and the level designs are also good. A map would have been really nice but there’s only a few that are big enough to get lost in.

Then we have the soundtrack which is actually pretty good. There are some tense themes here and in general there is a wide variety. The sound clips at the start of a mission can get old as you keep on hearing them over and over again though when you lose. “Stay quiet, Stay low, Stay Alive!” is something I had to hear Wolverine say dozens and dozens of times. It’s why every game should allow you to skip cutscenes and should not replay the same dialogue option every time although I now that’s a bit harder to work around.

In terms of length I’d say the game is fairly satisfying. That’s in part due to the difficulty of course but still this is not a game that you will be conquering in one day and that’s important to note. It’s going to be sticking around for the longhaul and really making sure that you bring your A game because without it you really will get stuck on the levels. There’s not really any replay value unless there is a bonus ending of sorts but there is a challenge mode where you can have some fun in.

Overall, X2: Wolverine’s Revenge is a game where the gameplay sacrificed the story’s effort. I actually thought the story was really good with a lot of characters running around everywhere. It managed to stay exciting the whole time and the ending leaves a ton of cliffhangers for a possible sequel. The game was having quite a bit of fun here even if you knew the odds were not great that they would be able to complete this plot. Well, if you’re looking for an old superhero game that you haven’t played yet, this one is just obscure enough where it could fit the bill. It’s not going to touch most of the big ones or even come close to those but you definitely can’t call it a rehash or anything like that. It was trying its own thing from the start.

Overall 5/10