Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition

Review by Guest Reviewer: Matt “Shibby” Szybiak

The Info Bit

Genre: Slash ‘em up. Snikt!

Players: 1 Offline

Format Played: XB360

Available on: PC, PS3

Rating: BBFC 18

I debated for a week or so deciding whether or not to buy this, especially as it was tied to a movie with elements of which particularly annoyed me. However I ended up making the purchase as I had been continually playing the demo and thought I might as well give it a try.

Wolverine is no masterpiece when it comes to games and will not be hailed as being groundbreaking in any way. However it is rather fun to play, even though with it’s somewhat repetitive nature. Slashing and tearing people apart with Wolverines razor sharp Adamantium claws just doesn’t get old as quickly as you might think.

The story is expanded from the film and it is not a complete slave to the film either which is a nice touch making the game more on it’s own terms. Another point is the fact that the game is has BBFC 18 certificate, making it a more violent than the movie which had a lower certificate or a mere 12A. Some may feel the violence is gratuitous, but I feel it really shows the character of Wolverine well, as in many of the comics he seen to be violent and with his razor sharp claws can do a lot of damage.

It all seems a lot more real, rather than previous lower rated games. With Wolverine’s claws of death slicing off limbs, decapitating enemies and sometimes even slicing them clean in two. It fits the game and brings it to a level of maturity that some of this characters comic book adventures have been at for some time.

At times the game is a little achievement happy, but there are some you will have to work for giving the game some replay-ability. You will probably want to show friends some of the quick kills and how strong your character has become. There is a simply level up system, as when you start you are slightly more vulnerable. As you grow in levels you will become increasing more difficult to kill and can upgrade aspects such as attack damage, health, rage and rage attacks unlocked throughout the game.

Now I know this may be a sore point for some, we know that Wolverine is pretty much un-killable, but this would never work in a game. I think this has been done pretty well, you get a long regular health bar, when this is depleted you go down to a circle showing a heart when this is depleted you die. The idea from what I ahve read is that this circle is Logan’s vital organs being exposed to damage and therefore more lethal. The healing factor kicks in if you don’t get damaged for a short time and works well and as you grow in levels and upgrade Wolverine he does get harder to kill. There are also mutagens that can modify your healing factor, rage, experience gained from each kill and variety of others that can be utilised.

The story is average, nothing special but it expands on the source material, the fighting though repetitive takes some time to get really stale. The bosses and sub-bosses are generally simple, the best or at least most epic boss fight being a fight with a Sentinel.

There are some glitches, probably due to it being rushed out to coincide with the film, but they are mainly minor. They are things like floating enemy bodies’ occasional weird camera actions that normally sort themselves out pretty much instantly. The only main glitch that annoyed me was when fighting the Sentinel I destroyed the feet but could not destroy the final hand, I need the Sentinel to grab as it had earlier but it just didn’t seem to want to play ball so I restarted and made sure to destroy the hands first. This was the biggest most annoying problem I experienced while playing.

Another minor grip is there are some jumping puzzles that can be a little annoying and other puzzles that sometimes are a nice little break from the slaughter but at times can be a little irritating. Enemies occasionally just seem to stand still waiting to be engaged, but I didn’t expect amazing AI especially from many of the peons you face. There role is to be there, attack Wolverine and then be killed by Wolverine and so as cannon fodder they serve their purpose well.

I played the game quite a bit after completing the initial story, would say there is about 8-10 hours roughly long first play through. I replayed to get most of the left over achievements and still found it enjoyable.

The quick kills in the game can especially be entertaining and you will be doing them on many a foe, not just because as they say are “quick” but also to see the different ways Wolverine can quickly in a variety of ways dispatch each enemy.

I’d compared Wolverine to games like Stranglehold or God of War in some ways, though some may prefer the story of these others, they are of a similar nature.

I’d say it’s defiantly worth getting if you’re a fan of Wolverine; it is not only a pretty good movie based title but also the best Wolverine game there has ever been. It works well and is enjoyable despite being repetitive. The graphics are pretty good and the real time healing of Wolverine is cool to watch. There are some of the cast from the film, Hugh Jackman being the main one, but is still good to see some real collaboration between the two. When it comes down to it X-Men Origins Wolverine is really just big dumb fun, not over complicated plot or gameplay just pure carnage and enjoyment.

Stars out of Five: 3

Review: Zack and Miri Make a Porno

The Info Bit

Genre: Comedy
Starring: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Mewes, Traci Lords
Director: Kevin Smith
Run Time: 1hr 40mins
Rating: 18
Year: 2008
Production Company: The Weinstein Company

Let me start by saying, I love comedy films they are most certainly my top genre of film, let me also say I love Kevin Smith films, to me he always makes films that are funny and watchable, so when I put Zack and Miri into my DVD player I hoped he wasn’t going to let me down and he didn’t.

The story for this film is simple and stupid but that’s the point. Zack an Miri have been friends since High School, they now live together and can’t afford the rent and all the bills they have, so to get money they decide to get their friends together and make a porn movie to pay the rent.

The films funny throughout(with is sort of the point with comedies of course) but near the end its stops being your normal ‘teen/stoner’ type comedy and turns into a romantic comedy. This doesn’t hurt the film in my opinion, partly because you see it coming a mile off, but I can see some people getting annoyed at the random skew of into rom com land. I should also say that without giving to much away this film also contains the most disgusting moment I’ve ever seen in a comedy film, so brace yourselves people.

Performances are good, Seth Rogan plays Zack which is his ‘normal’ character a well meaning waste of space who finds himself in the end, Elizabeth Banks does a good job of mirroring Seth’s performance with what is essentially a female version of him. Jason Mewes (who stars in all of Kevin Smith’s films) appears as the porn ’stud’ and I reckon its probably his best part to date, Lastly Traci Lords who plays the crazy character of ‘Miss Bubbles’ a women with a special talent…..oh and for you guys (or girls I guess) who just watch films like this to see boobs, Katie Morgan stars as Stacey the Pole dancer/Porn star and covers the boob front pretty well. (Sorry about the phrasing of that last sentence but I couldn’t think of a better way to put it)

Kevin Smith in my eyes has added another great comedy to his repertoire here and his directing is as good as it always has been, bringing out exactly the right emotions for each scene.

Comedies can often be very average but yet again Kevin Smith has pulled a potential classic out of the bag again, so if you want to laugh for the best part of two hours I highly recommend this film, the comedy’s great, the story’s good and for some of you (most of the men probably), you get to see boobs as well, it’s a win win situation

Stars out of Five: 4 1/2

Review: Death Race

The Info Bit

Genre: Action
Starring: Jason Statham, Ian McShane, Natalie Martinez, Joan Allen
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Run Time: 1hr 45mins
Rating: 15
Year: 2008
Production Company: Universal Pictures

Jason Statham seems to be in every average action film under the sun these days and Death Race has added to the list.

First a brief plot overview, Jason Statham plays Jenson Ames a former race driver who is sent to jail for murdering his wife. The jail in question runs a competition called Death Race, basically ten inmates get souped up muscle cars with armour plating and guns and proceed to race said cars against each other with the winner of five successful races earning their freedom. Simple.

I have to say that despite its flaws (of which there are a few) this film is undeniable watchable. The race sequences, although occasionally to long for my liking, always have lots of great explosions, crashes and various stunts in them none more so than the first two races, and with a film like this it’s what we’re all after to be honest. The dialogue and plot at best throwaway but its not really something that I can say hampers the film much.

Onto performances, Jason Statham does what’s required of him in this role, he doesn’t talk a lot and has a permanent frown on his face but on a side note when he does talk he talks with his ‘put-on’ American accent which annoys the hell out of me! Ian McShane is good as the car mechanic/team leader but despite being one of the top stars on the billing he doesn’t actually feature that much in the film. The main female roles are played pretty well (for what they are), Joan Allen playing the head of the prison and race organiser does a pretty good job of playing the two faced liar with a ruthless heart and mind, to sum up she plays a bitch, but again its not really the dialogue that gives off that, its just the way she performs it. Finally the beauty of the film is Natalie Martinez (no I’ve not heard of her either and probably won’t again), she plays a female inmate and navigator for Jason and successfully pulls off what every attractive woman in these films is there to do, walk slow mo, look sexy and help the good guy with a bit of romantic sub plot.

To sum it up I quite like this film (even though you might not be able to tell with the amount of criticism above) but I like it for what it is, which is a film you can chill out and watch with a beer and some popcorn on a lazy evening.

Stars out of Five: 3 1/2

Review: Terminator - Salvation

The Info Bit
Genre: 3rd Person Shooter
Players: 1-2 Offline and Online (CO-OP only)
Format Played: XB360
Available on: PC, PS3
Rating: 16 +

With every big film release comes a ‘tie-in’ game, which is usually of very poor quality both in gameplay and graphics, this however doesn’t mean you should never buy any, (in fact most sell really well which I guess just compounds the problem of poor releases but there you go), every so often a few are really enjoyable to play despite the poor development, I believe Terminator - Salvation is one such game.

I will be the first to say that the only reason I really bought this game was because Fuel was delayed by a month (a review for that will come when its released I promise). As a result I started playing Terminator with regret in my heart thinking that I’ve bought an awful game as a stop gap and questioning the decision as to why I didn’t just save my money, that was until about 20 minutes or so into the game when I destroyed the first HK, or Hunter Killer for those not familiar with the Terminator series.

Graphics in this game are shall we say ‘functional’, they’re not great but nor are they bad, they serve the purpose well, the characters are a little ‘square faced’ and the scenery looks like a city ravaged by years of war but they aren’t as polished as they could be, I suspect it was rushed out for the launch of the film and as a result they didn’t get time to finish all the polishing. Gameplay is good (although I would like to add some people might find it repetitive), basically a level will be laid out a bit like this: cutscene continuing story, walk for a bit admiring the scenery, robots appear and attack, use cool cover system to flank said robots, kill them by shooting the weak spot , walk to next fight, repeat until final cutscene of level. On face value this seems a bad thing but I found this procedure made it quite tactical at times, especially when you face the T700’s with the chain guns because you have to move from cover to cover and use your team to help kill them or you will die.

The sound effects and musical score also aren’t amazing but serve the purposes well, and I deny anyone to not get a little excited when you first see a T700 and the Terminator ‘stalking’ music starts, and yes it is the official terminator soundtrack as well, not a dodgy new made up version, now onto the bad things.

If anyone cares the voices are not the people from the film (ie no Christian Bale) but that’s not really a big deal in my book, I wished the game was longer, with only nine levels and a couple of them being only twenty minutes long, it did feel a bit to quick to complete and there was a lack of variation in the weapon choices. My only other complaint, and to be honest my main one, is that the achievement points are way to easy to get. I finished the game on medium in about eight hours, which isn’t great for a game these days but what baffled me more than anything else is that for eight hours work I got 820 achievement points out of 1000, when will developers learn to make achievements a bit harder to get, because the only one I’ve not got left is to complete it on hard which I reckon I could do in another twelve hours or so assuming I die more. This is a major annoyance for me and its not just this game that’s done it and it won’t be the last but please developers give us something to aim at.

That rant over with I reckon most shooter fans out there will quite like Terminator - Salvation and if you can get it for about twenty pounds or so (which is what I got it for) then it is certainly worth the money for a few days entertainment, if you like the Terminator franchise you‘ll probably like this game to, especially the second to last level which I won‘t spoil for you. All in all I’ve not been disappointed with my ‘back-up’ purchase but I still would’ve liked Fuel instead and there are better shooters out there.




Stars out of Five: 2 1/2

Review: Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans

The Info Bit
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Starring: Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy, Rhona Mitra
Director: Patrick Tatopoulos
Run Time: 1hr 30mins
Rating: 18
Year: 2009
Production Company: Lakeshore Entertainment


The Underworld films are a strange series of films, consistently condemned by much of the media but loved by many moviegoers (in fact I don’t think I know anyone who really hates the Underworld films). This, if you will, ‘cult’ status has now successfully spawned two sequels and it’s the third one I’ll be writing about now.

The film follows the story of a young boy called Lucian (played by Michael Sheen) who just happens to be a lycan (aka werewolf) who can control when he changes. Quite why he can do this is never properly explained for my liking but it doesn’t really detract from the films story so it’s a minor complaint. After seeing him grow up a bit we get into the story proper where you find he and all the lycans are slaves to the vampires ruled by Viktor (Bill Nighy’s character). Basically it’s a simple plot, werewolves not happy being slaves, they revolt, romantic subplot of werewolf loving vampire and the war starts.

As with many films like this CGI is pretty frequent, some good and some truly awful but it doesn’t make it any less watchable and there is enough action to keep the viewer going. If I’m honest they story, although interesting to a point, really doesn’t matter with a film like this and I just kept getting more interested in the fight sequences (which are well choreographed) than any of the story points.

The extras on the DVD are well, normal, you have the directors commentary (Although I will put this question out now…who actually cares with a film like this about the directors commentary???), two making of sections (which are from Script to Screen and Re-Creating the Dark Ages) and last but not least a music video.

There really isn’t a lot more to say about this film, if you like your fantasy vampire action flicks then you’ll enjoy it, if you like action in general you’ll probably like it and if you like films with a great moral message and lots of complex issues dealt with in the story then I have this advice….STAY AWAY FROM THIS FILM.

Stars out of Five: 3