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Riding on the coattails of the movie, Wolverine’s Revenge tells the tale of our friend Logan and how he is infected with a deadly virus giving him 48 hours to live. Only by returning to the site of the secret government “Weapon-X” Facility and finding the vaccine can he survive. Featuring the voice talents of Patrick Stewart as he role of Professor Xavier, and Mark Hamill as Wolverine (don’t ask my why it isn’t Hugh Jackman), a host of other Mutants, and loads of fighting, you can’t go wrong, can you?

Well, unfortunately you can. This game has to be one of the most frustrating games I’ve played to date. When you throw your controller at the screen in the first level, you know that no matter how you look at the game you are not going to give it a good review. There are some very clever innovations in this game, but they’re just not worth the hassle of pushing that little power button and dealing with the atrocious gameplay.

First off, I’ll talk about the good parts of the game. Well, you are playing Wolverine after all, and he has some pretty impressive moves. You punch and kick with the X and Y buttons respectively, jump with the A button and perform “Strikes” with the B button. Strikes are performed when you are in a position between two or more enemies, and the word “Strike” flashes up on screen. You perform some pretty killer moves.

Strike is also used when sneaking, done by holding the black button, and as you get closer to a target who is unaware of your presence, the “strike” appears and you do a Stealth Strike. While not entirely new, it’s a lot of fun and you often pick up “dogtags” that allow you to do better looking and more damaging strikes. Also, when fighting, a flurry of blows can leave your opponent dizzy, and you can then use finishing moves to pick them up to throw them or slice them.

Another good aspect of this game is the Heightened Senses Mode. In this mode you can see footprints, heat signatures, and scent trails, telling you where your enemy is. You can hear better and see hidden objects like mines and secret compartments, and if you can see an enemy you can see a little ‘ghost’ of yourself showing you the best way to take that enemy down. It’s quite a cool little addition to the game, and if only the gameplay wasn’t so stinkingly horrible it would make the game quite a good one.

As I just mentioned, the gameplay sucks. I don’t know where to start. Maybe I should start with the fact that you can’t save the game during a level. Not that this is bad in and of itself, but in this game if you make one tiny little mistake, you have to go all the way back to the start of the level. Tiny mistakes like you are in a room with 8 guards, no healing power, and you’re told by Professor Xavier that you have to move quickly. So, instead of fighting, you run towards the lift – sounds like a reasonable thing to me…

EEERP! Wrong, the guards beat you to the lift, even though they’re on the other side of the room, and you have to start the level all over again. By the way, once you’re in that lift, it’s the end of the level. The gameplay is not difficult, it’s just that if you stuff up, you go back to the start, and do the whole level again. As you often don’t know what’s around the corner, you find yourself making many mistakes, and find yourself doing the same level over and over and over again.

Sneaking is another stupid part of this game. You sneak along with your back against the walls, but at every join in the wall you have to release yourself from the wall, move around the join, and then go back to the wall. Again, this wouldn’t be bad if the walls were continuous, but each and every cave and rock wall is made of zigzagged sections of wall, making it IMPOSSIBLE to sneak along. In some levels sneaking is MANDATORY, so why the hell did they make the game work in this way? There’s more bad stuff, Like this piss poor AI, but I can’t be bothered mentioning it because I simply shouldn’t have to – no game should be this bad.

I guess the graphics aren’t too bad, but the trails in the snow around Wolverine are just totally wrong, and the sound is adequate and you can put your own soundtrack in. There are some groovy Xmen related things to unlock, like different costumes and stories about the characters and such, which add that little something extra I guess, but is it worth playing with such lousy gameplay? I don’t think so. I really wanted to enjoy this game, but it is like the game makers realised the film was coming out, and skimped on the gameplay to cash in, which is a real pity as this could have been a really good game.

4/ 10.