X-Men Origins: Wolverine for the Nintendo DS (NDS) is pretty messed up, much like its namesake character. But unlike the appealing messiness of Wolverine’s convulated history, the video game feels like a mishmash of ideas thrown into a pot, hoping that it would go down well with gamers.
The first level kick starts with you playing as Wolverine, laying the beatdown on his brother (at least in the movie, whoops…spoiler!) Sabretooth. I can’t remember the last game I played which featured a boss-fight at the very beginning, but this doesn’t really do the game any justice as you have no idea why are you fighting him in the first place.
This then skips to the Weapon X facility to the part where Wolverine was getting his adamantium manicure, I mean adamantium bonding done. Unlike the movie, the game developers chose to have Wolverine wear the head piece featured in Chris Claremont’s Weapon X comic series.
Conflicting source material aside, it is here that you’ll get the gist of the game. It is basically a 2D brawler, an updated Streets of Rage with metal claws and a really crazy touch screen-based beserker mode. Fights can be frenetic but you’ll be let down with jerky animations and the fact that Wolverine has to resort to jumping around like a hyper active dog to tackle multiple enemies makes it feel like Mario with claws.
The NDS version of the game feels uninspired, sharing the knack of letting down fans as the recently released film which on its own would seem like the writers went to town with the source material and came back with a watered-down, Teen-friendly and untimately un-Wolverine-like cinematic experience.
But if you are really interested in the game, click here to check ou the various console versions available.
