Deadpool – Xbox 360 Reviews

I believe my review title reference of DP’s character upgrade from Ultimate Alliance 2 says it all. The game is in an over-the-top, 4th wall breaking class of its own. As other reviewers stated, the graphics aren’t groundbreaking and the gameplay is twitchy at times, especially the shooting mechanics. However, the game offers a unique experience that you won’t find anywhere else. The closest thing I can think of is the Spawn PS 2 game due to its combo of melee and shooting. The only minor complaint I find is the combat gets repetitive even with the variations High Moon Studios cleverly threw in, but what third-person action game doesn’t get monotonous at times? I’ve played through every level but the last two. I’m a veteran video gamer and it took me about 4 hours to get that far, which isn’t too bad considering I haven’t touched the challenge maps yet and there are at least 2 levels I want to replay because they were so much fun. This game interacts with the player amazingly and I think that helped keep me engaged. I found the graphics to be above-par, especially during combat. Parents be warned: just because Wolverine, Psylocke, Rogue and other familiars appear in the game does not make this suitable for children or early teens. It’s full of jokes about gay sex, killing, hetero sex, the size of various sex organs and much more. Spoiler and graphic content alert: to give a small sample of the violence in the game- at one point the player has to control Deadpool as he climbs up his own intestines after his body has been cut in half, so that he can slice off his own guts to free himself to an area below where the lower half of his body is waiting. So think about that before buying this for little Tommy or Suzie and then complaining about the grotesque level of violence after you, yourself, had the idiocy to purchase a game, one that truly earned its M rating, for your 11-15 year old. The violence and raunchiness are on another planet compared to other M rated games like Black Ops. I stopped playing GTA games a while ago, but I’d say Deadpool makes those look tame by comparison. Like I said, it’s pretty much the best one ever. Now click “helpful!”

OKay first off, we all knew this game wasn’t going to be amazing from the get go. It’s a licensed game from people who made the Transformers games. The gameplay is just plain boring, repetitive and sometimes annoying. The challenges are frustrating on level two: they run in the damn sewers and there is only one way to get to their spawn…and that’s climb the stairs. The campaign was long and a bore after about an hour…which is actually 1/4 of the game…it’s short. The only reason I put myself through this game is Nolan North does a fantastic job portraying the Merc with a Mouth. I believe four stars is a fair accolade… 5 is just stupid and anything lower than 3 is just critical. For some main points to put together here are my comments

Pros:
+ Funny dialogue/very entertaining
+ a decent strew of weapons although you might not enjoy using any of the unlock able melee weapons
+ a wide variety of types of enemies that require you to switch between projectile and melee weapons
+ level design isn’t copy and paste…I for one enjoyed the constant difference in structure
+ it wasn’t dumbed down to appeal to a younger audience

Cons
– Graphics are meh
– Short Campaign
– Dialogue is easily skipped on accident (So just be ready to not press buttons like I did when Deadpool interacts with characters)
– Challenges and enemies in general are very frustrating even on the lowest difficulty
– Combat and Combos are very simple: Slice, slam with heavy attack, shoot, evade. Gadgets are only useful when the AI decides to over horde you.
– X-men characters aren’t with you very often and there aren’t very many of them… clones of them as enemies do however appear VERY OFTEN and are kind of overwhelming
– Controls for certain abilities are shared on the same button; you wanted to evade and counter an attack? too bad, you just teleported
– Controls are confusing and sometimes awful (especially aiming guns in combat) a lock on feature outside of Aiming down sight would have been a great; even then the ADS is very difficult to accomplish against fast enemies
– No unlock able content…comics, costumes, easter eggs, cheat code abilities, cut scenes; nothing but challenges that are simply just time trials.

Overall I’d say wait until it’s worth about 20 dollars; it’s a great collection of Deadpool humor and the mischief just left me in disbelief how awesome Deadpool was in this game. But if you would rather, I’d say watch someone else play this game…although gameplay can still be kind of fun… It took me about 4-5 hours to complete.

I’ve always loved Deadpool. In the world of Comics, he’s unique. He constantly breaks the fourth wall, he has crazy, off-the-wall hilarious dialogue, and he does all those wacky things that we’ve all thought about, but never got to see done in the comics.

A friend of mine at work told me about the game, and I immediately swore him to absolute silence regarding the game itself. I did not want to know about it. I did not want to hear quotes. I did not want a single thing spoiled for a game starring my favourite character of all time. I rushed home, ordered it, and paid for one-day shipping (thank you, Amazon Prime!).

You know, I’m of two minds regarding the game. On one hand, it certainly delivers that inimitable Deadpool hilarity, chock-full of profanities and out-of-place pop culture references. The dialogue is BRILLIANT. I mean, it is superb. Hilarious to the point of bust-a-gut, it is wildly irreverent, irrelevant, and unmistakably ‘Deadpool’. Full points for that, High Moon.

The game is also tremendously funny outside of mere dialogue. An hour or two in is an all-too-brief pastiche of the original Zelda on NES (courtesy of Deadpool blowing the game’s budget on explosions), and a point wherein you can slap an unconscious Wolverine for about five minutes straight.

The game would have made a brilliant comic book. The problem is that it doesn’t make a very good game.

It’s pretty evident that the dialogue was written first, and the game mechanic and engine were written around that. The camera is over-the-shoulder third-person, a view which I tend not to like. Controls are a little clunky, with Deadpool practically straining at the bit to break into a full run every time you tilt the joystick. The look around axis is particularly unpleasant, being a curious mixture of overly sensitive and strangely inaccurate.

There are too many quicktime events. A game having a few here and there doesn’t really bother me, but you just can’t escape the things in this game! You also have side-scrolling platforming sections, a carnival ride blasting apparitions of Deadpool’s own diseased imagination, top-down maze exploration sections, stealth sections…it all feels fairly disjointed and schizophrenic.

Which, considering the subject matter, may have been the point, but as much as I admire them sticking to the character of Deadsy, I can’t help but feel somewhat let down by the game itself. If I wanted to be entertained only by dialogue, I’d watch a comedy variety show.