Today, in a press release from Capcom, gamers across the world were given the news they’ve been desperately waiting to hear: the official release date for Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

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Deadpool is one of my favorite characters in comics. When he’s written by someone who knows how to write him, Deadpool is the most entertaining super-whatever you will ever encounter. His never-shuts-up personality puts Spider-Man to shame, and the fourth wall is just a formality to him. From performing a Shoryuken on Kitty Pryde in order to piss off Wolverine, to acknowledging thought boxes on comic pages, to dance-fighting a villain that can mimic his fighting abilities, Deadpool is a barrel of laughs with a very loosely built moral compass and an unerring talent for pop-culture references. Unfortunately, terrible things were done to him by the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie that made me worry for a very long time about the announced Deadpool spin-off. Read the full story

Lindsey, you’re my wife.  As my wife, if I were to ask you to do something for me…something that I consider to be vital to my continued existence…you’d do it, right?  That’s what being married is all about, right?  Well, I want you to break every bone in my body, and get me into the human trials for titanium bones.  I doubt the trials include any SNIKT-SNIKT claws, but hey, I’d settle for an awesome new skeleton. Read the full story

About an hour ago I tweeted about a video so hilarious, it made me cry. Because I love you all so much, I feel that I should share this video.

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Personally, I’m not particularly excited about either of these characters appearing in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but hey, maybe one of you guys happens to be shit-your-pants excited about it.  Tron Bonne was an antagonist in a Mega Man game who developed feelings for Mega Man (or some such crap), and X-23 is a female clone of Wolverine (this makes how many clones/derivatives of Wolverine now?). Read the full story

Oliver Platt, Rose Byrne and Jason Flemyng are enrolling in First Class along with the other 1.2 billion people cast so far.

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While browsing one of my favorite time-killer sites, I saw an article that grabbed my immediate attention. I like comic books. I like them even better when they’re cheap, and let me tell you brother, this is cheap. Barnes & Noble is discounting select bargain books by around 80% (some higher, some lower). I purchased Wolverine: Weapon X, Wolverine by Claremont and Miller, and Ultimates 2: Volume 1 for $2.99 each. They have a limited supply of these things, though, and may not be pristine, so if you’re a hardcore collector, these may not be the purchases you are looking for.

To quote Barnes & Noble:

Note: This is a bargain book and quantities are limited.  Bargain books are new but may have slight markings from the publisher and/or stickers showing their discounted price.

I’m perfectly fine that that, personally. All I care about is the 80% savings on two of the best Wolverine trade paperbacks of all time.

Go buy while there’s still time!

-[insert I BUY WHEN I WANNA BUY! here]

We rented X-Men Origins: Wolverine over a week ago, but since I work, and we had a busy weekend, it’s taken me the full week to finally complete the game.  Now, on to the review!

I’ll start with the complaints.  Primarily, the game was short.  At least, shorter than I would have liked.  However, when you really think about it, that seems to be the case for all games that I enjoy a great deal.  Realistically, though, if I had one solid day to sit and play, it could easily have been completed in 6-10 hours, depending on how thorough I was.  With the cost of video games for the current generation consoles being what it is (approx. $60), I think it’s fair to expect more length, content, and replay value.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine has no multiplayer system, only the single player campaign.  You can play through this in Normal, and upon completion of the game, you can replay it in Hard.  There are also four bonus challenges that can be unlocked in the game, but I’ll go into those later.  Most of the achievements can be accomplished in the first run through on Normal, and any that are missed can be grabbed on Hard, limiting the number of runthroughs for true game completion to two.  I understand that most games, however, have this problem, and have, for the time being, accepted it as a necessary drawback of playing video games.

My second complaint focuses on the camera.  There are times in the game when you are forced to travel in a certain direction while being attacked or being in some otherwise perilous situation, such as a narrow ledge, etc.  During these times, more often than not, the camera forces itself into a forward position, directed towards Wolverine’s face, making it impossible to see where you are going.  I died three times simply because I couldn’t see anything in front of me and wasn’t able to readjust the camera.  Another example of bad camera direction is during one of the boss fights.  As you run from this boss, the camera defaults to the face-Wolverine direction.  It can be moved, but as soon as you let go of the camera control joystick, it reverts quickly to the face-Wolverine direction.

Thirdly, there are some minor bugs in the game that can make it necessary to restart from the previous save or checkpoint.  When fighting near a low fence that constitues a level boundary for Wolverine, some combat bugs can occur.  If Wolverine throws an enemy outside of this boundary, and they remain alive, they become untouchable.  There are many stages where progress is impossible until every single enemy is killed.  A simple solution would have been to make the boundaries not only apply to Wolverine, but to the NPCs as well.

My final complaint is the inconsistency of difficulty.  The game is broken into 5 “Chapters”.  Each chapter introduces progressively more difficult enemies while retaining the enemies of previous chapters.  The problem is that the boss fights, while they get progressively more difficult through the fourth chapter, become ridiculously simple in the final chapter.  A returning boss is easily defeated, while the final game boss provides little challenge other than to make you fall and die, which is easily avoided.  The sudden drop in difficulty was disappointing.  The entire level was easier than previous levels had been as well.

Now to the fun stuff.  I may have given a lot of space to those complaints, but honestly, compared to the rest of this game, they are extremely minor.  In terms of pure fun, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a 10.  The game is visually stunning.  The story unfolds smoothly (even if the story is bullshit (sorry, comic nerd in me is rebelling)) with great cut-scenes and FMVs.  The combat system is amazing, with a simple structure allowing the player to focus more on the damage than on a combination of buttons.  Wolverine’s healing factor is really showcased in this game.  There were times when I had Wolverine down to mostly skeleton and he was still going strong(ish).  Watching the regeneration was a lot of fun, too.

The game includes four bonus stages, three of which I have unlocked.  By finding specific action figure statues of Wolverine in the game, you unlock challenges from the main menu.  These challenges open up new costumes for Wolverine to wear instead of the white shirt and jeans.  I managed to obtain the “Classic” Wolverine costume, which is his blue and yellow, the “Legendary” Wolverine costume, which is his brown and yellow (as soon as I unlocked this, I spent the rest of the game in this costume), and the “X-Force” Wolverine costume, which is mostly black.  Great bonus content.

There isn’t a lot more to say that I haven’t said in my demo review and my partial review already.

Oh shit!  Wolverine just jumped towards a helicopter?  Spoiler: Wolverine kicks its ass.

Holy crap!  Wolverine is fighting a full size Sentinel!  Spoiler:  WOLVERINE KICKS ITS ASS.

This game is fantastic.  Even though the game is far too short for my liking, the ridiculous amounts of AWESOME that the developers stuffed into this game makes it easily worth the $59.99+tax price tag.

-Because I said so

On Wednesday evening, once Lindsey had finished her runthrough of Overlord II on our Xbox 360 (she should have a review up today), we headed to Blockbuster to trade it in for X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  I played the demo not so long ago, and fell in love with the graphics, the gameplay, and the way Wolverine’s abilities were depicted.  I started the game and was not disappointed.

Since I have a job that takes up most of my valuable gaming time, I have only been able to play the game in short spurts.  So far, I’m through the first chapter, and a good way through the second chapter.  I have read that the game contains five chapters, so I still have a ways to go.  It’s been a blast so far, though.  I think the thing I’ve been happiest with so far, however, is that I’ve managed to unlock two of Wolverine’s classic suits, the brown/yellow and the blue/yellow, for play.  I was giddy when I first started playing as the Wolverine I remember from the comics and tv show I remember as a child.

That made my week.

A full review will be coming once I actually finish the game!

-Because I said so

Over the weekend, we downloaded the Wolverine: Origins demo on our Xbox 360.  I am generally hesitant of movie adaptations, but Lindsey had seen some gameplay footage, and I had read a great deal about the game, so we felt it would be a fun, free demo.  I gave it a shot on Sunday night, and was immediately impressed by the graphics.  The introductory FMV does a good job of introducing the character for people who might not have seen the movie (such as myself), as well as setting up the demo mission.  Your first control of Wolverine in the demo comes while falling out of an exploding helicopter, many hundreds of feet above the ground.  It is limited movement control, enough to dodge oncoming bullets and missiles.  Near the end of the fall, the game takes over and seamlessly transitions to another FMV, which sees Wolverine land, claws first, into a soldier’s head, followed by dismemberment of his comrades.  Control is returned, again, seamlessly, and you set out to rid the area of enemies.

The controls are unbelievable.  The movement and attacks are incredibly fluid.  It gives you a feel of how Wolverine would move in real life.  The controls are very intuitive, seeming to know what I want to do before I actually do it, resulting in very smooth and clean gameplay.  What I was most surprised by was the level of violence and gore in the game.  I can’t remember playing a game that was so realistically and visually violent without the use of zombies.  It was intense and excessive, in a very good way.

Based on the quality of the demo experience, I am very eager to get my hands on a full copy of this game.  Once I do, I’ll put up a better review.

-Because I said so