To commemorate, the culmination of their long-running and successful X-Men movies, 20th Century Fox declared May 13th as “X-Men Day”, a day to celebrate all things Mutant and X-Men and celebrate Marvel’s iconic collection of superpowered beings who fight to protect a world that hates and fears them.
Released: 14 December 2010 Originally Released: 31 January 1992 Developer: Backbone Entertainment Original Developer: Konami Also Available For: Arcade, Mobile, and Xbox 360
A Brief Background: After Stan Lee and long-time collaborator Jack Kirby introduced the X-Men in 1963, Mutants have featured prominently not only in Marvel Comics but also in videogames. The first X-Men videogame was essentially a vertical shooter on the Nintendo Entertainment System, but the characters saw their greatest early success in arcade ventures and team-based brawlers. Indeed, in 1992, the arcade scene was still a popular staple of the industry and beat-‘em-ups were at the forefront of that; the biggest names in this genre were Capcom and Konami, who pumped out licensed and first-party titles and defined a generation. X-Men was one of Konami’s most celebrated efforts; based on the vastly different pilot episode of the incredibly popularX-Men animated series (1992 to 1997), X-Men’s widespreadacclaim was matched only by its scarcity. The title never made it to home consoles and it would take about twenty years for it to finally be ported from the arcades. This digital-only version was praised for its nostalgia, though criticised for being far too easy, and was sadly delisted from digital store fronts in 2013 due to licensing issues and hasn’t been seen since.
The Plot: Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto leads an all-out war against humanity with an army of Sentinels and his human-hating loyalists, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, even kidnapping his old friend and rival, Professor Charles Xavier/Professor X, and the X-Man Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat. It’s up to the X-Men to use their unique Mutant powers to topple Magneto’s forces, rescue their allies, and put an end to his mad schemes!
The Review: X-Men is one of the quintessential arcade beat-‘em-ups from the heyday of the era, allowing up to six players to battle it out across eight stages beating the crap out of an unending series of robotic or animalistic enemies and vying to be top of the leaderboards. The controls are as simple as you could want from a game like this: you use Circle or Square to attack, landing a series of combos with each button press and attacks that are unique to each character, jump with X, and perform a jumping attack by pressing Circle or Square in mid-air. When enemies are on the ground, you can press Circle or Square to pound on them or press Square when close to most enemies to throw them across the screen or into other enemies for good crowd control. Unfortunately, there’s no dash attack here and few other attack options available beyond pressing Triangle to unleash your character’s Mutant power, which will drain a bit of your health or cost you a “Mutant Orb”. These attacks are unique to each character and will wipe out all enemies on screen, but have some limitations; James “Logan” Howlett/Wolverine and Scott Summers/Cyclops’s Mutant powers are great for clearing what’s right in front of you but you’ll want to pick Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler of Piotr “Peter” Rasputin/Colossus if you want to target enemies all around you. Unlike other beat-‘em-ups, there are no weapons to get, no crates or barrels to smash, and no interactive objects to aid you (there are no explosive barrels here, for example); hell, there aren’t even any health pickups to find. Supposedly, the Japanese version of the game does have them, and other pick-ups that are dropped by defeated enemies, and I didn’t see one when I did a quick check after my first playthrough.
Plough through endless robotic enemies using the X-Men’s uncanny Mutant powers!
Indeed, despite its much-deserved reputation as one of the greatest arcade games of all time, there’s not much that makes X-Men particularly innovative. Its appeal comes down to the enjoyable mindlessness of its action, the colourful visuals, and the atrociously entertaining voice acting. The goal here is little more than to travel from the left side of the screen to the right, ploughing through disposable enemies until you reach the boss of each level. You’ll need to watch out for hidden turrets, cliff drops and lava pits, and a bunch of palette-swapped Sentinels who throw rocks, detach their hands, or fire projectiles. They’re joined by bulkier robots armed with cannons who fire missiles, low fireballs, or high laser shots, lizard men who attack with their tails or breathe fire, and even anthropomorphic mud and plant monsters and robotic arms, though these enemies are constantly recycled and become quite samey quite quickly, even when they’re riding in on trucks or these weird gun-toting cyborgs on treadmills. The environments are a bit hit and miss, too; the opening city is suitably wrecked, there’s a thunderstorm raging in the background of the cave stage, you’ll see the Giant Sentinel, X-Jet, and the captured Professor X and Kitty in other stages, but few levels were as visually interesting as the wild jungles of Island M and lava-filled dangers found in “The Trap”. You’ll be transported up and down lifts, as is expected in a beat-‘em-up, but won’t really be battling a host of enemies in these sections; there is one part where you’re confronted by a missile-spewing wall, but you don’t actually have to destroy it, and the only character with anything close to an idle animation is Wolverine, who sheathes and unsheathes his claws when left standing (but don’t linger too long or the game will punish you with an explosive death!)
Magneto’s monstrous Mutant minions are itching to welcome you to die!
Yet, the character and enemy sprites are big, colourful, and evoke both the comic books and the pilot of the animated series. The story, paper-thin as it is, is related through large, partially animated cartoon-esque sprite art and in-game graphics, with Raven Darkhölme/Mystique’s deceptive tricks and the Brotherhood’s explosive, boastful entrances being as notable a highlight as Professor X’s many words of wisdom. Of course, one reason X-Men is so fondly remembered is the awful dialogue, lovingly recreated here so as not to rob us of such meme-worthy statement as “X-Men! Welcome to die!”, “Magneto is in another place”, and “You’re dead, X-Chicken!” In terms of bosses, X-Men doesn’t offer much in the way of challenge or strategy and you can generally get by with a simple technique of jumping in for an attack, landing a quick combo, and jumping out of harm’s way, maybe landing a special attack if you have a spare orb or enough health. This is established from the first encounter with St. John Allerdyce/Pyro and is largely true of all bosses: they’ll burst into the scene, taunt you (leaving themselves vulnerable to an early attack), and use their various powers to whittle down your health. While Pyro is quite nimble and spams screeching flame projectiles and roasts you with a flame burst, Fred Dukes/The Blob is much slower, plodding about and landing big punches or swings with his spiked mace, causing the screen to shake when you knock him down for a few seconds, and tanking your hits. A version of the Wendigo is also fought, with it pouncing at you and performing a head grab/throw combo shared by subsequent bosses, such as Nimrod, another large, clunky, slow boss who’d rather waste time taunting you than attacking in an interesting way. Cain Marko/The Juggernaut is similarly large and cumbersome but makes up for it with a screen-crossing charge and a huge cannon that fires a large blast across the screen. There are also a couple of mini bosses to contend with, such as the mental bolt-throwing Emma Frost/White Queen, a battle against three Egyptian statues, several Pyro clones, and additional encounters with all previous bosses when battling through Asteroid M. You’ll fight Magneto twice; the first time, it’s Mystique in disguise and he/she’s limited to punches and kicks but defeating her sees you battle the true Magneto. This is the toughest fight yet thanks to his impenetrable shield, but his attacks are still limited to slightly faster and very powerful punches and kicks. He also likes to mock you, though, so you can get in a good combo in those moments, and you’ll be immediately trust into another playthrough after the ending and credits roll when playing the American version of the game.
Colourful visuals and fun bosses were offset by some repetitive backgrounds and enemies.
Yes, this version of X-Men allowed you to pick between the American and Japanese versions; the main difference between the two was that you get a free, non-health-sapping Mutant Orb after every boss in the American version, but you start each new life with one in the Japanese version, and there’s apparently more to pick up from defeated enemies in that version, too. X-Men also allowed for local and, at one time, online multiplayer, allowing up to six players to fight together like in the arcade days of old. You can head into the “Options” menu and turn smoothing on or off, set whether you want a wallpaper to fill in the gaps around the action, show or hide the in-game timer used for speed runs and such, change the screen size, and change where the player’s health and lives and score are displayed. Every time you clear a stage, it’s unlocked to select for next time, allowing you to pick up where you left off or freely jump to any level. While you strangely can’t change characters when you die (or, at least, I wasn’t able to; there was no way when the continue countdown appeared and the option was greyed out on the pause menu), you do get unlimited credits and you can test your skills on three difficulty stings: Normal, Hard, and Hardcore, with even more enemies swarming the screen on the harder settings. X-Men had twelve Trophies for players to earn, with Trophies popping when you used a Mutant power five times, earned at last 250 points in one game, completed it on Expert difficulty, and defeated Pyro without using your Mutant powers. Tougher challenges included beating Magneto with every playable character, finishing the game in 25 minutes or less, and being fooled by Mystique in a six-player game (which I achieved by mapping all six characters to one controller). Otherwise, that’s it; there are no skins, no new characters to unlock, and no additional game modes here; just the classic arcade machine in all its punchy, ridiculous, and colourful glory.
The Summary: It’s such a shame that X-Men got delisted and hasn’t been made widely available for download since 2013; almost as much of a shame that it never came to home consoles back in the day and we were stuck with all those mediocre X-Men platformers. It’s a really fun game that ends just as things are about to become too repetitive and mindless, with a surprising amount of variety to each character despite the lack of pickups and power-ups. Each character plays a little differently (Nightcrawler is fast and has lots of elaborate attack animations while Colossus is much slower and bulkier, for example) and has some fairly good special attacks, though the lack of team-based moves and temporary power-ups is a bit of a shame. Similarly, the environments are quite bland and uninspired, especially compared to other beat-‘em-ups and even the colourful sprites on offer here. Considering the vast library of X-Men characters and enemies, there’s very little enemy variety (potentially because it’s more appropriate to have players smash up robots than people) and, while the bosses make up for this, there’s not much strategy to defeating them. I liked that there was a lot of voice samples used here, and in the engaging tunes, and the quality of the cutscenes was very much like a cartoon, which was very fitting considering the source material. Although X-Men doesn’t offer anything new to the genre and is, in many ways, inferior to other titles that don’t have the luxury of such a big licensing name being attached to them, it’s a short burst of entertaining fun that’s best enjoyed with a couple of friends. I’m really hoping Konami work out some kind of deal to make this accessible to new players sometime soon so I can revisit it again, maybe as a collection of titles or something, and add in some additional materials like concept art, the option for HD graphics, and maybe a couple of extra characters and game modes. If you missed out on playing this version of the game, which is nevertheless the definitive version, there’s always the Arcade1Up cabinet or…you know…emulation, the latter of which I’d highly recommend as this is a great game that should be more easily available to play despite its lack of core features.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
Were you lucky enough to play X-Men when it came to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360? Have you ever played it out in the wild? Which character was your favourite and were you surprised by Magneto’s polite welcome to die? Do you agree that the levels and features were a bit sparse, or do you think there was just enough here to compensate? Would you like to see X-Men more widely accessible for modern gamers? What’s the worst (or best) videogame tie-in you’ve ever played? Which X-Men videogame is your favourite and how are you celebrating X-Men Day today? Whatever you think about X-Men, and arcade games in general, feel free to share your thoughts below or leave a comment on my social media.
In 1995, Marvel Comics created “National Superhero Day” and, in the process, provided comics and superhero fans the world over with a great excuse to celebrate their favourite characters and publications.
Released: 15 September 2009 Developer: Vicarious Visions Also Available For: Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Portable (PSP), Xbox One
The Background: Few videogame publishers are as closely associated with Marvel Comics than Activision, who have been spearheading adaptations of some of Marvel’s most popular characters since 2000. Of course, these weren’t all smash hits but some of their titles are counted as being among the best outings for the likes of Peter Parker/Spider-Man and the X-Men. In 2004, Activision teamed with Raven Software and achieved big success with X-Men Legends, a team-based brawler that mixed role-playing elements and co-op gameplay, and its sequel, so the two expanded to incorporate the larger Marvel universe with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Raven Software, 2006), a sadly delisted title that was met with generally favourable reviews. For the sequel, Activision turned to Vicarious Visions, who developed the game engine for the first game, and tweaked the gameplay to focus on team-based “Fusion” attacks to encourage players to experiment with different character combinations. Rather than tell an original story like the first game, or deliver on the many optional endings for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, the sequel drew inspiration from the controversial “Civil War” story arc (Millar, et al, 2006 to 2007) that saw Marvel’s heroes divided over a governmental registration act, though the game was met with positive reviews. The action-packed gameplay and branching storyline were particularly praised, though some decried the stripped down roleplaying mechanics; the game was also delisted in 2020 and it would take just under ten years for another developer to produce a third entry.
The Plot: After a series of devastating attacks on the United States, the American government passes the Superhero Registration Act (SRA), forcing all super-powered individuals to act under official regulation, to reduce the chaos that results from their battles. The superhero community is left divided; Tony Stark/Iron Man and his followers champion the Act while Steve Rogers/Captain America and his oppose it, but the two warring factions soon find themselves battling a new enemy that threatens global peace.
Gameplay: Like its predecessor, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is a team-based brawler with limited roleplaying mechanics, exploration options, and puzzle elements. Players can (eventually) assemble a team of four from a roster of around twenty-five characters, many of which return from the last game alongside some newcomers, though your options are limited by story-mandated restrictions and the decision you make partway through to side with the Pro-Registration side or the Anti-Registration side. Regardless of which character you pick, your basic combat and control mechanics remain the same: tapping A executes a light attack while B throws a heavy attack; you can hold B to charge up a stronger strike and mix these together to form basic combos, such as a pop-up attack to break an opponent’s guard. X lets you activate doors and consoles, grab anything from crates to cars to toss at enemies, pull shields off foes and even grab enemies to pummel or throw them to their doom. Y lets you jump; press an attack button in mid-air and you’ll crash to the ground with a slam and press Y again for a double jump or to web-sling, fly, or dart along on a glider or ice bridge depending on who you’re playing as. The Left Bumper allows you to block incoming attacks or dodge out of the way by wiggling the left stick at the same time; there are also times when you’ll need to hit LB to deflect incoming projectiles. The Right Bumper allows you to heal yourself or your allies or revive a fallen comrade as long as you have a Heal Token in stock; these are found scattered across each location, usually spawning in during boss encounters or after defeating enemies, and you can hold up to two at a time.
Characters boast new superpowers and can combine abilities in devastating Fusion attacks.
Although up to four players can play Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 simultaneously; you can also play alone with some competent A.I. companions and freely switch to another character using the directional pad when playing solo. You can press in the right stick for a handy arrow to point you to your next objective or bring up the game map from the pause menu. Each character as a life and stamina bar; the former is filled when you collect red Health Orbs or level-up and the latter fills automatically, and each character also comes equipped with their own Super Powers, which you activate by holding the Right Trigger and pressing A, B, X, or Y. Many of these are shared across characters, but with a unique flare to each; Spider-Man can web enemies towards him, for example, while Matt Murdock/Daredevil homes in with his grapple cane, but both can lash at foes with their whip-like weapons. Most characters tend to have a ranged attack (Johnny Storm/The Human Torch’s flaming projectiles, Iron Man’s Repulsor blasts, Ororo Munroe/Storm’s lightning strikes, etc) and a clearing attack (Doctor Bruce Banner/The Hulk’s ground pound, Doctor Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic’s tornado spin, and Remy LeBeau/Gambit’s kinetically-charged card barrage, etc), but some also have abilities that buff either their attacks or their team (Doctor Jean Grey/Phoenix can automatically revive characters or add fire damage to her attacks, Danny Rand/Iron Fist’s “Healing Hand” technique heals him, and Captain America can temporarily reduce the damage he takes, for example). Not only can these be improved by earning experience points (XP) and levelling-up and spending “Ability Points” (AP) in the character menu, but you can now combine powers for powerful “Fusion” abilities. As you dish out damage, you’ll build up the Fusion Meter and you can store up to two Fusion Stars at once and combine powers by holding the Left Trigger and pressing either A, B, X, or Y to team up with one of your allies. This produces various effects depending on the combination but, again, many of them are very similar and only made unique by the way the characters team up. For example, you can perform the iconic “Fastball Special” by combining James “Logan” Howlett/Wolverine, Daredevil, Iron Fist, and Mr. Fantastic with bruisers like the Hulk, Ben Grimm/The Thing, or Mac Gargan/Venom. Venom, Hulk, and the Thing can also do a dual stomping attack and you’ll be able to suck enemies in with tornados from the likes of Storm and Thor Odinson while adding elemental attacks to these twisters with the Human Torch and Phoenix.
Puzzles and objectives are simpler than ever and dialogue trees give the illusion of dramatic discord.
No matter the combination of characters, you’ll be prompted to tap A to increase the radius, target specific enemies, or hit successive foes to score extra points and unlock additional abilities and buffs for your characters. Tapping or holding X is also the most common way you’ll be solving the game’s puzzles; generally, you’re tasked with clearing out all nearby enemies and then activating a console or door with X, but sometimes you’ll need to push or pull amplifiers and giant batteries to power up (or down) generators or pass through barriers, rip off control panels, or destroy projectors. Other objectives include destroying anti-aircraft guns, defeating certain enemies, activating consoles in the correct order, and moving stone columns around to unlock doorways and paths, and some missions also contain optional objectives (such as destroying weapon stockpiles or teleporter pads) that net you additional rewards. Additionally, while you’re often told over your comms that you need to act quickly, only certain objectives actually carry a time limit (you’re given less than six minutes to defeat certain bosses, dispose of bombs, or escape collapsing facilities, for example) and you’re often given options to pick from in dialogue trees that will earn you buffs for being “aggressive”, “diplomatic”, or “defensive”. However, as near as I can tell, this doesn’t really alter the story or your character relationships like picking between Pro- and Anti-Reg, which will restrict the characters available to you and alter both the bosses and mission objectives you’re given (protecting or destroying a Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate (S.H.I.E.L.D.) convoy, for example, or raiding or defending a S.H.I.E.L.D. base). Other missions will see you joined by an additional fifth character (technically not a non-playable character as many, like Captain America and Nick Fury, are playable) who will provide support; however, you can’t select them during gameplay, and you’ll still be met with failure if all four of your team are knocked out.
Graphics and Sound: There’s been a decent graphical upgrade between Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and its sequel, namely in the sense that the game is far less dark than before and environments are a little more varied, though the same issues with things becoming repetitive and visually dull persist despite how many additional destructible elements have been added. The game starts in Latveria and sees you infiltrating both the castle town, with its many statues of dictator Doctor Victor Von Doom, and Dr. Doom’s main castle, a location that featured in the last game and is now far more linear and less confusing. This is true of all of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2’s locations; it’s very rare that’ll you’ll need to explore off the beaten track, mazes and repeating areas are pretty much non-existent, and everything is much more straightforward this time around, which is great in the sense that levels tended to drag on a bit and be frustrating in the first game but disappointing as you don’t have much to do in, say, Wakanda, except follow a straight path taking out enemies and gun placements and simply walking past the waterfalls, jungles, and tribal trappings in the background. Additionally, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is way less fantastical; there are no trips to Atlantis, Asgard, or Hell here and, instead, you have to make do with such inspiring locations as…downtown, the rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen, train tracks, and high-tech facilities. Some, like Phineas Mason/The Tinkerer’s lab, T’Challa/The Black Panther’s throne room, and the Negative Zone prison are actually visually very interesting but, for the most part, this is a far more grounded affair, and the game loses a lot of its madcap appeal as a result since the focus is on the more grounded struggles of the Civil War.
While the characters and cutscenes look good, the game is noticeably less visually interesting than its predecessor.
This disappointment is also felt in the game’s soundtrack, which once again opts for very generic, military-esque tunes and rock-inspired beats that serve only to make the mindless gameplay all the more tedious. The voice acting and cutscenes are a lot better this time around; there’s still an obvious graphical difference between pre-rendered cutscenes and in-game graphics, but there’s more focus on character interactions and debating the merits of the SRA. Characters will continue to offer commentary during gameplay, with Wade W. Wilson/Deadpool regularly breaking the fourth wall and characters alerting you when they’re on low health, plus you sometimes get bonuses and additional dialogue if you have certain characters speak to each other. Character models seem better this time around, though; the animations used to bring their powers to life feel more unique and tailored to each hero, though it is disappointing (though, at the same time, understandable) that the same Fusion animations are recycled for certain team-ups. Once again, you’ll be operating out of various hub worlds, like Stark Tower and the White Star base, where you can chat to other characters and find collectibles, and performing certain deeds during gameplay will net you extra costumes (though, sadly, each character only has one this time around). Unfortunately, though, you won’t be treated to as many bizarre and wacky Easter Eggs or endings as before; you only really get one game-changing choice to make here, meaning there are only two endings to see, which is a shame as I really enjoyed all the different consequences of your actions in the first game and how it led to more replay value, whereas here you’re limited to picking Pro- or Anti-Reg.
Enemies and Bosses: A slew of disposable goons will be set against you throughout Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, from Dr. Doom’s soldiers and robots to S.H.I.E.L.D. forces and the nanite-controlled minions of “The Fold”, a rogue A.I. that springs up in the game’s final act to reunite the warring superheroes. Regardless of who you’re fighting, you’ll come across the same recycled enemy tropes again and again: gun-toting soldiers, grunts with shields, ones who block your attack or inflict elemental statuses on you (such as burning, electrocution, and poisoning), and larger mechs. Helicopters will need to be taken out by tossing their grenades back at them, enemies will fire missiles and rockets at you; some have swords, some need to be stunned with your charged attack, some are shielded, and some toss explosive barrels your way. You’ll also have to watch for flame-spitting turrets, laser guns imbedded in walls, loose wires, and flaming hazards that’ll need a dose of coolant (or Bobby Drake/Iceman’s ice powers) to get past. It all gets very repetitive very quickly; the basic enemies aren’t much of a threat to you with your various powers and abilities but can quickly whittle your health down as they start mixing and matched and increasing in number, with more enemies onscreen than the last game and many of them being called in to boost or interrupt the many mini and main boss battles that you’ll have to contend with throughout the story. Like the last game, a who’s-who of Marvel’s most obscure and memorable villains are encountered throughout the game’s three acts, many of which crop up again, often in tandem with other villains.
The Tinkerer, Lucia von Bardas, and the damn Titanium Man represent a dramatic difficulty spike.
The first supervillain you’ll face is Max Dillon/Electro, who teleports around a church in a burst of electricity, performs an electrical blast attack, and can recharge his powers at the capacitors dotted throughout the area. After that, you’ll come up against Bentley Wittman/The Wizard and Steven Hudak/The Scorcher, with the former capable of erecting a shield and the latter roasting you with flame blasts, but your first real boss battle is against the Tinkerer. The Tinkerer stomps about in a large, spider-like tank mech that fires homing missiles, stamps the ground and sets it aflame, and sweeps that area with a laser blast. He’s also supported by an endless swarm of robotic minions, but you can use these to build up your Fusion Meter to target the Tinkerer’s legs and turn his mech into scrap metal. The Shocker/Herman Schultz’s stunning pulses must then be endured to rescue Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel, then you’ll have your first of many encounters with the scythe-handed Eric Williams/Grim Reaper, one of the most recurring mini bosses who’s actually pretty tough thanks to his fast speed and quick, targeted slashes. Electro, the Scorcher, the Shocker, and the Wizard all reappear during the chaotic battle against cyborg Lucia von Bardas, which takes place on the deck of a ship. You’ll need to avoid her blasts and destroy the four cannons in each corner of the deck, which is easier said than done as Lucia defends three of them with flaming jets and you’ll have to contend with her supervillain bodyguards. Lucia also rains bombs from the sky, protects herself (and her minions) with energy shields, regularly hovers out of reach, and compounds the entire fight with a time limit. In the last part of the game’s first act, which takes part in Washington, D.C., you’ll have to do battle with Deadpool (who teleports about and riddles you with uzi bullets) and hit a bit of a brick wall when you go up against the mysterious Titanium Man. At first this isn’t so hard (he sends you flying, slows you with a pulse, and showers you with a laser spread) but things get much tougher in the second phase, where he turns invisible, is bolstered by minions and floating cannons, sends out loads of annoying vortexes, and there are no checkpoints during this battle, making it all the more frustrating.
While Bishop and Deathstrike can be aggravating, the Yellowjacket boss fight was actually pretty fun.
After this, you’ll be forced to pick a side and this alters the characters you pick and fight against; I went with Anti-Registration (because, frankly, the was the right choice all along) so I’ll primarily talk about those bosses. First up is a scuffle with Natalia Romanova/The Black Widow, who keeps you at bay with her pistols, cartwheel kicks, and grenades, and your first battle with Colonel James Rhodes/War Machine, who’s basically a mirror of Iron Man and attacks with a rocket-powered punch and missiles, though both are pretty easy fights here, especially compared to the one against Lucas Bishop. Your energy attacks will actually heal the grenade-toting Bishop, so try to focus on physical attacks, but you’ll deal the greatest damage against him if you attack and destroy the terminals he plugs himself into. This actually gets pretty tricky as you have to hit three power terminals to cause feedback, then hit four nodes on other terminals to stop him regaining health, and finally hit all six nodes when he draws energy from the middle of the terminals, all while avoiding his rushes and shockwave attacks. In comparison, Melissa Gold/Songbird is a bit of a joke since all you have to worry about are her pink sonic waves, but the difficulty ramps up again when you butt heads with Yuriko Oyama/Lady Deathstrike, who attacks with her Adamantium claws like a whirling dervish. Though the Thing saves your ass, you’ll have to contend with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s soldiers and robots in the second phase; Deathstrike will repair these mechs, so it pays to quickly take them out, but that’s not easy thanks to her speed and aggression. Thankfully, this is followed by a fun and visually interesting fight against Doctor Henry “Hank” Pym/Yellowjacket, who pounds and slaps at you in his gigantic form; you need to attack his massive fists to build up your Fusion Meter and stun him, only then can you unleash a Fusion attack to deal big damage to him, though you’ll have to watch for his double-fist slam and the minions who swarm the rooftops. When in the unstable chemical plant, you’ll have a quick run-ins with Bullseye (who I had no issues with despite his triple-shot projectile), Simon Williams/Wonder Man (who’s also not too hard despite teleporting about the place and sporting powerful melee attacks), and even an unexpected alliance between Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk and Mark Raxton/Molten Man that sees you avoiding the former’s jumping slams and the latter’s flame bursts.
You’ll face different bosses depending on which side you choose, which also impacts the game’s difficulty.
You’ll also contend with a more formidable version of War Machine and have a brief fight with Iron Man (who’s basically the same as War Machine but with fancier laser attacks) before he tags in Mr. Fantastic (who’s actually a bit of a pain thanks to his stretchy limbs bursting up from the floor and his tornado spin). Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic prove quite the double team when you battle them together; even with Captain America on hand to help and with victory coming by defeating Iron Man alone, this can be a tough fight as Mr. Fantastic sometimes glitches and perpetually spins in place and Iron Man flies around the arena sending energy projectiles your way. Finally, you’ll need to help Nick Fury dispose of some bombs while fending off a joint attack from Doctor Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin and Venom; the former flies around dropping grenades or tosses pumpkin bombs in your face while the latter attacks with their tendrils and even webs up the bomb disposal vent and commandeers the Goblin’s glider! On the Pro-Reg side, you’ll have to quell Eli Bradley/Patriot after your betrayal, fend off Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman rather than Black Widow and Hercules instead of Wonder Man, as well as tangle with Nathanial Summers/Cable, who proves highly resistant to damage, constantly teleports about the place, and forces you to rely on your standard attacks and super powers since there are no minions to help build up your Fusion Meter. Ritchie Gilmore/Prodigy, Angelica Jones/Firestar, Tandy Bowen/Dagger, Piotr Rasputin/Colossus, and Jamie Madrox/Multiple Man also crop up, with the latter being quite the obstacle if you don’t have the right teammates, while Tom Foster/Goliath takes Yellowjacket’s place. Instead of fighting War Machine, Mr. Fantastic, and Iron Man, you’ll take on Iron Fist, Luke Cage/Power Man, and Captain America, with this latter fight complicated by plumes of fire and the Cage and Cap being able to pull off Fusion attacks!
After battling numerous foes, you’ll need all your powers to defeat the nanite-infused Nick Fury.
Before you enter the Negative Zone prison, Commander Maria Hill hands over a key card without issue and Robbie Baldwin/Penance is subdued and recruited after a brief fight. Terrance Sorenson/Equinox proved much tougher thanks to the nearby turrets and his health-draining elemental attacks, and you’ll battle the nanite-infected Grim Reaper, Bullseye, and Molten Man to rescue Luke Cage and Firestar. To escape the prison with the nanite samples, you’ll take on the combined might of David Cannon/Whirlwind, Karla Sofen/Moonstone, and Rachel Leighton/Diamondback; though Captain America and Iron Man help out, this can be a frustrating fight as Whirlwind is constantly spinning about and minions are always spawning in but focusing on one mini boss can help mitigate the danger. While in Wakanda, you’ll fight off Alexander Summers/Havok (whose concussive powers are bolstered by nearby vibrational pillars), the combined threat of Hulk-clone Rick Jones/A-Bomb and Vance Astrovik/Justice (who shields his nanite ally), and once again deal with the duo of Green Goblin and Venom, this time in the Black Panther’s throne room and with a wider, more versatile space for them to avoid your attacks (though having a flame-orientated character or buffs will help against Venom). Wonder Man and Spider-Woman guard the entrance to the Fold’s Iceland base, with both proving tougher than before, while She-Hulk, Firestar, Colossus, and Whirlwind await inside guarding amplifiers. You’ll also battle the Tinkerer again here; this time, he’s almost constantly shielded by the Fold’s enhanced elites, who you’ll need to destroy in order to deal damage to the mad inventor, though the sheer influx of enemies can make this a gruelling prospect. Finally, after battling on a rising elevator and reaching the top of the Fold’s amplifier tower, you’ll fight the nanite-infected Nick Fury. Using a coloured holographic projection, Fury emulates the powers of other characters and bosses to constantly keep you on your toes; he strikes with lightning, sends out energy pulses, rapidly moves and teleports all over the place, creates duplicates, absorbs and projects energy, blasts out a stream of light, and causes the ground to erupt in flames. Although a frustrating and long-winded bout, this was actually easier than some other bosses; switch characters to whoever’s closest, unleash your rapidly-filling Fusion Meter, and remember to deflect his projectiles when prompted and you should emerge victorious without having to expend a single revive, which is more than I can say for the damn Titanium Man!
Power-Ups and Bonuses: As mentioned, combat yields XP that levels you and your team up; all characters level-up regardless of whether you use them or not, but levelling-up alone isn’t enough to power-up your team. You need to spend AP boosting their four superpowers and all four will only be unlocked by levelling-up; thankfully, AP is easily earned by beating enemies, rapidly tapping A during Fusion attacks, and smashing crates and other onscreen destructibles. Each character also has “Passive” abilities that can be upgraded in the character menu; many of these are locked to a specific side, so you’ll never have full access to all abilities in a single playthrough, and they provide buffs such as raising your chances of landing a critical hit, allowing more frequent use of your powers, regenerating health, reducing damage, and increasing the stamina you gain. Defeating mini bosses and bosses also rewards you with medals that provide additional “Boosts”; you can manually or automatically equip up to three of these at a time to increase your health, teamwork, resistance to or ability to inflict elemental attacks, and other similar bonuses. It also pays to utilise your comic book knowledge; if you make a team comprised entirely of X-Men or the Fantastic Four, for example, you’ll get an additional boost to aid you. Finally, extra rewards are on offer for performing three “Heroic Deeds” per character; these range from defeating fifty enemies, performing specific Fusion attacks, or using certain superpowers and will unlock a new costume or ability for each character, as well as being a fun aside.
Additional Features: There are fifty Achievements to snag in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, with sixteen being tied to the story mode alone, though you’ll need to do two playthroughs and experience both the Pro- and Anti-Reg missions to earn them all. You’ll also earn Achievements for completing missions in co-op mode, clearing the game on “Legendary” difficulty, performing ten Fusions with a friend, earning high scores from Fusions, unlocking costumes, collecting boosts, and finding the various dossiers and audio logs scattered throughout the game. You’ll unlock additional characters not just through the story mode, but also by collecting Asgardian Ruins, pieces of the M’kraan Crystal, and Gamma Regulators; some characters’ alternate costumes also act as skins, such as General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross/Red Hulk and Eddie Brock/Venom. You’ll also find simulator discs scattered about that once again let you take on special simulator missions from the game’s hub worlds, can put your Marvel knowledge to the test in various trivia games for more XP, and will be given the option of starting a new game, with all your unlocks and stats, but at the cost of your existing save file. There is no option to replay previous missions as far as I can tell so you’ll need to start over if you missed anything. I’d also advise making use of the manual save function as often as possible, especially before you pick a side so you don’t have to start right from the beginning to see the other side of the story. If you were lucky enough to own this game before it got delisted, you can also expand the roster with some downloadable characters, like Cletus Kasady/Carnage and Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto, though this feature is obviously unavailable these days; additionally, other versions of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 include console-specific characters, like Eric Brooks/Blade.
The Summary: I was always hesitant about getting into Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, simply because of my hatred for the diabolical Civil War storyline. Even with that bias to one side, I wasn’t impressed that the sequel stripped back the story and scope of the franchise so much; the first game arguably tried to do a bit too much and touch base with a bunch of different locations and characters in the Marvel universe, but at least it embraced the bonkers spirit of the source material and wasn’t as blinkered as the sequel. I really missed the unpredictability at the first game; here, the only replay value is in picking a different side, especially as all characters are available to you in the finale, so all you’re really left with is the new-fangled Fusion mechanic. Sadly, this isn’t as good as the game makes it out to be; once you’ve seen a handful of them, you’ve basically seen them all and they weren’t as impressive as I had hoped. I also wasn’t a big fan of some of the character choices and the lack of extra skins, though overall I think I preferred the gameplay and combat; it’s still mindless and tedious and gets old really quickly, but at least the different superpowers felt a little more dynamic this time. While I have no complaints about the game’s linearity since it made it faster to play, it is a shame that exploration has been cut way back this time around and that many of the level-up and customisation mechanics have been stripped down. Once again, the game’s biggest issue is cramming so much into it; it’s great for a Marvel fan but it does impact the enjoyment and memorability of the mini bosses since a lot of them are just the same thing over and over with the same tactics used to overcome them. Overall, I feel Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is no better or worse than the first game: I miss the different gameplay mechanics and visual variety of the first game, but the sequel feels a bit more refined and focused; I don’t like how grounded and restricted it is, but the graphics and ability options are a step up. I think the best thing to do (if you can afford it) is have both and play them back to back for a complete experience but if I honestly had to pick which one was better, I’d go with the first one since I’m much more inclined to play it and see what wacky endings I can earn rather than seeing the SRA repealed or lessened by the end of this game.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever played Marvel: Ultimate Alliance2? If so, how do you think it compares to the first game? Which side did you pick and who made it into your team? What did you think to the new Fusion mechanic and the changes to the roster? Were you disappointed that the boss battles were still mostly tedious exercises and that the scope was scaled so far back? Did you ever complete all the Heroic Deeds and simulator missions? How are you celebrating National Superhero Day today? Whatever your thoughts, leave a comment below or on my social media, and be sure to check out my other superhero and comic book content across the site!
In February 1991, readers of The New Mutants were introduced to Wade W. Wilson, AKA the wise-cracking, fourth-wall-breaking Merc With a Mouth himself, Deadpool. Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza’s sword-swinging immortal went on to become one of Marvel’s most popular anti-heroes thanks to his metatextual humour, violent nature, and massively successfullive-actionfilms. It’s perhaps no surprise that Sideshow rechristened April 1st as “Deadpool Day” to give fans of the chimichanga-chomping mercenary an excuse to celebrate all things Deadpool.
Story Title: “A Kiss, A Curse, A Cure” Published: 13 May 1998 (cover-dated July 1998) Writer: Joe Kelly Artist: Steve Harris
The Background: By the 1980s, the X-Men were established as a successful cornerstone of Marvel Comics; they were so popular that then-chief editor Jim Shooter ordered a number of X-Men spin-off books, one of which was Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod’s The New Mutants. These Mutant youngsters were eventually tutored by the time travelling Mutant Nathan Summers/Cable and rechristened as X-Force, and famously went up against Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld’s Deadpool in The New Mutants #98 (ibid, 1991). Heavily inspired by James Howlett/Logan/Wolverine and Peter Parker/Spider-Man (and with numerous similarities to DC Comics’ Slade Wilson/Deathstroke the Terminator), the self-styled “Merc With a Mouth” was initially introduced as an antagonist for the Mutant team. However, Deadpool proved popular and soon made guest appearances in other Marvel Comics before receiving his own four-issue miniseries, a precursor to his ongoing solo title and his own influx of popularity once he began breaking the fourth wall. One of the character’s other defining traits is his relationship with Lady (or Mistress) Death, a cosmic, reaper-like entity whom Wade is desperately in love with. Created by Mike Friedrich and Jim Starlin, Death is most prominently known for also being the object of Thanos’s affections; his motivation for gathering the Infinity Gems and eradicating half the life in the universe was to win her love. Thanos and Deadpool clashed over their love for death more than once; in fact, it was the Mad Titan who cursed Deadpool with immortality when Lady Death chose Wade over him.
The Review: This bumper annual opens with the super chatty Deadpool unexpectedly teleporting right into the path of a closed fist; the punch sends him careening over a cliff edge where, despite this best efforts, he plummets to the ground with a sickening impact. Just moments before, Deadpool had been working to make amends for his past deeds in San Francisco, and now he finds himself literally dead of a broken neck thanks to his mysterious assailant. Deadpool’s spirit initially balks at the idea of the fall killing him, or the sudden attack being real, but is forced to confront the truth when Lady Death greets him with a passionate kiss. Despite Deadpool asking to skip the flashbacks and cosy up to Death, she silently insists on forcing him to relive his traumatic origins and the story regularly shifts between the present and the past, where mercenary for hire Wade Wilson is given a tour of the Weapon X facility, a special weapons development branch of Department K, the superhuman arm of the Canadian government. At this point, Wade is a strapping young man with a head full of blonde hair and the potential to be a valuable asset to his government, but also riddled with terminal cancer. Since Weapon X has already made a veritable Captain Canada out of James Hudson/Vindicator, the general is confident that even trash like Wade can be moulded into a superhero with their program. Wade readily agrees, awestruck by the Vindicator and with little to lose from his prognosis. However, he fails to pass the grade and, with his conditioning worsening, he’s locked up in a hospice where his fellow outcasts have such a low life expectancy that they regularly take bets on how long they will survive from their horrific and invasive experiments.
After being killed, Deadpool relives his traumatic origins and first encounter with Lady Death.
This “deadpool” carries high stakes and is championed by the semi-cybernetic Worm Cunningham; however, when Worm tries to pull that shit on Wade, the heavily scarred and slowly dying mercenary pulls a gun on him and demands to be left alone before turning the gun on himself. Before he can pull the trigger, though, the gun (and Wade’s wrist) is crushed by the sadistic, super strong Francis Fanny/A-Man, who mocks Wade and the knocks him out to deliver him to the resident doctor, Emrys Killebrew, for further experimentation. Dr. Killebrew and the A-Man are amused by Wade’s torture, especially when he begs for death, and both delight in subjecting him to unspeakable torment to make the most of his raw materials. The experience is so traumatic for Wade that his mind breaks and he grows cynical, scorns his misfortunes, and finds his body further ravaged by cancerous tumours. His mind becomes so warped that he perceives Lady Death, who lingers in his cell, intrigued by his unique imagination, and is stunned to find that he can see her. After invasively confirming that he’s not suffering from some kind of aneurysm, Death postulates that Wade is a unique being who longs to die but is being artificially kept alive against his will. Frankly, she finds the entire thing quite the turn on, as does he since Death assumes an alluring form given the amount of times he’s begged for it; thus, she promises they can be together if he finds a way to die but, despite his best efforts, he’s thwarted at every turn. He’s constantly stopped from killing himself and subjected to nightmarish experiments that bring him to the brink of death and cause him agony, yet he remains alive thanks to Dr. Killebrew’s machinations. He’s become so unkillable that his odds in the Deadpool have risen to three thousand to one, and such a risk to himself that he’s confined to a high-tech wheelchair. However, he remains determined to reunite with Death and to get the A-Man out of his way; Worm, however, doesn’t fancy his odds since the A-Man boasts enhanced strength, instincts, speed, and durability.
Wade’s defiance causes the A-Man to kill his friend just for the chance to murder the mouthy mercenary.
Worm lets slip that the A-Man hates his real name and is psychotically triggered by the merest mention of it, which is all Wade needs to rile up the brutal guard. Wade’s taunting works, sending Francis into a violent frenzy and condemning him to endure electroshock therapy. The experience is so intense and extreme that it briefly allows Wade to speak with Death once more. While he’s not truly dead, he crosses over long enough to share a dance with her, and Wade’s mockery of the A-Man not only improves his standing in the Deadpool but also offers a glimmer of hope to the other inmates. There’s a defiant fire there that wasn’t there before, but Wade angrily denies that he’s a hero; he sees the world as cruel and unfair and hope as a waste of energy, much to Worm’s disappointment. Even Death wonders if he was a little hard on the semi-cyborg but Wade insists that the only thing he cares about is being with her; others can play the role of hero, after all. Still, Wade’s attitude and the rising insubordination sees the A-Man voice his grievances to Dr. Killebrew; despite the A-Man protesting that he’s less effective if the patients don’t fear him, Dr. Killebrew is unwilling to simply dispose of Wade since his body contains information vital to his research. To get around this, and teach Wade some respect, the A-Man threatens to subject Worm to violent torture unless Wade falls in line. While Wade is torn between saving his friend and standing up to the A-Man, he ultimately chooses the latter, berating the A-Man with a tirade of insults after Worm begs him to stay defiant. This results in Worm being viciously lobotomised, giving Wade no choice to end his suffering and consequently forcing Dr. Killebrew to order Wade’s execution for killing one of his test subjects.
Wade’s desire for revenge sees him live on as Deadpool and drives him to confront his tormentor.
As the A-Man gleefully takes the controls of Dr. Killebrew’s elaborate murder machine, Wade vows to make them pay for what they’ve done to him, the other patients, and to Worm even as the A-Man rips his heart from his chest. Death comes to him, eager to consummate their love and begging him to let go and be with him; however, while he wishes to finally be with her, his stubborn nature and desperate need for vengeance kick-start his Mutant healing factor and force his body to repair the damage. The experience further damages his psyche but also shuts Death off from him as he drives himself forward to get revenge on his tormentors. Wade relieves some guards of their weapons and goes on a killing spree, much to the A-Man’s surprise and anger. The A-Man crushes Wade’s spine (his entire abdomen, in fact) in a rage and is left stunned when Wade painfully and sickeningly heals from the damage right before his eyes. Wade then christens himself “Deadpool” and unloads two assault rifles into his abuser but, even as he lies dying on the floor amidst the chaos of a full-blown riot, the A-Man can’t help but mock Deadpool’s heavily scarred visage, which somehow remains despite his advanced healing factor. With the A-Man dead, Deadpool calls to Death to take him but she doesn’t answer, leaving him distraught and heartbroken, which in the present he assumes is her way of causing him pain for choosing revenge over her. A silent point from Death reveals that Deadpool’s killer was none other than the A-Man, now calling himself “Ajax”, resurrected and sent to hunt down all the escapees from the hospice, The ghosts of his victims implore Deadpool to finish the job so they can move on to the afterlife and, with one last regretful kiss to Death, Deadpool spontaneously returns to life and heads out to make Ajax pay once and for all.
The Summary: This was quite the surreal story. I believe this was the first real extended dive into Deadpool’s origins, and I recognise a lot of the elements from his first live-action movie, so that was kind of cool. While we don’t learn much about Wade’s life before Weapon X, and nothing about his time with the program since he dropped out of “hero school”, he has a reputation as being a mercenary and has a bit of sympathy to him because of his terminal disease. The main thrust of the story is to showcase just how horrific and traumatic Wade’s time at the hospice was. Wade’s unique speech patterns and manic thought boxes can be traced back to his time there, where the experiments and abuse fractured his mind and drove him to the point where he exists in this kind of limbo between life and death. That alone is alluring to Lady Death, but Wade’s crazed perspective on life also draws her attention, as does her desire to tease him with her affections. Naturally, since he longs for death, Wade finds her impossibly alluring and is desperate to be with her but he’s forever denied that thanks to a throwaway line from Dr. Killebrew about transplanting a healing factor into his ravaged body. When he finally is on the brink of death, Wade’s normally cold-hearted resolve has been replaced by a burning desire for revenge, spurning Death and close that door to him seemingly forever.
The story goes to great pains to examine the tragedy and torture that made Deadpool the man he is.
I do find this concept a little convoluted, similar to the idea that Wolverine has to literally fight off death every time he suffers a mortal injury. I think it clouds things a little and it’s simpler to just say he has a super-superhuman healing factor, but it only muddies the water if you think about it too much. While the concept of Death as a cosmic entity is proven to be real in Marvel Comics, it’s just as likely that Wade’s fracted mind is imagining her as this alluring skeleton woman and that he’s too stubborn, too powerful, and too stupid to die, despite wanting to deep down. Still, the story does a great job of humanising Deadpool and peeling back the layers behind his demented bravado; his experiences left him hating the world, cursing fate and the Gods alike, and wanting nothing more than to die, but the kindness of others and the brutality of his captors shifted him towards a different path. Dr. Killebrew and the A-Man are understandably one-dimensional characters; one’s a cackling mad scientist with no regard for his patients’ welfare and the other’s a superhuman sadist who delights in throwing his weight around and the suffering of others. I liked how Wade riled the A-Man up with insults and repeatedly calling him Francis, and that Wade became this revolutionary figure amongst the populace as a result, so the conflict was more about physical embodiments of oppression and freedom rather than an actual fist fight, which is fitting considering this extends to the physical and metaphysical aspect of Death. Ultimately, this was a decent and surprisingly tragic story designed to explain how awful Deadpool’s life has been and why he is the way he is. In that respect it worked well, and the art was serviceable enough most of the time, so it’s a good choice for anyone who’s just getting into Deadpool and wants to learn a bit more about his background and character.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever read Deadpool and Death Annual ’98? If so, what did you think about Deadpool’s trip down memory lane? Do you like the idea of him falling for Lady Death or do you find that aspect a bit convoluted? What did you think to the agonising torture Deadpool had to suffer and the characterisation of Dr. Killeshaw and the A-Man? Do you enjoy Deadpool’s manic sense of humour or do you find it a bit grating? What are some of your favourite Deadpool stories and moments and how are you celebrating Deadpool Day today? Whatever your thoughts on Deadpool, feel free to share them below or drop a comment on my social media.
When readers were first introduced to the character of James Howlett, better known by the names “Logan” and “Wolverine”, it was in the pages of The Incredible Hulk. From his first full debut in issue 181 all the way back in November 1974 to him officially joining the X-Men in 1975, the character has become one of Marvel Comics’ most recognisable and enduring superheroes, regularly featuring in solo and team comics, cartoons, movies, videogames, and countless other merchandise.
Writer: Chris Claremont – Artist: Frank Miller
Story Title: “I’m Wolverine!” Published: 1 June 1982 (cover-dated September 1982)
Story Title: “Debts and Obligations” Published: 29 June 1982 (cover-dated October 1982)
Story Title: “Loss” Published: 3 August 1982 (cover-dated November 1982)
Story Title: “Honor” Published: 31 August 1982 (cover-dated December 1982)
The Background: In 1974, Roy Thomas, editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics, tasked writer Len Wein with creating the first Canadian superhero; a short, feisty adventurer named “Wolverine” who would be as scrappy and fearsome as his namesake. Though the legendary John Romita Sr came up with the original concept art for Wolverine and his now-iconic retractable claws, it was artist Herb Trimbe who put the finishing touches to the character’s design. In what would become a staple for Wolverine for decades, Wolverine’s past and true identity was initially quite the mystery; yet, despite claims that Wolverine was originally conceived to be a mutated wolverine cub, Wein insisted this was false and that Wolverine was always intended to be a Mutant. These days, Wolverine is established as one of Marvel’s most popular characters thanks not only to him joining the X-Men a year after his debut but also the success of his first solo miniseries courtesy of X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and legendary comic book artist Frank Miller. Largely regarded as one of Marvel’s best miniseries, Claremont and Miller’s work helped to define many of Wolverine’s now recognisable character traits, from his time in Japan, his knack for brutality, and his iconic no-nonsense attitude. The popularity of the miniseries led to an ongoing solo book from 1988 but it’s not hyperbole to say that Wolverine probably wouldn’t be as big of a star as he is today without this influential four-issue series, which would come to inform the character’s later adaptations into films, cartoons, and videogames.
The Review: Wolverine’s first solo outing begins within him freeclimbing his way through the Rocky Mountains, back in his home soil in Canada, on “business”; as he explains in his blunt and characteristically glib dialogue boxes, he’s “the best there is at what [he] does. But what [he] does isn’t very nice”, which may very well be the first instance of him saying this iconic catchphrase. He’s there to track, hunt, and kill a ferocious grizzly bear that’s been slaughtering locals as they venture onto the mountain; thanks to his heightened senses, Adamantium laced skeleton, and innate ability to tackle even a berserker grizzly bear head-on, Wolverine easily challenges, dismembers, and kills the beast with a minimum of fuss but he’s not happy about it. Not only does he recognise that the bear is simply being true to his nature, but he also spots an illegal poison-barbed arrow in the dead beast’s back, evidence of a hunter landing a hit on the bear but not sticking around to finish it off and thus driving it into a frenzy. With seven men, three women, and five kids dead as a result, Wolverine tracks the foolish hunter to a bar some fifty-seven miles away and confronts him; riled up, the hunter picks a fight, much to Wolverine’s pleasure. Though we don’t see what Wolverine does to the man, he assures the reader that he let the hunter live…and that the bear put up a better fight. He makes sure the hunter pays for his actions in a court of law and prepares to head home to the X-Men when he spots a pile of letters on his doorstep; they’ve all been returned, unopened, from an old flame of his: Mariko Yashida, the daughter of one of the oldest and most respected families in Japan. Although the Japanese embassy tells him that Mariko was called back to Japan, her home line hangs up on him, so Wolverine takes the next flight to Japan and meets up with an old contact of his, Asano Kimura, who informs him that Mariko’s long-lost father recently returned and reclaimed his position at the head of the Yashida clan and family, thus forcing Mariko to marry.
Wolverine dishonours himself trying to fight for his love’s freedom.
Despite the fact that Mariko was obligated by ages-old traditions of duty and honour, and Asano warning Wolverine off, Logan lets his anger and emotions overrule his common sense, dons his brown and yellow outfit, and forces his way into the Yashida ancestral stronghold and confront Mariko even though Asano may be legally obligated to hunt him down as a result. After easily bypassing Yashida’s near-feral guard dogs, Wolverine scales the main tower and conveniently comes across Mariko standing beneath a gigantic, ostentatious Buddha statue; Mariko tries to brush him off, citing the same explanations of duty and honour, and even accuses him of shaming her, but he’s enraged to find her face bruised. However, Mariko calms his rage and even admits that she loves him, but is bound to the will of her father, who promised her hand to another to pay a debt. When Mariko’s abusive husband, Noburu-Hideki, interrupts, Wolverine is ready to gut him on the spot, but allows Mariko to talk him out of it, only to be briefly rendered unconscious by a barrage of poisoned shuriken. Thanks to his superhuman healing factor, Wolverine recovers and is confronted by Mariko’s father, Lord Shingen, who brands him a gaijin (a derogatory term for an outsider) and chastises his arrogance. Deeming the X-Man unworthy, Lord Shingen challenges Logan to fight for Mariko’s affection with wooden swords (bokken, here referred to as “Bokan”). Although Lord Shingen is an old man, Logan is still feeling the effects of his poisoning and is out of practice with a sword; Lord Shingen also specifically targets nerve clusters and pressure points to cause maximum pain and rile him up to the point where he abandons his toy weapon and attacks with his claws, dishonouring himself before his beloved. Despite now having a lethal edge, Wolverine never gets the chance to land a mortal or killing blow; Lord Shingen’s skill half-cripples him and leaves him abandoned, beaten and humiliated, on the bustling streets of Tokyo.
Yukio manipulates Wolverine to drive him from Mariko and into her bed.
Naturally, Logan’s immediately set upon by punks and soon drawn into an all-out ambush with the highly skilled ninjas known as the Hand by the mysterious Yukio. The Hand have the superior numbers, and even wound Yukio, but Wolverine’s Mutant abilities and enhanced bones give him the edge and he leaves them all dead. Yukio is astounded by his regenerative abilities, which she would use to destroy the Hand, a supposedly peerless ninja clan commanded by a ruthless and powerful crime lord. Due to their shared killer instinct, things quickly get heated between them, but Wolverine can’t shake the image of Mariko and walks away, much to Yukio’s despair. An interlude sees her storm into Lord Shingen’s office, revealing he hired her to win Wolverine’s trust and lure him into a two-pronged attack that will see both Logan and Lord Shingen’s rival, Katsuyori, dead at Yukio’s hand. Although Wolverine notices Yukio’s changed demeanour, a half-veiled version of the truth is enough to convince him to accompany her in confronting Katsuyori at a theatre performance. Although Logan hesitates when he sees Mariko in the crowd, he leaps into action when the actors try to assassinate the Yashidas. While Wolverine cuts his way through the ninjas, driven berserk by their attack, Yukio takes out Katsuyori with a car bomb and is delighted when Mariko expresses shock and even fear at witnessing Wolverine’s bloodthirsty berserker rage. In the aftermath, Wolverine takes solace in alcohol, Yukio’s affections, and in a random brawl, but rebukes Asano’s pleas to assist in combating the recently united Japanese underworld. After narrowly avoiding being splattered by a bullet train simply so Yukio can get a sadistic thrill, Wolverine passes out and is tormented by dreams of his lost love. While he sleeps, Yukio is accosted by the Hand, who demand she redeem herself by cutting out Logan’s heart, but she opts to fight them off instead; however, when she tries to rouse him, she’s enraged when he speaks Mariko’s name and leaves him to his stupor, cursing her foolishness for believing he could ever love anyone but Mariko.
After a bloody conflict, Logan finds himself victorious and betrothed to his beloved Mariko.
By the time Logan returns to their apartment, he’s dismayed to find Asano dead at Yukio’s hand. Finally, realising Yukio’s deception, he chases her across the rooftops of neon-drenched Tokyo and prepares to eviscerate her, regardless of their kinship, but is suddenly ensnared by roped arrows fired by the Hand. Angered at ignoring his instincts, Wolverine makes short work of the ninjas but Yukio slips away in the chaos. Determined to prove that he’s a man, rather than some mindless beast, Wolverine systematically disrupts Lord Shingen’s operation, angering the crime lord and forcing him into a rematch. After being captured, Yukio is given the chance to kill Lord Shingen in a desperate attempt to win back Wolverine’s affection after killing Asano, but she’s hopelessly outmatched compared by Lord Shingen’s strength, speed, and skill. Ultimately, she partially redeems herself when she frees Mariko from Noburu-Hideki’s abuse; unable to forgive her for Asano’s death, or repay her for saving Mariko, Wolverine simply allows her to leave so he can face Lord Shingen one-on-one. This time, Lord Shingen grabs a Muramasa katana to see if Logan is truly worthy and they engage in blood combat largely bereft of dialogue or sound effects. Although Wolverine gets impaled on Lord Shingen’s sword, this allows him to close the gap between them and end the crime lord’s life by stabbing him through the face and head with his claws (something kept off-panel but clearly implied by the artwork). Mariko is stunned by the sight; duty and honour, the two driving forces behind her entire life and unwanted marriage, dictate that she avenge her father’s death yet, despite being able to stop her and kill her even with his wounds, Wolverine chooses to do nothing. However, Mariko delivers a soliloquy about how her father’s actions brought shame to the Yashida clan; she bequeaths the sword to Wolverine and dubs him worthy not just of the blade but of the clan and her heart. Wolverine’s dialogue reveals that Marko fully planned to kill her father herself, and then commit ritualistic suicide, had Logan not emerged the victor, and the two recuperate in the mountains before sending a most unexpected invitation to their wedding to the X-Men!
The Summary: I’m reasonably familiar with Frank Miller; I’ve read his work on Batman, Daredevil, RoboCop, and some of his original work, like 300 and Sin City and, as a rule, I’m not always his biggest fan. His writing is repetitive and atrocious most of the time, often to the point of self-parody, and his art can be ridiculously simplistic and childish in a lot of his work. Thankfully, that isn’t the case here; not only is he kept away from the script but his art is coherent and impressive, while still making great use of shadows, silhouettes, and panel positioning in a way that makes some of his later work look amateurish in comparison. The result is a very different presentation and atmosphere to the story, one decidedly at odds with the more colourful X-Men and deeply entrenched in the gritty, grounded, and realistic. The only ludicrous things happening in this miniseries are Wolverine’s status as a Mutant and the sheer number of Hand ninjas; no other Mutants appear, save for a brief cameo by the X-Men, and Wolverine opts to wear his darker, more serious costume rather than his bright yellow and blue X-Men outfit. The dialogue and writing are also far more mature than in your regular X-Men comic to take a deeper dive into Wolverine’s brutal nature, and that means getting a sense of his self-loathing, his acceptance of his animalistic side, and that he’s a well-travelled, highly experienced fighter and killer with a chequered past that we’re only just scraping the surface of.
Logan’s tumultuous love life is a primary element of this four-issue solo run.
This is explicit in the depiction of Wolverine’s relationship to Lady Mariko; while we don’t really get much sense of how they first met and their previous relationship here, it’s clear that Logan cares deeply for her (he describes her as the woman he loves on more than one occasion, to the point where he not only flies all the way to Japan to check on her but willingly dishonours himself by interjecting himself into her current situation. For her part, Mariko obviously loves Logan as well but it’s clear she’s torn; tradition, honour, and duty mean she must do as her father commands, even if it means enduring a loveless and abusive relationship, yet she also chastises Wolverine for his tardiness and for trying to force her out of her duties when he should know that she cannot disobey her father without bringing disgrace and shame upon her family. Submissive and unable to defy her father, Mariko even shuns Wolverine and his efforts to help, and is shocked by his berserker rage since, apparently, she’s never seen that side of him, hinting that she may not know him as completely as she claims. Yukio, on the other hand, is like Logan’s mirror opposite; like him, she’s a killer at heart, highly skilled, and delights in showcasing her skills through combat and death-defying situations. In this way, they’re naturally attracted to each other and make for a well-oiled unit yet, despite the passionate spark between them, Wolverine longs for the pure, innocent love he feels towards Mariko. As ever, Wolverine is torn between his animal instincts and his desire to rise above them and Mariko represents a chance for him to lay down his arms, so to speak, and have a normal life away from bloodshed and combat, and he’ll fight and kill whoever he has to just to see her happy, whether it’s with him or not.
The miniseries is a violent deep-dive into Wolverine’s complex character.
This is startlingly brought to life throughout the miniseries; it’s not often that Marvel Comics were so explicitly violent back then but there’s a fair amount of blood, death, and injury throughout Wolverine’s first solo run. Even better, this is still at a time when Wolverine wasn’t some nigh-invincible force; it’s stated repeatedly that his Mutant abilities and Adamantium skeleton mean he can endure a great deal of punishment and heal from virtually any wound, yet he’s still slowed by injury, poison, and is hurt or knocked out from attacks. Lord Shingen bests him with an ease that, these days, would never be heard of and even random mooks draw blood by piercing him with arrows or blasting him in the nose. Wolverine is almost constantly receiving deep cuts and injuries throughout the mini, which keeps things grounded and levels the playing field for his opponents. More often than not, he gives as good as he gets and leaves an incalculable number of bodies in his wake, but it takes a toll and he still needs to recover rather than his body instantly sewing itself back together so he can tank through his fights. Similarly, he’s susceptible to alcohol, stumbling about and even passing out from over drinking, and significantly weakened by Yukio’s poisons, which leave him as vulnerable to Lord Shingen’s precise and measured attacks as his heartache over Mariko. Still, his keen senses and abilities (both superhuman and artificial) make him a fearsome and formidable individual; the driving force here is the question of worthiness. Wolverine knows that he can never truly be worthy of Mariko since he’s both a killer and a gaijin, yet he fights for her regardless; he eschews tradition and respect to ensure her safety and happiness and is even willing to dishonour himself in her eyes even it means she can be free. Ultimately, she chooses to see the best in him and offer a glimpse of the happiness that’s long eluded him, and it’s easy to see why this four-issue run is so well-regarded as so much of Wolverine’s character, his motivation and the dichotomy of his personality, were established here to portray him as a fiercely loyal and driven individual, but one surrounded by death and tragedy and his own feral nature, all of which he must constantly battle to overcome to be the lesser of two evils.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
What are your thoughts on Wolverine’s first solo run? Did you enjoy seeing him battling ninjas in Japan? What did you think to Wolverine’s depiction and characterisation here? Were you surprised at how vulnerable he was and the greater insight into his personality? What did you think to Mariko and Yukio and which of the two do you think is a better fit for Wolverine? Were you a fan of Claremont and Miller’s work with the character? How are you celebrating Wolverine’s debut this month? Whatever you think about this four-issue run, or Wolverine in general, leave a comment below or on my social media.
Published: June 2008 to January 2009 Writer: Brian Michael Bendis Artists: Leinil Francis Yu
The Background: In January 1962, legendary duo Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced Marvel Comics readers to the Skrulls, a race of warmongering shape-shifters who have long hounded Marvel’s heroes, particularly the Fantastic Four, by assuming their identities and powers. Experimented on by the all-mighty Celestials and launching aggressive campaigns against both the Earth and their hated enemies, the Kree, the Skrulls have been at the forefront of numerous Marvel stories over the years in addition to featuring as villains in various videogames and animated ventures before making their live-action debut, in a decidedly different manner, in Captain Marvel(Boden, 2019). Perhaps one of their most prominent storylines was the Secret Invasion arc that ran through these eight issues and multiple tie-ins and spin-offs; the brainchild of writer Brian Michael Bendis, Secret Invasion had not only been hinted at for some time and was heavily advertised as a means of changed up the perception of legacy Marvel characters and even return some to mainstream publication. Reviews of the storyline were mixed, with some noting that it was an anti-climatic Marvel event and others praising the marketing and artwork while criticising the religious undertones and spotty dialogue. Still, an adaptation of the story made its way into the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon (2010 to 2012) and it also formed the basis of a six-episode, live-action series of the same name on Disney+.
The Review: This eight-issue event series begins “years ago” after the destruction of the Skrull throneworld, a cataclysmic, prophesied event that leads the few survivors back to their queen, Veranke, who kicks the story’s narrative in motion by seeding Skrull agents throughout our world. It took years for this to be uncovered, and it was revealed in dramatic fashion when it turned out that the resurrected assassin Elektra Natchios was a Skrull in disguise, a revelation that alerted Tony Stark/Iron Man (then the conceited and self-righteous director of the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate (S.H.I.E.L.D.) following the game-changing events of Civil War (Millar, et al, 2006 to 2007)) to the depths of the Skrull’s infiltration. Recognising that even his armour’s sensors can’t be trusted to identity friend from foe, Stark drafts in his allies – Doctor Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic and Doctor Henry “Hank” Pym/Yellowjacket – to perform an autopsy in an attempt to figure out how the Skrull was able to remain completely undetected to technology, magic, and Mutant probing. Conveniently enough, a Skrull ship chooses this exact moment to come crashing into Earth’s atmosphere and make landfall in the Savage Land, taking Iron Man away from the operating room so he can investigate. Concerned that this could be the full-scale invasion they fear, Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman calls in the renegade “New” Avengers (those who refused to sign up to the ludicrous Superhero Registration Act in Civil War), which leads to Luke Cage/Power Man, Peter Parker/Spider-Man, James “Logan” Howlett/Wolverine, Danny Rand/Iron Fist, Clint Barton/Ronin, and Maya Lopez/Echo subduing Black Widow/Natasha Romanova and stealing her Quinjet to beat Iron Man and his government-sanction Mighty Avengers – Iron Man, Spider-Woman, Black Widow, Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel, Janet van Dyne/The Wasp, Ares, Simon Williams/Wonder Man, and Robert “Bob” Reynolds/The Sentry – to the crash site. Both sets of Avengers are aware of the potential Skrull threat, which drives an even greater wedge between them as not only are the Secret Avengers being actively hunted by their former comrades, but they can’t even trust each other to be who they say they are.
While the Skrulls cripple Earth’s defenses, the fractured Avengers battle their classic counterparts.
After being brought down by one of the Savage Land’s rampaging dinosaurs, the New Avengers prepare to open up the crashed ship, but they’re intercepted by the Mighty Avengers, with Iron Man immediately trying to arrest them and Luke Cage obviously telling him and his jumped-up thugs to go kick rocks. Iron Man’s attempt to keep the rogue superheroes from overstepping the mark are scuppered when Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan and his trusted butler, Edwin Jarvis, unexpectedly sabotage not only the orbiting the Sentient World Observation and Response Department’s (S.W.O.R.D.) satellite base but also Stark’s armour and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Helicarriers and bases, effectively disabling the armoured Avenger and crippling the superhero community’s resources and communications. Additionally, maximum security prisons the Raft and the Cube are suddenly hit by mass breakouts and Mar-Vell/Captain Marvel and Susan Storm/Invisible Woman disable the villainous Thunderbolts and the rest of the Fantastic Four, with each of these supposed heroes flashing ominous eyes and assuring their victims that “He loves [them]”. Meanwhile, a Skrull armada bares down on Earth and Mr. Fantastic finds himself reduced to an elasticated mess right as he figures out the key behind the Skrull’s newfound undetectability, the victim of a shot from Pym, who’s revealed to also be the Skrull Citri Noll! Momentarily setting aside their differences to get Tony Stark to aid, the two Avengers groups are startled when a slew of classic-styled, currently deceased or long-changed superheroes emerge from the Skrull ship; Captain Steve Rogers/Captain America, the Vision, Thor Odinson, Doctor Jean Grey/Phoenix, Doctor Henry “Hank” McCoy/The Beast, Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, Jessica Jones/Jewel, Emma Frost/The White Queen, and Barbara “Bobbi” Morse/Mockingbird appear alongside classic versions of Spider-Man, Power Man, Wonder Man, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Wolverine, and the Invisible Woman. Naturally, a tense showdown ensues in which both groups assume the other are Skrulls in disguise; guys like Wolverine, Spider-Man, Emma Frost, and the Vision struggle to get any kind of reading on their counterparts beyond sensing their distrust while Ronin is stunned to see his former flame, Mockingbird, alive and well but, despite Ares trying to convince his allies that it’s a trap, tensions boil over and an all-out brawl kicks off!
As more characters enter the fray, internal distrust is as rife as the escalating war with the Skrulls.
With Stark in agony from the alien virus that’s crippled his armour, Ms. Marvel flies him to safety as the others duke it out; the two Spider-Men trade quips and punches, the Vision uses the Sentry’s fear of his destructive and malevolent alter ego, the Void, to disable his God-like power, and Ronin steals his counterpart’s weapons to subdue their attackers but the arrival of a raging Tyrannosaurus rex disrupts the fracas. Trampled to death by the dinosaur, the classic Spider-Man and Hawkeye are revealed to be Skrulls, and Wolverine intuits that the Skrulls are setting them against each other to wipe out any resistance to their invasion plan. However, when he tries to eviscerate Mockingbird, Ronin intervenes and questions her; she’s adamant that she’s not a Skrull and even reveals personal information that only she and Clint would know, which is enough to convince him to trust her. This offers Luke Cage the hope that the Cap and Iron Man aboard the ship are the real deal, which would certainly explain Stark’s recent manic behaviour and allow the recently deceased Cap to still be alive, but Wolverine’s far from convinced. Meanwhile, back in New York City, a portal opens up and a whole slew of Avengers-inspired Super-Skrulls attack; there’s Skrulls combining the powers of various X-Men, a Fantastic Four Super-Skrull, one that’s a mixture of Spider-Man villains, and even an Illuminati hybrid, meaning the Young Avengers – Eli Bradley/Patriot, Dorrek VIII/Hulkling, Billy Kaplan/Wiccan, Tommy Shepherd/Speed, Kate Bishop/Hawkeye, and their mentor, the Vision – are completely overwhelmed despite Hulkling’s efforts to talk down their attackers with his royal status. Thankfully, they receive some back-up in the timely arrival of fledgling superheroes, the Initiative – Joseph Green/Gauntlet, Rachel Leighton/Diamondback, Cassandra “Cassie” Lang/Stature, David Alleyne/Prodigy, Anthony Masters/Taskmaster, Geldoff/Proton, Z’Reg/Crusader, Jimmy Santini/Batwing, Fahnbullah Eddy/Gorilla Girl, Wallace Jackson/Red 9, Delilah Dearborn/Geiger, Melee, Andrea Roarke/Sunstreak, and Alexander Ellis/Annex. Though the Skrull forces prove ruthlessly formidable, and the Vision is lost in the battle, even more help arrives when the Secret Warriors – Colonel Nick Fury, Yo-Yo Rodriguez/Slingshot, Daisy Johnson/Quake, Alexander Aaron/Phobos, J.T. Slade/Hellfire, Jerry Sledge/Stonewall, and Sebastian Druid/Druid – add yet more names and the bodies to the chaotic artwork and conflict.
Heroes and villains set aside their differences to take the fight to the invading Skrull army.
The Skrull threat is doubled thanks to the distrust between the world’s heroes, with even Nick Fury abandoning Ms. Marvel because of her alien DNA. Meanwhile, as a weakened Stark desperately attempts to repair his armour, Spider-Woman reveals herself to be the Skrull Queen, Veranke, and tries to convince him that he’s a Skrull agent so deep undercover that he’s forgotten his true nature. Before her poison (both literal and figurative) can take hold, Black Widow causes her to flee and Stark reveals that the key to victory lies with Mr. Fantastic, who’s currently being tortured aboard a Skull ship. Thankfully, S.W.O.R.D. director Abigail Brand bluffs her way onto the ship and flushes the Skrull into space to rescue him; Reed then fashions a device that exposes the Skrulls’ real forms, arriving just in time to stop another conflict in the Savage Land and revealing not only that the classic Emma Frost, Invisible Woman, Thor, Ms. Marvel, and Jessica Jones are Skrulls but that Mockingbird is as well, enraging Clint. The real Thor transports everyone to New York for a final confrontation, which even the Watcher, Uatu, shows up to observe and also sees Parker Robbins/The Hood’s criminal syndicate and Doctor Norman Osborn’s Thunderbolts pitch in with the nearly-incomprehensible brawl. While Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man try to take out Veranke (still disguised as Spider-Woman) to demoralise the Skrulls, the Wasp targets Citri Noll, who apes Pym’s Giant-Man form, though it’s Stature and the assassin Bullseye who end up taking him out. Iron Man is forced to withdraw so he can sort out his messed-up armour, Fury’s forces save Mr. Fantastic from being torn apart by multiple Skrulls posing as the Invisible Woman, the real Jessica Jones joins the fray, and Kate Bishop ends up gravely injured amidst the chaos. Although Wolverine tries to take out Veranke, the bio-electrical powers she stole from Spider-Woman keep him at bay, meaning it’s an arrow through the face courtesy of the vengeful Ronin that ultimately subdues her.
Although the Skrulls are defeated, the general distrust in Stark allows Osborn to seize power!
With Veranke compromised, Citri Noll activates a device that causes Janet to enlarge uncontrollably and unleash a chemical agent designed to kill humanity and Skrulls alike. With no other choice available, Thor whips up a hurricane with his magical hammer, one so powerful that is destroys the enlarged Janet and dissipates the weird black spots that threaten everyone’s lives. Although Wolverine seeks to make Veranke pay for Janet’s death, it’s Norman Osborn who gets the kill shot, then Iron Man finally gets his shit together and leads an all-out assault on the remaining Skrull ships, with the now disillusioned and leaderless armada being easy pickings. Iron Man also frees everyone the Skrulls impersonated since the shape-shifters conveniently needed the original versions alive in order to make the deception more convincing, meaning Elektra and Mockingbird return to “life”, Reed is finally reunited with his family, and the true versions of the likes of Spider-Woman re-join society. Unfortunately, this also means that Jessica Jones left her and Luke’s baby, Danielle Cage, in the care of the Skrull-Jarvis, a plot thread left unresolved in this story. Although recent tensions are eased in the aftermath and ensuing celebration, there’s an unshakable sense of hesitation given how long the Skrulls had been a part of Earth’s society and superhero community; Thor also condemns Stark’s recent actions and refuses to associate with him. Thanks to having publicly executed Veranke, Osborn is able to manipulate the President of the United States into equally losing faith in Stark, his methods, and his technology; the President thus ousts Stark as director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and names Osborn as the new overseer of any and all superhuman and defensive measures under a new organisation, H.A.M.M.E.R., unaware that this is exactly the opportunity the scheming madman and his Cabal of allies (Emma Frost, Doctor Victor Von Doom/Dr. Doom, The Hood, Prince Namor McKenzie/The Sub-Mariner, and Lady Loki) were waiting for.
The Summary: Now, I am by no means an expert on the Skrulls; I know of them, primarily as an antagonistic, shape-shifting race of aliens who are almost constantly at war with the Kree and getting into scuffles with the Fantastic Four, but they’re generally on the periphery of most Marvel stories I’ve read. Secret Invasion is probably, to date, their most prominent story, at least in my experience, and it definitely adds some nuance to them that I didn’t expect. Normally, I see them as a warmongering race who live to conquer through both subterfuge and force but, here, they’re motivated by a fanatical devotion to their God (the “He” they keep referring to) and their invasion is seen almost as divine intervention. The Skrulls swamp television screens with their pseudo-religious propaganda, hijacking every telecommunications device across the globe and assuming the guise of various political figures, celebrities, and superpowered monarchs like Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto and Dr. Doom, and insist that they’re there to bring glory to our world and that their might cannot be opposed. Given the strength of their invasion and that their Super-Skrulls have mimicked the combined powers of many of Marvel’s heroes, it’s perhaps not surprising that Marvel’s ridiculously fickle citizens embrace their alien overlords, though this scene showcases that the Skrulls aren’t simply defending themselves or there to usher in a new age for mankind as they claim and are hell-bent on conquering the planet.
Having lost everything, the Skrulls throw themselves at Earth with fanatical desperation.
This campaign is spearheaded by their queen, Veranke, a figure of worship for the Skrulls and who has placed herself on the frontline, earning the trust of Tony Stark by posing as Spider-Woman and becoming privy to many of Earth’s defences. Stark even reflects on his role in the invasion and the shame he feels about not recognising the threat sooner in a show of guilt that was somewhat uncharacteristic of him at this time; this is a man who was so blinded by his belief that superhumans needed to register with the government that he actively fought and imprisoned his fellow heroes and abandoned many of them, and his morals, in favour of an uncompromising, borderline fascist mentality that only led to further conflict and resentment Indeed, Veranke revels in the irony of having twisted Earth’s technology and heroes towards her agenda, something she was easily able to do thanks to Stark being so dead-set about forcing or punishing his peers to register their true identities and powers. However, as much as Veranke likes to preach that hers is a Holy mission, she’s actually equally motivated out of revenge, specifically against Mr. Fantastic and the Fantastic Four after they tricked a contingent of Skrulls into believing they were cows decades prior. Since the Skrull home world has been lost and their once-prosperous empire lies in ruins, the Skrulls follow her without question and throw everything they have at Earth; they’re even willing to give their lives in the process, and in a last-ditch effort of mutually assured destruction, only to be defeated and left dejected. Veranke’s death leaves the Skrulls directionless and all their once-formidable might is as nothing; those that survive are left demoralised as they saw this as their last chance at survival and glory. Thus, Veranke’s quest for vengeance and conquest leaves her people devastated and more worse off than ever as a sizable portion of their armada is destroyed and the last thing they had in all the universe, their faith, is also shattered by their defeat.
The Skrulls are so deeply entrenched that the already frayed heroes are strained to breaking point.
I’m generally not a fan of imposter storylines; it’s a tired cliché and one that quickly outstays its welcome, but it actually works quite well in Secret Invasion. Many of the Skrulls seem to be completely unaware of their true nature; the Mockingbird-Skrull believes that she’s the real deal right up until the end and is begging Clint to listen to her even as he attacks her in a rage. This is also true of Captain Marvel, who believed so strongly that he was the deceased former hero that he couldn’t bring himself to kill and was convinced by Norman Osborn, of all people, to turn on his race; he even died begging the Kree warrior Noh-Varr/Marvel Boy to carry on the fight in his stead, so complete was his conditioning. It’s not revealed exactly how the Skrulls have the memories they do but it’s one of the big reasons why so many of them went undetected; however, many of the Skrulls posing as classic Avengers continued to believe they were the real deal after their true nature was revealed rather than immediately attacking the heroes in service of their God, which definitely paints much of this conflict in a morally grey area. The Skrulls pick the perfect time to strike the Earth; its heroes are divided and at war with each other and easy to manipulate, and seeing the return of dead heroes like Captain America, Mockingbird, and Captain Marvel, as well as the original version of Iron Man, only fuelled the flames of conflict between them thanks to Stark’s actions during Civil War leading to many deaths, including Captain America’s. It would’ve been so easy to explain away Stark’s recent actions as being the work of the Skrulls but, interestingly, that doesn’t turn out to be the case and, similarly, Cap’s death isn’t immediately undone with the presence of his classic counterpart. Instead, we’re left with a world where Stark is still shouldering the burden of his actions and where Cap’s mantle has been taken up by his friend, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes; there are no quick-fixes in this story to explain away the events of Civil War and there isn’t really a sense that bridges have been mended by the end of it as distrust is still rife and the status quo remains unchanged.
A decent story with some interesting wrinkles but a bit overstuffed and manic at times.
Ultimately, I quite enjoyed this story; it’s hard to read as an eight-issue standalone as you need some knowledge of prior Marvel events, especially Civil War, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of additional story and conflict in supplementary collections and books, but the narrative works just as well if you only read these eight issues. I enjoyed seeing the Mighty and New Avengers be forced to set aside their differences when faced with their classic counterparts and the reveals of which characters were Skrulls, even if none of the major players were aliens in disguise. The quasi-religious bent to the Skrull invasion was an interesting twist, as was them siphoning and combining the powers of Marvel heroes into an army of Super-Skrulls, and the art was pretty consistent and easy to follow throughout. Unfortunately, the biggest issue I had with Secret Invasion was the sheer number of characters jammed into it; it was hard to keep track of it all at times and it’s obvious that teams like the Young Avengers, Thunderbolts, and Secret Warriors all had bigger parts to play in spin-off stories, but I think they could’ve been downplayed a little here. There’s a Skrull-Galactus with absolutely no context or consequence to the story and even Uatu shows up, which is generally a short-hand to indicate that the events are of cosmic importance but, again, it doesn’t actually factor into the story in a meaningful way. Stark spends most of the arc out of action thanks to the Skrull virus messing up his armour, which is great for leaving him vulnerable and in pain and unable to participate in the wider conflict but then he just shows up in an older armour with a throwaway line for the finale. Similarly, Thor just pops in out of nowhere, formally prominent characters like Wolverine and Spider-Man get lost in the shuffle, and late appearances from Jessica Jones and Norman Osborn are simply there to set up the next big Marvel events and stories. Overall, it was pretty enjoyable and not as much of a mess as some Marvel events, but the action got a little too chaotic at times and there were too many characters wedged into these issues, which I think would’ve been far stronger if they’d focused on, say, eight or ten main characters and then just showcased the others in supplementary materials.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Did you enjoy Secret Invasion? Were you shocked to find out which characters were Skrulls in disguise? Were you hoping that some of the classic Avengers would turn out to be the real heroes? Which of the teams featured was your favourite? Did you think there were too many teams and characters in the story and which of the spin-off books did you enjoy? What did you think to Veranke, the pseudo-religious slant to the Skrulls, and the Skrull invasion? Were you also frustrated by Tony Stark’s characterisation during this time, or did you enjoy seeing Marvel’s heroes in dispute? What are some of your favourite Skrull-centric stories? Whatever your thoughts on Secret Invasion, feel free to share them below or leave your thoughts on my social media.
To commemorate, the culmination of their long-running and successful X-Men movies, 20th Century Fox declared May 13th as “X-Men Day”, a day to celebrate all things Mutant and X-Men and celebrate Marvel’s iconic collection of superpowered beings who fight to protect a world that hates and fears them.
Released: 16 May 2006 Developer: Z-Axis Also Available For: Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Nintendo DS, PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox
The Background: Ever since Stan Lee and long-time collaborator Jack Kirby created the X-Men in 1963, Mutants have featured prominently in Marvel Comics and grew to greater mainstream prominence thanks to the influential animated series from the nineties, the success of which led to 20th Century Fox purchasing the film rights and producing a successful long-running live-action franchise. The X-Men have also have a storied history in pixels and polygons; the Mutant team first came to life on the Nintendo Entertainment System in what was essentially a vertical shooter, but the characters arguably saw the most success in their numerous arcade ventures and team-based brawlers. To coincide with the release of X-Men: The Last Stand (Ratner, 2006), publisher Activision was tasked with creating a tie-in videogame to be released across all available platforms and bridge the gap between X2: X-Men 2 (Singer, 2003) and the third entry. However, just as X-Men: The Last Stand was critically panned, X-Men: The Official Gamefailed to impress with its poor enemy A.I., repetitive gameplay, and for being little more than a shameless cash-in.
The Plot: Still reeling from the death of Doctor Jean Grey, Logan/Wolverine, Bobby Drake/Iceman, and Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler find themselves coming into conflict with the radical terrorist group known as Hydra, who have been constructing gigantic, Mutant-hunting Sentinels, and are forced to confront (and team up with) some of their worst enemies to stop the program before it can be fully completed.
Gameplay: X-Men: The Official Game is a third-person action game with three distinct gameplay styles split across its three playable characters, Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler, who embark on an adventure that takes place soon after the events of X-Men 2 and fills the gap between that film and X-Men: The Last Stand to explain why Nightcrawler is missing from the team in the third movie. While the levels in X-Men: The Official Game are pretty linear, the developers furnished players with a helpful mini map which indicates friendly non-playable characters (NPCs), enemies, and points you in the direction of your next objective/s. There are a few branching paths you can sometimes take, either by smashing through walls and windows as Wolverine or teleporting to higher areas as Nightcrawler, but these generally just lead to a collectible and it is actually pretty easy to get turned around as everything looks very similar. Although each character has a distinct way of playing, there are some similarities between all three: both Wolverine and Nightcrawler can jump with A and dish out attacks and combos with X and Y, Nightcrawler and Iceman can both target foes with the Left Trigger, and all three will automatically heal from minor wounds (though Wolverine and Nightcrawler and able to dramatically speed this up by holding the Left Bumper or pressing the Right Bumper, respectively, whenever it’s safe to do so, though any movement at all will cancel out this healing boost).
Slice through enemies as Wolverine, teleport about as Nightcrawler, and slide around as Iceman.
Wolverine’s gameplay is very much that of a hack-and-slash brawler; however, fans of genre-defining titles like the God of War series (Various, 2005 to present) will be left disappointed as Wolverine is quite a clunky and limited character thanks to the presentation and camera angles offered by this game. With a tap of LB, Wolverine can sheath and unsheathe his claws (which is more of an Easter Egg than anything), which he can use to slash at the multitude of minions who come charging at him in any given level. Using combinations of X, Y, and B (which pushes enemies away), Wolverine can string together some basic combos; he can also block incoming attacks by holding the Left or Right Trigger (and you can flick the analogue stick while blocking to pull off an awkward dodge roll to try and get away from sticky situations), and successfully landing attacks will build up his “Fury Meter” which, when full, powers up your attacks and healing for a short time with a press of the Right Bumper. Nightcrawler has similar capabilities in combat, but his levels are much more focused on platforming with his signature teleport and a bit of semi-stealth. Nightcrawler can also string together punches and kicks for combos, but you’re best served using his relocation attack; pressing B sees him automatically teleport behind the nearest enemy to pummel them with X or smash them with Y, which is great for taking out groups of enemies quickly. RT allows Nightcrawler to teleport to a variety of surfaces, from pipes to bridges and walkways, and is great for quickly traversing areas and getting to consoles or control panels which need rewiring with X. Of the three, Iceman is the most unique as he’s constantly moving forwards on an ice slide and his levels play much more like chasers or dogfight simulators. Holding A lets Iceman boost ahead, while RT brakes and RB allows him to flip around quickly to retarget enemies. X unleashes an ice beam, which is great for freezing up pipes or putting out fires, while B tosses out his Hailstorm attack and Y puts up a temporary frost shield. You’ll need to constantly tap LT and B when faced with multiple targets, but Iceman’s levels are much more geared towards preventing catastrophes or reaching a goal and are often accompanied by an anxiety-inducing time limit.
Whether you’re fighting a gauntlet, repairing consoles, or facing a time limit, things get very tedious.
The game’s story mode is laid out in a linear mission-based structure; at various points, the narrative branches off to follow each of the three characters and, prior to starting a mission, you can pick from three difficulty settings: “Novice”, “Hero”, and “Superhero”. These will dictate how tough the enemies are, with enemies on “Superhero” able to whittle your health to nothing in just a few hits or under sustained gunfire, but there are perks to completing the mission on higher difficulties as you earn more “Mutation Evolutions” on these settings. These power-up each character’s stats, raising such attributes as their overall health, the damage their attacks deal, and their health and energy recovery, and the only way you’ll only be able to max out your abilities is by beating every mission on “Superhero” mode. This, however, is easier said than done; the game is very stingy with its checkpoints, meaning that failure to complete some of the game’s more monotonous tasks requires you to start the mission over right from the beginning. Following glorified training missions for each character, you’ll be thrust into the game’s story mode and, very quickly, will see everything X-Men: The Official Game has to offer. Wolverine will pretty much always be tasked with clearing away all enemies, with wave upon wave teleporting in or rushing in through doors, though he sometimes has to dodge hazards such as flaming vents and cages or destroy something in order to progress. Nightcrawler almost always has to teleport about the claustrophobic environments, activating panels or rewiring stuff, and occasionally luring exploding probes to power nodes or Sentinels to open doors. Iceman is either racing towards something or fending off attacks, often against a time limit; this means you’ll be dousing fires and cooling down nuclear reactors with your ice beam or chasing down an enemy or towards a goal before time runs out. Occasionally, another X-Men appears to help out; Ororo Munroe/Storm accompanies Wolverine and Nightcrawler you can have her instantly kill all enemies with her lightning by pressing in the left stick, while Nightcrawler also has to deactivate shields so that Piotr “Peter” Rasputin/Colossus can destroy some power generators, but Iceman has no such help when desperately trying to stop Giant Sentinels from marching on the downed X-Jet. Sometimes Iceman will have to slide through “nav points” (essentially glorified rings) and avoid laser hazards and mines, sometimes Wolverine’s locked in a room and forced to fight a gauntlet of enemies, and sometimes Nightcrawler has to destroy glowing crystals to keep enemies from spawning, but it’s all very repetitive and your objectives tend to be to do something once and then repeat it three or four times until the mission abruptly ends.
Graphics and Sound: In all honesty, X-Men: The Official Game doesn’t look all that bad; the in-game graphics are pretty decent, with stylistic versions of the film characters well represented for the most part, though the range of animation offered by the three is somewhat lacklustre. Of them all, Nightcrawler looks the best; I love his little coat and how he spins around on poles with a flourish and sometimes gallops on all fours, and it’s a stark contrast to Iceman, who is either relatively static due to his gameplay or ragdolling all over the place when knocked from his slide. Wolverine looks good, but his gameplay is tedious and clunky and severely hampered by the lack of a lunge attack, though he does gain some extra animation frames when in Fury Mode or trying to pounce on larger enemies. The game’s music is pretty decent; it’s mostly all ripped from X-Men: The Last Stand, and many of the film’s cast return to voice their respective characters. In fact, the vocal work may be one of the best things about this game; it’s great hearing Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart not only reprise their roles but do it without the lifelessness and boredom that so often accompanies videogame tie-ins.
While the game’s later locations become more visually interesting, the cutscenes are a cheap let down.
Sadly, the same praise can’t be levelled at the game’s environments and cutscenes. Cutscenes are accomplished using a motion comic aesthetic not unlike those employed at various points in games by NetherRealm Studios; these painted pictures have a very limited range of movement, no lip synching, and the cutscenes come off as cheap and rushed and quite unsightly as a result. The in-game environments are okay, but disappointingly bland; the whole game makes a clear effort to evoke the grey, grounded, semi-sci-fi aesthetic of Singer’s films but there’s generally not really much to see since areas are so linear and empty. You’ll get to fight on the Statue of Liberty in a call-back to the first film and revisit the surprisingly unflooded Alkali Lake facility from the second film and the Weapon X laboratory, all of which are very well realised interpretations of the film locations but are so grey and drab that even cheeky references to Wade W. Wilson/Deadpool can’t save them. Thankfully, once the game gets away from recreating areas from X-Men 2, locations become a bit more visually interesting; the Sentinel factory is great, with a massive Sentinel head looming in the background, as are the colourful levels that take Wolverine to an elaborate Japanese palace and garden grounds, but the game really shines once you get into the Master Mold’s control centre, a gigantic airship full of electrified wires and ominous dread that evokes the Borg Cube. Iceman’s chase through the streets of Hong Kong is similarly a visual spectacle thanks to the neon signs, bridges, and skyscrapers, all of which helps to really elevate the game’s presentation after the first few drab missions and despite the tedious gameplay.
Enemies and Bosses: With such varied and colourful characters as the X-Men and the Brotherhood to work with, it’s no surprise that the developers chose to mainly have you wade through an endless supply of generic and boring Hydra thugs. These guys come packing machine guns, electrified axes and lances, and claws and can mostly be taken out with some quick combos but some will block your attacks. For Wolverine, things get a little more interesting as he gets to battle the Hydra “Wind Unit” (who are basically ninjas with two katana), while Iceman is often blasting at smaller Sentinels or fire dragons conjured by John Allerdyce/Pyro. Nightcrawler will also have to deal with Sentinels but he can only take them out by teleporting to them and luring explosive drones to them before the robots can blast him off with a shockwave. Later, Nightcrawler is placed in a nightmarish illusion by Jason Stryker and forced to battle off teleporting demonic entities, and you’ll also encounter Hydra goons packing bazookas and heavy cannons in some levels. For the most part, the enemy AI is pretty dumb; they’ll easily lose track of you and won’t think to go around certain obstacles, but in wider, more open areas they can be incredibly annoying and persistent, catching you in a crossfire or swarming around you to deplete your health in seconds while you desperately try to escape to safety.
No matter who Wolverine faces, the same hit-and-run tactics will always serve you well.
Each character also has to deal with a number of bosses, with some fought multiple times in different forms. During Wolverine’s first training mission, you’ll battle against Victor Creed/Sabretooth to learn the basics of combat; Sabretooth makes a return as the final boss of the game, too, where he’s fought within the decaying remains of the Master Mold facility and significantly more powerful even against your upgraded stats. Sabretooth charges at you with a shoulder barge, can hit slow but powerful combos, grabs and lunges at you, and even has his own Fury Mode that speeds him up and makes him more aggressive. Still, the best thing to do is to avoid his attacks, hit a quick combo, and then stay out of his reach to build up your Fury Meter before unleashing it (avoiding pressing Y as this lunge isn’t effective against him) to whittle down his health bar. Halfway through the fight, Sabretooth flees to a lower level, where debris is a concern for both you and him, and you’ll also have to worry about his health slowly replenishing if you take too long, but he’s not especially difficult to put down. Yuriko Oyama/Lady Deathstrike makes a return in this game and you’ll battle her a couple of times, too; the first time you fight her, it’s within the eye of a hurricane and you have to be careful of being blasted about by the winds while also pushing her into the hazard, and the second time is within a Japanese temple and forces you to fend off waves of enemies between rounds. Still, Lady Deathstrike may be faster and nimbler than Sabretooth, but the same hit-and-run tactics work well against her and it’s much easier to get her trapped in a corner and just go at her full pelt until she goes down. Wolverine’s toughest foe is easily the Silver Samurai; this hulking armoured bastard can teleport about, has great reach with his broadsword, doesn’t get stunned by your attacks, and can send out both energy blades and electrified shockwaves and forces you to fight his minions between bouts. Once again, simply run or dodge about to avoid the brunt of his attacks and build up your Fury Meter and then just tank him as he’s a bit of a damage sponge and can easily cut you down with just a few swipes of his sword.
Nightcrawler and Iceman generally have to fulfill other objectives while fighting their bosses.
Nightcrawler only gets one boss to fight against, but it’s one of the more frustrating ones in the game; while on the rainswept Brooklyn Bridge, he and Storm must fend off clones of James Madrox/Multiple Man while teleporting about the place and defusing his many bombs against a time limit. Afterwards, Nightcrawler has to battle him alone and more directly; the “prime” Multiple Man will occasionally set an explosive charge and, if enough of them go off, the bridge will be destroyed and you’ll lose the mission but try and disarm them and you’ll be beaten to death in seconds by his ceaseless doubles. Your best bet is to stay on the move, dashing to safety and healing when you can, and hoping that he doesn’t set any of these charges (or quickly interrupt him before he can). The hardest thing about this battle, though, is actually dealing damage to Multiple Man; he seems either impervious to your attacks or only hurt after you take out his clones, which can be hard to do as they swarm around you, making for a boss battle more about luck than anything. Iceman primarily battles against Pyro; first, Pyro tries to burn down and destroy a fission plant, then he tries to overload a nuclear reactor, and then he conjures a gigantic fire serpent to target the toxic waste canisters. If enough of these are destroyed, the mission ends so make sure you’re rapidly switching target locks and throwing out your Hailstorms to take out the fire dragons. The serpent itself is also quite a damage sponge, and can set you ablaze if you get too close, but if you power-up Iceman’s Hailstorm attack that makes things a lot easier. Definitely his hardest challenge is stopping a seemingly endless army of Giant Sentinels from destroying the X-Jet in Hong Kong; these huge armoured hulks can only be destroyed by targeting six yellow power nodes, but the ones on the front are super hard to hit not just because of aiming difficulties but also because of their high-powered lasers. Destroy one, and another drops soon after, and another, and this was the first mission where I actively had to drop the difficulty down to “Novice” to get past it and even then it was a pain in the ass!
Power-Ups and Bonuses: Unfortunately, there are no collectible power-us available here. Wolverine and Nightcrawler can built meters (either by landing attacks or waiting for it to charge, respectively) to speed up their healing but the closest Iceman gets is destroying Sentinels to gain extra time until fifteen are taken out. As mentioned, Storm and Colossus will accompany you for some missions; Storm can unleash her lightning, but you’ll need to wait for her meter to fill up too, and you’ll also need to get back to help Colossus fend off the Hydra goons before they deal too much damage to him.
Additional Features: There are sixteen Achievements up for grabs here, with three insulting 0G Achievements awarded after clearing each character’s training mission, three more being rewarded for completing the story mode’s three vaguely defined acts, and three more earned after fully upgrading each characters Mutations. You’ll no doubt notice a few collectibles in each level of the game; every mission hides five Sentinel Tech files and one Weapon X file, and collecting all of these for each character will award another three Achievements and also unlock a bonus costume for each character and a “Danger Room Challenge” for each. Unfortunately, while these collectibles aren’t too difficult to find even without a guide, the rewards you get are pretty pathetic; the costumes are little more than street clothes variants and just having one each is more than a disappointment, it’s a travesty. The Danger Room Challenges amount to timed obstacle courses and challenges used to test your character’s gameplay and abilities, but you earn nothing for completing them so there’s no point in them even being there. Aside from all that, your only other option is to try and beat every mission on “Superhero” to fully upgrade every character, something you won’t really be motivated to do since the gameplay is so uninspiring that even the promise of cutting down goons dressed in Wolverine’s signature wife-beater won’t be incentive enough to ever play this game again.
The Summary: I tend to go into movie tie-in videogames with pretty low expectations; while I’ve played a fair amount that are pretty good, there’s no denying that they’re generally very rushed, lacking in content, and don’t have a lot going for them. On the plus side, they can sometimes be quite cheap and have some easy-to-snag Achievements, and that’s basically what you’re getting here with X-Men: The Official Game. There’s some decent stuff on offer here; Nightcrawler, especially, is pretty fun to play as and I enjoyed teleporting about the place and pummelling enemies with his attacks, and even Iceman was quite fun in the few missions where you weren’t forced to battle against an arbitrary time limit. Sadly, and most confusingly, it’s Wolverine’s gameplay that really drags this one down; he’s very restricted in his offense and the lack of checkpoints really makes getting through some missions, but especially his tedious gauntlets, a frustrating chore. Awful cutscenes aside, the presentation is pretty good; the game makes a decent attempt at recreating iconic locations from the first two films while infusing a more comic book aesthetic and storyline into the movie timeline, but locations are far too bland and repetitive to really be all that interesting, even in the latter parts of the game. Bosses battles are equally uninspiring; thanks to Wolverine getting the bulk of them, they’re hardly a selling point of the game’s few strengths and, overall, there are far better superhero and action videogames out there for you to put your time into. A serious lack of options, unlockables, and replayability hamper this title; while it’s not too difficult to blast through it in about four to six hours, it’s unlikely you’ll be motivated to try and get everything you miss the first time around and, despite a few entertaining aspects, it remains a cheap cash grab designed solely to leech off the popularity of Fox’s X-Men films rather than actually trying to be an entertaining videogame experience in and of itself.
My Rating:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Could Be Better
Did you enjoy X-Men: The Official Game? Which of the three characters was your favourite? Did you enjoy the game’s effort to bridge the gap between X-Men 2 and X-Men: The Last Stand? Which of the game’s missions and bosses was your favourite and do you feel like Sentinels are a little overdone in Marvel games? Did you ever fully upgrade the characters and find all the collectibles? Were you disappointed by the lack of options and unlockable extras? What’s the worst (or best) videogame tie-in you’ve ever played? Which X-Men videogame is your favourite and how are you celebrating X-Men Day today? Whatever you think about X-Men: The Official Game, and X-Men in general, feel free to share your thoughts below or leave a comment on my social media.
In 1995, Marvel Comics created “National Superhero Day” and, in the process, provided comics and superhero fans the world over with a great excuse to celebrate their favourite characters and publications.
Released: 24 October 2006 Developer: Raven Software Also Available For: Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Wii, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Portable (PSP), Xbox 360, Xbox One
The Background: Perhaps few videogame publishers are as synonymous with Marvel Comics than Activision; the publisher has been spearheading adaptations of some of Marvel’s most popular properties since the year 2000. They weren’t all smash hits, of course, but some of their titles have been praised as among the best for characters like Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Marvel’s resident Mutant team, the X-Men. In 2004, the publisher teamed with developers Raven Software and saw big success with X-Men Legends, a team-based brawler that incorporated role-playing elements and simultaneous co-op gameplay. Following similar success with the sequel, Activision’s partnership with Raven Software expanded to incorporate much of the rest of Marvel’s line-up with this title, which was built on Vicarious Visions’ Alchemy engine. The game also greatly benefitted from utilising the Havok physics engine; in addition to including many of Marvel’s most popular characters alongside those added as downloadable content (DLC), Nintendo staples Link and Samus Aran were initially planned to be Wii-exclusive characters before being nixed. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance received generally favourable reviews; critics praised the game’s presentation and for improving and expanding upon its predecessors, and the game was successful enough to warrant an equally-successful sequel three years later and (eventually) a Nintendo Switch-exclusive third entry that received mixed reviews. Sadly, despite a remastered version being developed for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2016, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is currently delisted from digital storefronts and quite difficult to come back for an affordable price as a result.
The Plot: When Doctor Victor Von Doom and his Masters of Evil launch an attack against the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate (S.H.I.E.L.D.), Colonel Nick Fury sends out a distress call to all available superheroes for assistance. Steve Rogers/Captain America, Spider-Man, Thor Odinson, and Logan/Wolverine respond to the call and must soon join forces with a myriad of other Marvel heroes in order to put a stop to Dr. Doom after he attains incredible cosmic powers from Odin Allfather.
Gameplay: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a top-down, team-based brawer peppered with some very light puzzle solving, opportunities for exploration, and role-playing mechanics. Players can (eventually) assemble a team of four from around thirty available superheroes and journey across a number of recognisable Marvel locations battling against the nigh-on endless minions of the Masters of Evil. Up to four players can play at once, though a single player is able to battle on alone, using the Left Trigger and directional pad (D-pad) to direct their computer-controlled team mates or switching to another superhero by pressing a corresponding direction on the D-pad. Players are given two primary attack options: A for a quick attack and B for a stronger attack, which can be charged up, and alternating between these commands will allow you to string together a few simple combos that will stun, trip, or blast your foe into the air, which can be essential to breaking through some enemy’s guards. X is the “action” button, allowing you to open doors, activate consoles, turn levers, or grab enemies to pummel, throw, or relieve them of their weapons, and Y allows you to swim and jump (you can also double jump, web-sling, or fly by double pressing and holding the button, respectively). Players can block incoming attacks by holding the Left Bumper or tap it to dodge out of the way entirely and each character has their own special abilities, which are accessed by holding the Right Trigger and selecting either A, B, X, or Y. Special powers can only be used if you have another energy, which is represented by glowing blue orbs dropped by enemies or uncovered from smashing crates or opening chests, and allow you to fire energy beams, toss projectiles, entrap enemies (by freezing or webbing them up, among other options), boost you (and your team mate’s) defense, attack, and other attributes, and cause status effects to your enemies like stunning, burning, or electrocuting them. While many of the effects are largely shared amongst the roster, each character pulls them off in their own unique way; Tony Stark/Iron Man’s Repulsor blasts are different from Mark Spector/Moon Knight’s projectiles, even though both can ricochet around the environment, and each character has a variety of special powers that you can power-up and assign to the face buttons from the “Hero Management” menu.
Assemble a team of four superheroes and battle the endless forces of the Masters of Evil.
Each character also has a big, character-specific attack that can be performed when your energy gauge is completely full and you press Y while holding RT this will see them unleash a huge, screen-clearing attack specific to them and each character will perform these in succession if their energy gauge is full. You’ll also earn additional bonuses if certain characters pull off their special moves at the same time, and this also happens if your team is formed of characters who have a history together, like the X-Men or the Fantastic Four. The game’s story mode is comprised of five “Acts”, which drop your team in a variety of locations that should be familiar to Marvel Comics fans. After clearing the first mission, which has you retaking a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier from Dr. Doom’s forces, you’ll be dropped into one of five hub areas where you can interact with Nick Fury, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, and other non-playable characters (NPCs) to learn more about your current or next mission, gain insight into the heroes and villains, and be given side quests to perform. In the hub area, and scattered throughout each location, are S.H.I.E.L.D. Access Points where you can save or load your game, change up and upgrade your team, or revive fallen teammates. Just as blue energy orbs can be acquired during gameplay, so too can red health orbs, but some environmental hazards or bottomless pits will see you or your teammates taken out of action. It can take about three minutes for your fallen ally to be ready for revival, but they can only be brought back into the fight from one of these save points. As you defeat enemies, you’ll earn experience points (XP) and level-up once you’ve gained enough XP, which will improve both your individual and team stats and unlock additional special moves for you to utilise. From the Hero Management screen, you can switch your character entirely, change their costume (which affords different abilities), equip gear to boost their stats, and name and improve the competence of your team to increase your odds when in a fight.
The tedious combat is broken up by some simple puzzles, QTEs, or short bites of variety.
Gameplay in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance quickly grows quite repetitive; you can charge through most missions by repeating the same combos and special moves over and over, and opportunities for exploration are quite limited as areas generally only give the illusion of being large and multi-pathed. Combat doesn’t get much deeper than tripping, stunning, or blasting enemies, or avoiding using physical or energy-based attacks, and it’s surprisingly easy to get turned around in areas even with the presence of a mini map as one dark, grey corridor looks the same as the last. Puzzles aren’t much of a head-scratcher here; you’ll generally fight your way to a console or power generator that needs to be activated or destroyed, though sometimes you’ll need to activate two switches at once with the either of a partner, and you’ll sometimes have to perform these tasks against a time limit. You’ll need to push or pull heavy objects onto pressure pads, redirect sunlight to free Balder Odinson, defend Dum Dum Dugen in a glorified escort mission, perform character-specific motions to activate statues, or complete quick-time events (QTEs) to open doors or take out larger, otherwise-invulnerable bosses. You’ll jump behind the controls of an anti-aircraft cannon, be joined by NPCs like Major Christopher Summers/Corsair, and have to rescue characters like Doctor Bruce Banner and Prince Namor McKenzie/The Sub-Mariner, though some of these are optional side quests. These optional missions appear during the main campaign and often having you searching for items for a specific character, or destroying certain targets along the way, and sometimes you’re faced with an impossible choice between two options which will fundamentally alter the multiple endings. Gameplay really gets interesting, though, when you end up in Murderworld, a twisted funfair featuring bumper cars, a giant pinball set, a hedge maze, and even an old-school Atari-style mini game that sees you awkwardly swinging from ropes and collecting Golden Tickets to rescue Doctor Jean Grey/Phoenix from Arcade’s clutches.
Graphics and Sound: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is largely an impressive looking title, despite how old it is now, thanks to the zoomed out, almost isometric camera perspective. This means that the in-game character models, while hardly the most detailed, pop out nicely against the various backgrounds and I liked how they all had their own unique flourishes, like Spider-Man being able to web enemies up when he grabs them and Norrin Radd/The Silver Surfer floating around on his cosmic surfboard. Unlike some similar team-based brawlers, this really helps it to feel as though each character plays a little differently since they don’t just share the same animations and have a little individuality to them; you’ll need a stronger character to move certain objects, for example, and it’s much easier to explore the environment with a character who can fly. While your customised team won’t appear in the pre-rendered cutscenes, they do all have a lot of unique dialogue during the game, and when talking to or fighting against other characters; dialogue trees exist so you can ask a number of questions to NPCs or pick different options, which either helps you answer trivia questions, kicks off a side mission, or has you picking to team up with or save a different character, and villains like “Lester”/Bullseye or Quinten Beck/Mysterio. Unfortunately, the music isn’t really on par with the voice acting; it’s all very generic superhero-y or militaristic themes, and the in-game tracks often awkwardly loop, which is very jarring; the music’s also very loud, so you might want to adjust the sound settings in the options.
While the cutscenes aren’t great, the in-game graphics are decent enough and there’s a lot of dialogue variety.
The pre-rendered cutscenes also often let the game down a bit; they haven’t aged too well, and have a very rubbery and surreal quality to them (though they are pretty epic, especially when the Masters of Evil are discussion their evil lot and when Galactus and Uatu/The Watcher enter the story) that I’d criticise more if I could actually see them but the cutscenes are very dark and the only way to brighten them is by changing your television’s settings. The game’s environments often don’t fare much better, either; while it’s fun visiting places like the Sanctum Sanctorum and Valhalla in the hub worlds, the actual mission locations quickly become confusing and boring. While there’s a lot to destroy and see in each area, and even some hidden paths to uncover, rooms, corridors, and sections all start to blend together and the levels themselves can outstay their welcome at times, which only makes the monotonous combat more glaring. That’s not to say that there aren’t some visually interesting locations, though; you’ll swim through the depths of Atlantis, travel to Hell itself, battle across the length of the Bifrost Bridge and through the frozen wastes of Niffleheim, and infiltrate the gothic, regal stone walls of Castle Doom. Easily the most impressive area you’ll visit, though, is the Skrull home world, which is currently under attack by Galactus; the World-Devourer is seen lumbering around in the background between the futuristic skyscrapers and even pursues your across the walkways in an exciting (if frustrating) sequence, though the gameplay and visual variety offered by Valhalla is equally fun as you can visit the Warrior’s Hall (where NPCs are enjoying revels) and hop across Viking ships amidst a cosmic backdrop.
Enemies and Bosses: Since a gaggle of Marvel’s most notorious villains has joined forces in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, you can expect to come up against a bevy of disposable goons during your adventure. It doesn’t take long for you to basically have seen everything the game has to offer in this regard, but each location does at least change up the appearance, dialogue, and some of the attacks of the enemies you face; you’ll battle Ultron’s minions, Loki Laufeyson’s trolls, and soldiers from the Shi’ar Empire and the depths of Atlantis, all of whom can be defeated using your standard combos or special powers. You can set your team mates to follow, attack, or defend formations, but I always like to choose an aggressive approach to overwhelm the hoards of enemies that can flood each area. Some of these carry weapons, either melee armaments like axes, spears, and swords which you can appropriate, or laser rifles for long-range attacks; others shield themselves and need to be attacked from behind or stunned. Some, like the imp-like demons from Mephisto’s Realm, leap onto you and drain your health, while others fly above taking pot-shots at you, and some are resistant to physical or energy attacks or need to be tripping, stunning, or blasted into the air. Some are larger, dealing and taking more damage, while others regenerate their health (or their allies), sap your health or energy, or boost the attack of other foes, so it’s best to take those guys out first.
A whole host of Marvel villains stand in your way, though most can just be beaten into submission.
The Masters of Evil have assembled quite the smorgasbord of allies; you’ll do battle with almost every single villain from Marvel Comics throughout the course of the game, sometimes more than once, as various underlings dog your progress throughout each mission. Often, you’ll battle at least two of these sub-bosses at a time; sometimes they flee after an initial encounter and need to be fought again, other times they’re powered up to be more formidable, and in other cases they’re able to heal or shield each other from your attacks by working together. However, defeating the likes of Mac Gargan/The Scorpion, Bullseye, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes/The Winter Soldier, Chen Lu/Radioactive Man, Valentin Shatalov/Crimson Dynamo, Aleksei Sytsevich/The Rhino, Herman Schultz/The Shocker, Doctor Curt Connors/The Lizard, Hussar and Neutron, Paibok, and even the corrupted superheroes you eventually fight really don’t require much more than you constantly attacking them with combos and special powers. Indeed, while it’s impressive that so many villains appear in the game, very few actually offer much in the way of a challenge beyond being a little tougher than the regular enemies you encounter, with even the likes of notorious villains like Ultron and Titannus proving quite disappointing encounters as, while they keep you at bay with laser blasts or destroy everything in a rampage, respectively, both can be similarly put down without any complicated strategies. Many of these villains are fought in teams, however, and they can also reappear in the simulator missions you unlock by finding discs, allowing you to battle them with different characters and in different situations, but as long as you string together your usual combos and unleash your best special attacks they go down pretty easily, even when bolstered by disposable minions.
Some of the best sub-bosses require a bit more strategy and forethought to put them down.
Other villains, however, do bring a little bit more to the table: Mysterio uses illusions to throw you off and, while Paul Pierre Duval/Grey Gargoyle can disable you by turning you to stone, Baron Carl Mordo, Kl’rt/Super Skrull, and the Mandarin disable you with elemental attacks to encase you in ice or send you flying with a blast of wind. The Mandarin also ends up being a particularly annoying boss as you need to lure his spider-like robots into teleporting to his safe spot to destroy his endless supply of Ultimos and actually bring him down for good. Mental/Mobile/Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing/M.O.D.O.K. challenges you to a trivia quiz to get closer to him, then brings in waves of Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) minions to annoy you in addition to firing lasers and shockwaves at you. When battling Byrrah Thakorr-So and Krang, you also need to destroy sonic emitters to progress the mission, while Attuma and Todd Arliss/Tiger Shark can be difficult to hit as they’re swimming all over the place, making for a more aggravating encounter. Dragon Man randomly drops in as a tough obstacle to bypass since he’s capable of dishing out some formidable damage, while Blackheart employs multiple versions of himself to attack you and you’ll need to take on all three members of the Wrecking Crew at once (though they fall pretty easily if you’re wielding an axe or other weapon). Amora the Enchantress can allure you and your teammates into not attacking her, and will heal her brutish ally, Skurge the Executioner, Ulik and Kurse can only be defeated by attacking one with melee attacks and the other with energy attacks, and you’ll need to lower the shields protecting the likes of Kallark/Gladiator, B’nee and C’cil/Warstar, and Cal’syee Neramani-Summers/Deathbird (who flies around the arena tantalisingly out of reach and swooping down to grab you otherwise).
The bigger, more formidable bosses offer a bit more variety and spectacle.
Luckily, the game claws back a bit of challenge and intrigue by its large and engaging end of Act boss battles. After fending off Dr. Doom’s attack on the Helicarrier, you’ll battle Fing Fang Foom on the main deck; this gigantic alien dragon blasts fireballs at you from the air, covers the ground with shockwaves when it lands, and can only be brought down by firing anti-aircraft cannons at it and making good use of your ranged attacks. After making it past his robots and death traps, you’ll battle Arcade’s massive mech in a circus tent, which you need to fire yourself at using cannons and succeed at QTEs in order to have it damage itself in frustration. The eldritch Kracken is one of the ore frustating bosses as you can’t damage it directly and must lure it into attacking the nearby columns so you can complete a QTE sequence, but it seems completely random when it’ll actually smash into these columns, meaning the fight drags a bit. Fittingly, Mephisto awaits you in the depths of Hell; this demonic villain spews hellfire at you, protects himself from attacks with a shield, and can even screw up your controls with his powers, though you can disarm him and use his Hellsword to damage him. You’ll have to take extra care when Mephisto compels Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler or Jean Grey to attack you, however, and will lose that character forever when they sacrifice themselves to stop Mephisto. At first, Loki isn’t really too much of a threat; sure, he’s got lightning attacks that stun you and is assisted by his Frost Giant minions, but he goes down pretty easily. However, it’s all a ruse as he then poses s Nick Fury to have you activate the indestructible Destroyer, which you must flee from while desperately searching for the ice-shielded Loki; once you find him, simply attack him until his shield breaks and the fight is ended. Galactus, however, is a threat far too big for you to tackle head-on; instead, you must desperately flee from him (destroying his drills if you have time) and then avoid his massive fists to activate three consoles and blast at him as the Silver Surfer in a QTE sequence. Finally, you must take on Dr. Doom himself; however, despite stealing Odin’s power to become a literal God, the mad doctor really isn’t too difficult to defeat even with the corrupted Fantastic Four acting as his personal guard. Simply destroy the four generators powering his shield, chase him down as he dashes and teleports across his throne room, mashing buttons when he grabs you, and pummel him as you would any other enemy or boss and, eventually, he’ll be defeated without too much problem regardless of his electrical attacks or shockwaves.
Power-Ups and Bonuses: As mentioned, you can refill your energy and health by collecting blue and red orbs, which are dropped by enemies or found by destroying crates or opening chests. While some hazards can whittle your health down pretty quickly, or kill you immediately, health is pretty easy to come back, and you can also grab weapons to dish out greater damage to enemies (in fact, this is highly recommended as weapon attacks easily cut down even the most intimidating Super Soldiers and Doombots). You will also acquire S.H.I.E.L.D. Credits from enemies and the environment, which can be spent on upgrades to your character’s powers, costume-specific abilities, and upgrading your team’s stats; you cans et these to auto-upgrade, but they increase in cost each time you boost them so you can burn through Credits pretty quickly. Defeating the game’s many sub-bosses and bosses will also yield special gear that you can assign to each character; this will boost your attack, XP, or gauges, resist or inflict elemental damage, and offer numerous other perks but you can only equip one item to each character and your inventory has limits, meaning you’ll need to sell some to make way for new pick-ups as you come across them. Finally, as mentioned, you’ll get boosts to your stats and performance for forming teams of related characters, and performing special moves with certain characters, so it can be beneficial to experiment with different combinations and search around the environments for chests for more loot.
Additional Features: There are forty-six Achievements on offer in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, with the majority of them popping after clearing each Act and defeating bosses. Other Achievements include tossing enemies to their deaths, performing a certain number of finishing moves, defeating a certain number of enemies, unlocking every character and costume, and finishing the game on Hard mode, among others. Since the only difficulty-based Achievement you get is finishing on Hard, you may as well play through on Easy unless you’re going for that Achievement, and you’ll also get Achievements for finishing missions with another human-controlled character and upgrade every character’s special moves. Throughout each level, you’ll find a number of collectibles scattered about; art books unlock artwork to view, action figures allow you to unlock T’Challa/Black Panther and Matt Murdock/Daredevil as playable characters (and you can play a claw mini game in Murderworld to unlock Eric Brooks/Blade as well), and you can unlock Nick Fury by finishing the game once and the Silver Surfer by earning at least a Bronze medal in the game’s bonus simulator missions. These are unlocked by finding S.H.I.E.L.D. Simulator discs and recreate key moments and battles from each character’s history in a series of tough challenges. You can also take on five sets of trivia questions in each hub world for additional XP and Achievements, replay and revisit any Act, hub, and mission once you’ve finished the game, view movies and other unlocks in the gallery, and go head-to-head with your friends batting for points in an “Arcade” mode. By defeating numerous enemies with each character, you’ll eventually unlock up to four different costumes for each one, with these offering slightly different abilities that you can upgrade. Unfortunately, you can no longer purchase the two additional DLC packs, which added eight new characters to the roster in addition to twelve extra Achievements, none of which can be accessed on home consoles any more, which is a shame as I wanted to have Eddie Brock/Venom on my team and had to settle for symbiote Spider-Man.
The Summary: I’d played Marvel: Ultimate Alliance before on the PlayStation 3 and, while I’d enjoyed it, I remember being put off by the lack of Trophies to earn and the fact that the DLC was only available on the Xbox 360 version. When I finally bought an Xbox 360, this game was on my buy list and, coincidentally, was a bit more expensive than I’d like and the DLC was still unobtainable, unless I wanted to shell out ridiculous amounts for an imported version. When I finally got it again, I enjoyed getting back into it; the game is very action-packed and chock full of playable characters, cameos, and villains to fight, but there’s really not a great deal to the combat, graphics, or the story. It’s fine and enjoyable enough, but things get repetitive very quickly and you’ve basically seen everything the game has to offer (apart from a few bells and whistles) after the first Act. You’ll beat on the same generic goons with the same tedious combos over and over, solving simplistic puzzles and spending your Coins on upgrades, but very rarely will you actually find much t set this apart from other, similar brawlers. The character selection and variety is great, and I like how they feel distinctive despite basically all being the same, and I enjoyed how some stages were more visually interesting than others, allowing you to swim or venture onto the hull of a space craft. While the sub-bosses weren’t up to much, the bigger bosses offered a bit more challenge and entertainment, but it feels a bit like the developers maybe crammed a little too much into the game without trying to make each villain a unique encounter. Overall, it’s a decent enough team-based brawler that’s probably more fun with a couple of friends to play with; there’s some decent replay value on offer with the different endings you can get based on your decisions and the extra missions and unlocks to find, but it does feel a little lacking in presentation and overall content to really score much higher.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever played Marvel: Ultimate Alliance? If so, what did you think to it and who made it into your team? What did you think to the combat, character selection, and the overall gameplay? Were you disappointed that the boss battles were mostly just a tedious log? Which of the characters, villains, and locations was your favourite? What endings did you get and did you ever unlock all of the costumes and characters? Did you ever play as the DLC characters? Where would you rate this game against its sequels and other similar games? How are you celebrating National Superhero Day today? Whatever your thoughts, sign up to leave a comment below or leave a comment on my social media, and be sure to stick around for more superhero and comic book content throughout the year.
In February 1991, readers of The New Mutants were introduced to Wade W. Wilson, AKA the wise-cracking, fourth-wall-breaking Merc With a Mouth himself, Deadpool. Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza’s sword-swinging immortal went on to become one of Marvel’s most popular anti-heroes thanks to his metatextual humour, violent nature, and massively successfullive-actionfilms. It’s perhaps no surprise that Sideshow rechristened April 1st as “Deadpool Day” to give fans of the chimichanga-chomping mercenary an excuse to celebrate all things Deadpool.
Writer: Fabian Nicieza – Artist: Joe Madureira
Story Title: “Ducks in a Row!” Published: 15 June 1993 (cover-dated August 1993)
Story Title: “Rabbit Season, Duck Season” Published: 20 July 1993 (cover-dated September 1993)
Story Title: “…And Quacks Like a Duck…” Published: 17 August 1993 (cover-dated October 1993)
Story Title: “Duck Soup” Published: 21 September 1993 (cover-dated November 1993)
The Background: By the 1980s, the X-Men had established themselves as one of Marvel Comics’ most successful features, prompting then-chief editor Jim Shooter to commission a series of X-Men spin-off titles, resulting in Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod’s New Mutants. The Mutant youngsters eventually fell under the command of the time travelling Mutant Nathan Summers/Cable, who reformed them into X-Force, and famously came up against Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld’s Deadpool in The New Mutants #98 (ibid, 1991). The self-styled “Merc With a Mouth” was heavily inspired by the likes of James Howlett/Logan/Wolverine and Peter Parker/Spider-Man with more than a few similarities to DC Comics’ Slade Wilson/Deathstroke the Terminator and was initially introduced in an antagonistic role with ties to time-travelling villain Mister Tolliver. Deadpool proved popular enough to make guest appearances in other Marvel Comics before receiving this four-issue miniseries that was a precursor to his ongoing solo title and the greater popularity he achieved once he became self-aware and began breaking the fourth wall. Naturally, this eventually evolved into appearances in Marvel/X-Men-related videogames, a cameo appearance in the beloved X-Men animated series (1992 to 1997), and his live-action debut in the much-malignedX-Men Origins: Wolverine(Hood, 2009), though it was his self-titled spin-off films that truly catapulted him to mainstream success.
The Review: Deadpool’s first solo series begins in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia two years into an ongoing conflict that has made it a breeding ground for international black marketeers and mercenaries, including a heavily-armed group who have been given the unenviable task of searching out and eliminating Deadpool. Unfortunately for them, the Merc With a Mouth catches them completely off-guard, easily dispatching them while mocking them for being less effectual than G. I. Joe’s or Ken dolls. Despairing of the quality of mercs he’s encountered ever since Tolliver died, Deadpool is offended when his friend and contact, Jack Hammer/Weasel, pulls a gun on him. still, Deadpool is so scatter-brained that he quickly moves on from the misunderstanding to first complain that his suit’s teleportation function is “on the fritz” and the fact that he (and anyone who ever worked for Tolliver) now has a target on their back. Weasel tries to suggest that they (or, at least, Deadpool) should try and get their hands on Tolliver’s estate and weapons, but Deadpool’s more focused on getting intel on Vanessa Carlysle/Copycat, a shape-shifting Mutant and former flame of his who he’s looking to kill off, when they’re suddenly interrupted by one of the most nineties-looking characters I’ve ever seen (which is saying something considering Deadpool’s attire), Garrison Kane/Weapon X, a cybernetic mercenary who was both part of the same Weapon X program as Deadpool and a member of Cable’s Six Pack when he was working for Tolliver.
Deadpool is hounded by mercenaries and former allies who all want him dead.
Kane also wants to know where Vanessa is and attacks, easily shielding himself from Deadpool’s blade and bullets with his versatile cybernetic enhancements. Shrugging off Wade’s jokes and insults, Kane mocks him for betraying his mercenary code and allowing so any of his former enemies and allies to live, but it’s only when Weasel points out that neither of the two beefed-up idiots knows where Vanessa is and they’ve simply being fighting over nothing and as a result of their stupidity and machismo. Admitting to acting without thinking, Kane tries to leave, determined to make an offer to Vanessa before she’s killed (since she’s one of the prime targets in the whole will fiasco), and drops the bombshell that another of Wade’s former adversaries, Gregory Terraerton/Slayback, is not only still alive but is actively gunning for Deadpool, the man who left him for dead way back when. As if on cue, the cybernetic killer breaks into the headquarters of Department X (the government agency behind the Weapon X program) to steal Wade and Kane’s files in order to settle the score and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the story also jumps over to New Delhi, India, where Wolverine knock-off Nyko Halfghanaghan guns down mercenaries looking for Tolliver’s will (his dead brother, Pico, was Tolliver’s right-hand man so they assume he must know something about it) before delivering a work order to Jacob Gavin Jr./Courier calling for Deadpool’s execution for his part in Pico’s death. Finally, there’s a third plot thread at work here as Cain Marko/The Juggernaut bursts into a genetic research facility outside of Angoulême, France in search of his friend, Thomas Cassidy/Black Tom Cassidy (a common occurrence during this time as the two had formed a strong friendship). Louis Banque, the director of the facility, manages to calm Juggernaut down enough to take him to Black Tom, who’s been enhanced through further mutations that allow him to form weapons, reshape his body into an organic wood substance, and focus and intensify his bioblasts through that same “wood gunk”. This storyline converges with Deadpool’s when issue two drops Wade into Cairo, Egypt where he executes another group of mercs to acquire a briefcase containing a disc that holds information on Tolliver’s will (if that sounds like some kind of mental scavenger hunt, it actually is as per Tolliver’s design, with the ultimate prize being “the most powerful weapon on the face of the planet!”) Anyway, just as Deadpool gets the case, Juggernaut and Black Tom show up, wreck the building he’s standing on, and then blast Deadpool in the back of the head to steal the case from him.
Deadpool is outraged when Commcast “violates” his mind while searching for Tolliver’s will.
Meanwhile, another former member of Weapon X, Bernard Hoyster/Sluggo, drops in on Vanessa’s mother in search for her and ends up garrotted around the neck by the blue-toned shape-shifter, who’s looking to avenge the death of her friend, Tina Valentino, at Sluggo’s hands. Vanessa settles for stealing Sluggo’s car and leaving him to be arrested after learning that she’s become a target in the search for the will and vows to head to Sarajevo to acquire it, and Tolliver’s fortune, for herself. However, when Courier procures the services of Garabed Bashur/Commcast and the Executive Elite, he offers not money, but Tolliver’s disc and thus a head start in the scavenger hunt. Unaware of this, Deadpool heads to Cairo International Airport using Weasel’s intel and a fight ensures between him and Juggernaut and Black Tom (in civilian guises) that sees Marko hand over the briefcase to save Tom from being sucked out of the plane, only for Wade to trick him and send both plummeting to the ground below while he returns to Sarajevo for issue three. There, he gets into it with Amie Zamborano/Makeshift and Anastasia Summit/Rive of the Executive Elite; disgusted by Deadpool’s sexist jeers, the two pin him to a wall and fry him into unconsciousness with a massive burst of electricity. This makes him easy pickings for Commcast to haul back to the Edsel and subject him to the torture of his “synaptic neural scanner”, a fancy high-tech headband that allows Commcast to scan the thoughts and memories of his victims. Though Deadpool attempts to resist, this sheds some light on his past with Vanessa, depicting them as lovers back before he was mutilated by the Weapon X program, and shows how Kane tried to emphasise the benefits of cybernetic prosthetics when Wade was diagnosed with terminal cancer. After revealing that there are actually two discs that act as a guide towards Tolliver’s will, Commcast rips off Deadpool’s mask, revealing his gruesome visage to everyone but the reader, distracting them enough for Weasel to make a dramatic entrance and break Deadpool free. Incensed at Commcast poking around in his head (which he unironically sees as a “violation” despite his mercenary ways), Deadpool goes on a rampage, destroying his facility and killing Makeshift and Rive (but it’s Weasel who delivers the fatal headshot to Commcast). Weasel then examines the two discs and learns of a monastery in Nepal, which he theorises is the location of Tolliver’s will, and of an “ambient-energy dampening” genetic monstrosity known as “Unit: Zero” that he assumes is guarding it.
After Slayback is atomised, Deadpool proves he’s more than just a killer…and makes out with Tolliver’s treasure!
Thanks to her shape-changing and mild mind control abilities, Vanessa is also able to learn of this monastery through alternative means but, when she makes the climb to the building, she’s surprised by Slayback and effectively taken hostage. Although Deadpool insists on heading in alone, Weasel makes the four-storey rope climb to offer his assistance in the arc’s final issue, and Kane also manages to make his way there so that all the loose ends can be nicely tied up. Thanks to Weasel, Deadpool discovers a locked vault packed full of weapons, gadgets, and other gizmos set aside by Tolliver, which leads to another scuffle with Kane when he comes looking to claim Tolliver’s secret, all-powerful weapon for himself. Although Deadpool is all mouth when it comes to Kane, he’s thrown into a panic when Slyback makes it a three-way dance since he didn’t just see Slayback die, he saw him reduced to little more than a bloody goop! Thanks to his cybernetic enhancements and burning desire to avenge himself, Slayback easily overwhelms Deadpool but, as he moves to deliver a fatal blow (despite this being impossible against Wade thanks to his superhuman healing factor…), Vanessa sacrifices herself to save her former love. During all of this kerfuffle, weasel realises that a seemingly innocuous mannequin is actually the Zero unit (or “Adam Unit-Zero”, to be precise) and Tolliver’s ultimate weapon, an energy-absorbing synthezoid built to eliminate all weapons of war. Consequently, it identifies Slayback as such and reduces him to cinders, atomising him in a blinding flash of light. While it settles for similarly destroying Weasel’s armaments and evaluates that Kane has a “strong inclination towards socially beneficial behaviour” [sic] despite his capability for lethal force, it classifies Deadpool as a weapon of war and moves to nullify him accordingly. However, in keeping with his reputation as the “Merc With a Mouth”, Deadpool is able to stall the machine by rationalising that he’s not just capable of killing but healing too. He then demonstrates this by having Vanessa touch his horrifically scarred body to absorb his healing factor and thus heal her mortal wounds, confusing Adam and causing it to teleport away to conduce further analysis. Although she’s grateful, and touched that he still loves her, Vanessa turns him down since she loves another and tearfully begs him to move past his cancer, his past, Tolliver, and even himself so he can find something worth fighting for again. Though heartbroken, Wade consoles himself with the knowledge (as amusingly expositing by Weasel) that he showed he can be more than just a brutal killing machine, and by swiping some of Tolliver’s gold for himself so the mission wasn’t a complete loss.
The Summary: In many ways, The Circle Chase suffers from a lot of the problems I often have with X-Men stories, particularly those from the team’s heyday in the nineties; stories were often crammed full of characters, lore, and interweaving plot threads that made single issues and even ongoing story arcs difficult for me to pick up and read since it was hard to keep track of everything going on. We’ve got Deadpool, Vanessa, the Juggernaut and Black Tom, Weasel, Garrison Kane, Slayback, Commcast, the Executive Elite, the complex search for Tolliver’s will and numerous references to him and his minions…it’s quite a bit to take in all at once. Thankfully, the art is pretty good; while much of the action takes place at night or in darkened interiors, all of the characters are very colourful and stand out thanks to that nineties excess of bulging muscles, ridiculously excessive guns and technology, and hyper sexualisation of female characters and bodies that was so rampant during this time.
Deadpool’s chatter mouth andquestionable past are a highlight of the miniseries.
The writing is also really good, particularly in terms of dialogue and in characterisation Deadpool. Wade more than lives up to his loquacious reputation here and is constantly spouting nonsense, pop culture references, and getting distracted with tangents in the heat of battle. He taunts his opponents to the point of frustration, which is always amusing, and offers relentless amusing commentary throughout the miniseries. Deadpool’s skills are at their peak here and he’s easily able to take out the many run of the mill mercenaries he comes up against; the more prominent mercs from the Executive Elite manage to subdue him (mainly to advance the story, put some spotlight on Commcast, and subject Deadpool to his mind reading device so we can learn a little more about him) but even this is just a temporary setback and he immediately enacts a bloody revenge upon being freed by Weasel. Interestingly, the final issue delves a little into Wade’s complex mindset; while he hides behind his near-psychotic persona and smart mouth, he’s actually a very tortured individual, one suffering from hideous scars as a result of his healing factor constantly staving off the cancer that threatened his life. Wade is also rattled into an uncharacteristic panic by Slayback’s survival and appearance and a prominent plot point being Wade’s rejection of the notion that he actually enjoys killing and is a mindless sadist like Slayback. This is ultimately proven to be true in the finale, where he uses his healing factor to restore Vanessa and reject the notion that he’s nothing more than a weapon of wear, which allows him to neuter Adam-Zero’s threat which along with his heartbreak over having lost Vanessa’s love, goes a long way to injecting some humanity into this otherwise volatile and unstable mercenary. While The Circle Chase may be bulging with colourful characters, Mutants, and cybernetic antagonists, the core villains are actually surprisingly interesting. It seems as though everyone in the story has a connection to Deadpool, mostly through either Weapon X or the Six Pack (or both), and almost everyone has an axe to grind against him (even Weasel, the closest thing he has to an ally, is constantly exasperated by Wade’s instability and childish nature).
There’s quite a bit going on, but the characterisations and art work make it an entertaining read.
Having said that, the Executive Elite are basically a throwaway distraction that exist mostly to pad the story out with a bit more action, intrigue, and exposition, but Commcast almost makes an impression as a kind of dark mirror of Professor Charles Xavier by using his technology to violate Deadpool’s memories and he even has an “X-Men” team of his own in Makeshift and Rive. Garrison Kane is even more of a wild card than Deadpool himself; he’s something of a reluctant ally but doesn’t hesitate to throw down against his former teammate simply because he acts “like an idiot” when it comes to Wade due to their history together. With his glowing eye and bionic arms and armaments, he’s kind of like a poor man’s Cable, which is fitting given their history together, and ends the story on slightly better terms with Wade than they began due to their shared concern for Vanessa. Vanessa is also a significant factor in the miniseries, primarily as one of the main targets for Tolliver’s will and as Deadpool’s lost love, though she doesn’t get a huge amount of agency; she is able to string up Sluggo and find her way to the monastery without the discs but, once there, she’s held hostage by Slayback and then nonsensically throws herself in front of Deadpool despite him being able to heal from any wound. As for Slayback…I’ve never heard of this guy, but I actually really enjoyed him! His zombie-like appearance and malleable cybernetics (which give him an extensive reach and even a drill appendage) make him a fearsome foe and he’s written with this biting, British wit that adds a lot of character to him. the parallels between him and Deadpool kind of come out of nowhere in the last chapter but I liked that his appearance rattled wade so much that it put him on the back foot, and it was interesting seeing wade think (well, “talk”, really) his way out of being atomised by Adam-Zero like Slayback was. Overall, I really enjoyed this miniseries; it was a little bloated at times but bat-shit-crazy in all the ways I enjoy about a character like Deadpool. While Wade isn’t being as self-referential or meta as he is now known for, all the foundation for the characterisation is here and the miniseries went a long way to justifying his later mainstream success.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Fantastic
Have you ever read The Circle Chase? If so, what did you think of the story and the Deadpool’s first solo foray? Did you enjoy the bloated cast of colourful characters and their ties to Deadpool’s past or was it all a bit too crowded for you? What did you think to Deadpool’s characterisation here, the glimpses into his past and motivations, and his snarky with? Were you a fan of Slayback, Vanessa, and the likes of Garrison Kane or is there another of Deadpool’s villains you prefer? What are some of your favourite Deadpool stories and moments and how are you celebrating Deadpool Day today? Whatever your thoughts on Deadpool, feel free to sign up and share them below or drop a comment on my social media.
When readers were first introduced to the character of James Howlett, better known by the names “Logan” and “Wolverine”, it was in the pages of The Incredible Hulk. From his first full debut in issue 181 all the way back in November 1974 to him officially joining the X-Men in 1975, the character has become one of Marvel Comics’ most recognisable and enduring superheroes, regularly featuring in solo and team comics, cartoons, movies, videogames, and countless other merchandise.
Uncaged Edition
Released: May 2009 Developer: Raven Software Also Available For: Mobile, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, PC, PlayStation 2 PlayStation 3 PlayStation Portable
The Background: 20th Century Fox profited greatly after acquiring the X-Men movie rights from Marvel Comics. Under their banner, the first three X-Men movies (Various, 2000 to 2006) made over $600 million and, eager to capitalise on that financial success and the popularity of their star, Hugh Jackman, they quickly began production of a spin-off film focusing solely on breakout star Wolverine. While X-Men: Origins Wolverine(Hood, 2009) proved a financial success, reviews ranged from mixed to scathing (unfairly, in my opinion) but the same couldn’t be said about the obligatory tie-in videogame. Developed by Raven Software, the game was a violent hack-and-slash adventure that expanded upon the film’s storyline using elements from the comic books and emphasised frenetic, gory violence very much like the God of War videogames (Santa Monica Studio/Various, 2005 to present). X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Uncaged Edition was highly regarded by critics and fans alike as one of the most enjoyable and entertaining videogame adaptations ever made.
The Plot: Decades before he joined the X-Men, Logan (a Mutant with retractable bone claws, a superhuman healing factor, and heightened senses) was a part of William Stryker’s Team X and operated under the codename Wolverine. After many years working alongside his half-brother, Victor Creed, Logan walked away from his violent life only to be forced back into the fight (and to undergo a radical procedure to bond indestructible Adamantium to his skeleton) when Victor killed his lover.
Gameplay: X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a hack-and-slash action brawler with very light platforming and puzzle elements that sees you cast into the role of the titular Mutant, who has the voice and likeness of X-Men star Huge Jacked-Man Hugh Jackman. The story can largely be summarised as taking “inspiration” from the movie, as the narrative constantly switches back to Africa to follow Wolverine’s final mission with Team X, and to the present day of the mid-1980s in a truncated and decidedly different, if similar, version of the events from the film. The gameplay is primarily geared towards slicing and dicing enemies with Wolverine’s bone or Adamantium claws in a variety of gruesome ways: Wolverine can attack with quick, light strikes with X, heavier attacks with Y (which can also be charged by holding the button), and string together successive presses of X and Y to pull off devastating combos (which you can review at any time from the pause menu) that turn Wolverine into a whirling dervish.
Lunge at enemies, unleash your Fury Attacks, and use Feral Senses spot environmental kill spots.
Wolverine can also jump with A, cling to ledges and climb certain walls, block, reflect, or counter incoming attacks with the Left Trigger, and grab enemies with B. Once grabbed, you can mash X to pummel them or toss them at other enemies (or into instant death environmental traps), or charge Y to perform a “Quick Kill”. Wolverine can also dash ahead with the Left Bumper but I found that this was a bit clunky and awkward as there is a delay between Wolverine stopping at the end of the dash and returning to a run, so it’s far better to press the Right Bumper and LB to perform a rolling dodge instead. One of Wolverine’s most useful skills, though, is his lunge attack. By holding RB to target enemies, you can then press LB to leap towards your target and attack them with X, B, or Y to quickly pounce across gaps and from target to target, which is endlessly satisfying when overrun by enemies. As you progress through the game, you’ll also unlock four Fury Attacks that can be unleashed when your Rage Meter is full and by pressing the Right Trigger and either A, B, X, or Y. Each of these can also be upgraded further and will see Wolverine fly into a berserker rage and becoming a spinning whirlwind of claws and death as you mash buttons to extend the duration of his onslaught. Wolverine also has the benefit of his heightened senses; by pressing up on the directional pad (D-pad), you’ll see the body heat of nearby enemies, climbable ledges and surfaces, footprints when tracking targets, and an ethereal blue light that points you in the right direction in a mechanic very similar to the Detective Vision from the Batman: Arkham games (Rocksteady Studios/Various, 2009 to 2015), though much more basic.
Puzzles are pretty simple and amount to little more than button mashing or powering up consoles.
While the environments you find yourself in are quite linear, they are also made up of a lot of dark, grey corridors, so Wolverine’s Feral Senses are helpful for keeping you on track and spotting opportunities to instantly kill your opponents. I’m not sure why but the developers also allowed you to sheath and unsheathe your claws by pressing down on the D-pad; this doesn’t really seem to do anything but I guess it adds to the immersion of being Wolverine and, very rarely, you’ll be able to instantly kill enemies by sneaking up behind him and pressing either B or X. A good 90% of the game is made up of mindless hack-and-slash combat, usually restricting you to a set area and fending off waves of enemies who can seem never-ending at times. Other times, though, you’ll need to pull off some tricky jumps and awkward platforming; mostly, this isn’t a problem, but that are times when you have to jump from platforms and ledges or ropes and it can be very difficult to make even simple jumps thanks to the dodgy camera and invisible barriers nudging you to your death. Wolverine will also have to zip down wires to cross gaps, precariously walk across balance beams and girders, and occasionally pull or push large objects (usually crates or jeeps) by holding B. Other times, you’ll need to mash A to turn a wheel to open a door or find a crank or power source and carry it to a power node by picking it up with B. It’s all very simple and puzzles generally don’t become more taxing than that, standing on pressure pads, or scaling towers. Given his Mutant abilities, Wolverine is extremely durable, able to sustain prolonged gunfire and attacks and continue fighting. Your health bar will automatically regenerate if you avoid attacks for a few seconds but you can still be “captured” if your bar is completely drained and your vital organs are damaged so, while you can largely leap head-first into situations and groups of enemies, it’s best to keep an eye out from spiked traps and avoid being set on fire or pummelled by larger enemies.
Gameplay is mixed up by a few different sections and mechanics, some more welcome than others.
Wolverine’s biggest danger in this regard is falling while trying to jump or navigating across bottomless pits or large chasms; if you fall, you’ll have to restart from your last checkpoint but, thankfully, checkpoints are quite numerous and generally always come right before a tricky situation. Gameplay is further mixed up by a few quick-time events (QTEs), mainly when opening doors, and slightly different camera angles and chase sequences, such as when Wolverine has to race down the spill well of the Alkali Lake facility and leap from jeep to jeep, dispatching enemies as a wall of water comes inexorably after him. Other times, helicopters will fire at you relentlessly and you’ll have to dart between platforms and cover to avoid fire or frantically run and jump across surfaces that crumble beneath your feet. In another mission, you have to lunge at enemies on speedboats down a racing river; if you fall in the water, you’ll have to restart but you eventually commandeer a machine gun turret and can fire wildly at your pursuers by holding RT. One particularly annoying mission has you dodging between metal shields as automatic turrets fire at you; you’ll need to activate a console to put the shields in place to stave off the heavy ordinance and use similar consoles to position teleporters around the sentinel facility.
Graphics and Sound: Generally speaking, X-Men Origins: Wolverine looks pretty good; environments can be a bit bland and drab at times but you’re constantly hopping back to the jungles of Africa, which helps add a bit of visual variety to the game even if the environments remain quite linear and have very few opportunities for you to explore in a meaningful way. Character models are decent enough but the developers clearly put the most time and effort into the titular character; no other character from the movie save Victor Creed bares the voice or likeness of their actor, which is disappointing, and most of the enemies you encounter are largely generic soldiers with little to really make them stand out. As mentioned, Wolverine spends a lot of his time flashing back to Africa; here; you’ll run through the ruin-strewn jungle and encounter a number of machete-wielding natives and ancient booby traps and such. It’s a stark contrast to the boring, grey corridors of Alkali Lake (a location I could live with never having to see again) but the game claws back (no pun intended) some visual variety in the Sentinel facility and the casino where you pursue and battle Remy Lebeau/Gambit. These locations are much more interesting to look at, being a vast technological complex full of intricate machinery and Sentinel parts and a neon-drenched skyscraper that sees you climbing horizontally and vertically, respectively.
Environments can be dark, drab, and bland but some manage to stand out regardless.
It’s a shame, then, that the game doesn’t change the location of its finale, which sees you back in dull, concrete surroundings on Three Mile Island, but I did enjoy the visual of battling Wade Wilson/Weapon XI/Deadpool atop the cooling tower like in the movie. The game’s story is largely told during gameplay using the in-game graphics, often with Wolverine conversing with his superiors or allies via an earpiece (again, very similar to the Batman: Arkham games). There are some CG cutscenes here, though, which are quite blurry and muddy as you might expect from an Xbox 360 title. Similarly, the music isn’t really anything to shout about; it’s not exactly memorable or catchy and the only thing really salvaging the audio presentation is Jackman’s unparalleled work as the titular character. There was, however, quite a bit of slowdown whenever there was a lot happening onscreen and the game doesn’t do a very good job of masking its loading times; often, the game stops completely and you’re left with a “Streaming…” message while it loads the next area, which interrupted the flow of the game considerably at times. You’ll find some interesting audio logs and references to (and cameos from) some recognisable X-Men characters, though, and the final cutscene even places Wolverine in the “Days of Future Past” (Claremont, et al, 1981) timeline.
The game’s biggest appeal is in its graphic violence and gore in depicting Wolverine’s brutal nature.
Where the game excels, though, is in its unrelenting gore and violence; ironically, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is more violent and uncompromising than the film it’s based on, meaning that kids who enjoyed the film probably weren’t old enough to play the game at the time! As Wolverine takes damage, his skin and clothing is torn and shredded, revealing his Adamantium skeleton, which is both gruesome and fantastic to see. The wounds heal up over time but you’ll often be running around with a fully metallic arm or half a metal skull, which is something we really haven’t seen in the films yet. When attacking enemies, Wolverine can slice off limbs, impale them on the environment, and set them alight or electrocute them with environmental hazards and you’ll often see dismembered bodies writhing on the floor in agony and heads flying from their shoulders. One of the most brutal kills in the game comes when Wolverine rips a helicopter pilot out of his cockpit and forces him head-first into the blades! There’s no nonsensical censoring in this game; it’s bloody, violent action all the way through and this really helps to make the repetitive hack-and-slash gameplay more interesting and entertaining.
Enemies and Bosses: As mentioned previously, the majority of the enemies you’ll encounter in the game are machine gun-toting soldiers; when in Africa, you’ll fight wild natives who wield machetes but you’ll also battle some rather generic-looking robots when breaching the Sentinel facility. It doesn’t take long for you to encounter more formidable variants of these enemies, such as the Machete Champion (who can set you ablaze), shield carrying soldiers (whose guard you must break with a charged heavy attack), soldiers packing grenade launchers (whose projectiles you must reflect back), and even invisible enemies (“Ghosts”) who carry shotguns and are be dispatched by grabbing them and tapping Y to blow their heads off. You’ll also come up against more monstrous enemies such as the lava-and-rock-covered Leviathan and the Weaponized Experiment Neurodindritic Incident Gamma Zero (W.E.N.D.I.G.O.) prototypes; these are best attacked with your Fury Attacks as they charge at you, deliver big damage with their swings, and can catch you in mid-air as you lunge if you don’t get around behind them. As you damage the Leviathan, it’ll protect itself with tougher rock and start tossing and smashing boulders at you so you’ll have to lunge at it whenever possible and you’ll soon be faced with two to four of these enemies at a time so it’s best to get a rhythm on.
You’ll be leaping at a lot of helicopters but especially to bring down the sharp-shooting Agent Zero.
You’ll also have to fight “Jungle Mutants” like Shifter, a blue energy being who teleports about the place, traps you in electrical prisms of light, and can duplicate itself (but is, thankfully, easily dispatched with environmental kills). The first time you encounter these enemies, they act as sub-bosses but quickly become regular enemies and you’ll often be faced with a variety of different opponents and forced to adapt to each on the fly. A recurring element in the game are the helicopters that are sent to bring you down; at least three times you’ll have to outrun these pursuers and then lunge at them, moving the left analogue stick to avoid being shot at and smashing your way into the cockpit with X or Y to bring them down. There’s a particularly gruelling battle that has you dodging helicopter fire as four W.E.N.D.I.G.O.s attack you at once but, thankfully, enemies can damage each other so you can position the beasts into each other’s attacks and the bullets from the helicopter. Prior to this battle, you’ll also have to contend with a pretty unique switch in perspective as David Nord/Agent Zero takes shots at you with his sniper rifle and you control Wolverine from the perspective of Nord’s sniper scope.
Creed is a far less pivotal or threatening figure in the game despite being fought twice.
The first real boss you’ll battle is Victor, Logan’s stepbrother (though this plot point, like a lot of plot points from the film, is nowhere near as relevant or emphasised as in the movie). You’ll fight Victor twice throughout the game, with the first bout taking place in and outside of a bar and the second inside of Stryker’s island base, just like in the film. Victor mirrors many of your own abilities and can lunge, swipe, and claw at you; he can also grab you to deliver combos and you’re in just as much danger of being impaled on the environment throughout the game as he and your other enemies are. Still, Victor isn’t much of a threat; although he boasts the same healing factor as Wolverine, I never actually noticed his health regenerating in either fight and it’s pretty simple to lunge at him, block and counter his attacks, and either use the environment or your Fury Attacks to whittle his health down and defeat him in both battles.
The Sentinel poses a formidable threat and must be attacked both on the ground and in mid-air!
As you might expect given that you end up in a Sentinel facility, you’ll have to battle with a Sentinel prototype as well. The first time you encounter the Sentinel, it’s in pieces and you have to solve a bit of a track puzzle to position its hand in place to attack its head but, despite your efforts, Bolivar Trask activates the prototype and you have to fight it outside the facility. The Sentinel is suitably massive and stomps around the place, leaps at you to cause shockwaves, fires laser blasts from its hand, and grabs you to blast you with its eyebeams in a homage to that iconic “Days of Future Past” cover art. To battle the Sentinel, you need to attack its feet and hands; this is best done by luring it towards the electrified panels on the floor, which will stun it for longer (though it’s difficult to tell that you’re actually dealing damage to it because of its high health bar). Once you damage it enough, it’ll take off and you’ll have to freefall down to it, dodging or ploughing through debris and guiding Wolverine to its thrusters. Eventually, you’ll do enough damage that Wolverine targets its main power source, which requires you to mash B to rip open its chest plate before it can blast you.
While the Blob is simple, Gambit leads you on an elaborate chase and is the most frustrating boss.
Immediately after felling the Sentinel, you’ll fight with Fred Dukes/The Blob; unlike in the movie, this fight takes place in a supermarket full of destructible elements. The Blob is very similar to the Leviathan and W.E.N.D.I.G.O. enemies and will charge at you and repel your lunges with his drum-like belly. Once you damage him enough, though, he’ll try to squash you with a belly flop, which stuns him long enough for you to lunge or mount him and claw at him and force him into walls to bring him down. Immediately after that fight, you’ll have to battle what was, for me, the most annoying, frustrating, and long-winded boss of the entire game: Gambit. Gambit attacks with his staff and kinetically-charged playing cards, which must be countered and reflected back, respectively, to stun him. What makes this boss so annoying, though, is that you fight him a whole bunch of times and are forced to chase through up and through a skyscraper. Eventually, you battle him on giant neon letters, lunging at him when he charges and destroys them and mashing A when he tosses you over the edge. This was, honestly, the most exasperating part of the entire game as each fight with Gambit just went on and on and it seemed never-ending; of all the characters and Mutants in the game, I never would have expected Gambit to be so versatile, resilient, and challenging!
Deadpool will push your button mashing skills to breaking point!
After the finale battle with Victor, you are forced to battle Deadpool at Three Mile Island. If you haven’t seen the film, you might be a bit confused about who Deadpool is since he barely appears at all in the game’s story but he’s a pretty formidable boss in his own right. Fighting him is, essentially, the same as fighting Victor except that you’ll damn near break your wrist trying to mash A following a counter of his blades and it’s a two-stage boss fight. In the first, you fight him in an ordinary area of the island, avoiding his spinning blades and jumping attacks and whittling his health down with your Fury Attacks but, in the second, you battle him atop a cooling tower. Here, he demonstrates his ability to teleport and will blast at you with optic blasts that can destroy parts of the environment. Still, he’s pretty easy to defeat; you simply block his attacks, unleash your Fury Attacks, and lunge at him after he fires his eye beams. When you’ve dealt enough damage, the QTE becomes easier to pull off and is a great way to deal additional damage; while Deadpool’s health doesn’t regenerate during the fight, it will fill up at least once, which can make this rather long-winded and frustrating but it’s nothing compared to fighting Gambit!
Power-Ups and Bonuses: As you battle enemies and destroy crates, you’ll earn red Rage Orbs to fill up your Rage Meter and experience points (XP) that will see you level-up in time. Levelling up increases your health meter and earns you Skill Points, which you can spend in the “Character” sub-menu. Here, you can increase your maximum health, Rage Meter, and the damage and duration and effectiveness of your Fury Attacks. Each one will cost you more Skill Points as you upgrade them, though, so it’s best to either stock up or focus on one attribute to upgrade at a time. You can also boost your health and earn additional Skill Points by finding power-ups hidden in each environment, generally just off to one side or the opposite way from where you’re being directed to go. Every time you fight and defeat enemies, you’ll also fill up a “Reflex” meter in the Character sub-menu; when each of these is mastered, you’ll find that you deal more damage to, and have a greater defence against, the game’s enemies, which adds an extra incentive to combat. Finally, you’ll also find “Mutagens” hidden throughout the game; up to three of these can eventually be equipped and each one can also by upgraded further to increase you damage, Fury Attacks, or regenerative capabilities as well as boosting the speed which you build up your Reflexes.
Additional Features: There are fifty Achievements for you to earn throughout the game, the majority of which you’ll get just by playing through the story mode. You get Achievements for killing up to 2000 enemies, performing lunges and Quick Kills, tossing enemies from high ledges, and clearing each chapter of the main story. As you explore your environment, you’ll also find dead bodies and acquire Dog Tags for XP and which count towards Achievements and you’ll need to venture off the beaten path a little bit or attack enemies and bosses in specific ways to get some of the more obscure Achievements but you can track your progress towards them at any time from the “Statistics” menu. When you first start the game, you can select to play on “Easy” or “Normal” difficulty; you may as well pick “Easy” as the only difficulty-based Achievement comes after you clear the game and unlock “Hard” mode. Once you beat the game, though, you can replay any mission you like and pick a costume to wear beforehand but you’ll lose all of your saved progress and upgrades if you want to get the “Walking Death” Achievement so I’d recommend clearing the game and mopping up any Achievements you’ve missed tied to kills and Dog Tags and such before playing on Hard.
Unlock some cool classic costumes and beat the game to access a harder difficulty mode.
Also hidden throughout the game are a number of different Wolverine action figures; finding enough of these will unlock a special challenge from the main menu. Here, you’re pitted against three different Wolverines and, when you defeat them, you’ll unlock a new costume to wear including Wolverine’s classic brown-and-tan outfit, his yellow-and-blue spandex, and his awesome black-and-grey X-Force outfit. There are actually more action figures than you need but collecting them only awards you an XP boost rather than the likes of Wolverine’s Weapon-X outfit or movie costume, and there is a fourth challenge available but it seems that this was a Gamestop exclusive unlockable that would give you access to the X-Men’s Danger Room and it doesn’t appear to be accessible now. Sadly, that’s about it as far as bonus content goes; you can enter some codes to make the game easier but you won’t be able to get Achievements with these activated and it’s a shame that there aren’t more costumes to unlock.
The Summary: I was very much looking forward to playing X-Men Origins: Wolverine; I’d heard time and time again that it was one of the best licensed videogames out there and actually better than the movie (which I have always considered to be pretty enjoyable and under-rated). However, I was surprised to find that all of the praise I had heard about the game didn’t relate to it doing a very good job of recreating the events of the movie. To be fair, a lot of licensed videogames falter a bit in this regard but X-Men Origins: Wolverine does a pretty lacklustre job of rushing through the film’s story, glossing over Team X and Wolverine’s relationship with the team and his brother, and simultaneously paying lip service to the film’s narrative while also awkwardly staying beholden to it in other ways. The game excels when it veers from the film’s plot, to be honest, and I can’t help but think it would have been better for it to act as a prequel and sequel to the movie rather than actually including events from the film. The sections in Africa are much more visually interesting than those in Alkali Lake (even though the developers tried to mix things up a bit by stripping you of your powers here) and I’d rather infiltrate a Sentinel production plant than visit Stryker’s bland island. This would also have given the developers the opportunity to include more characters, enemies, and elements from the comic books; they hint at this with the final cutscene but fall back on disposable grunts and characters from the movie rather than the likes of Mister Sinister or Omega Red. Thanks to its gore, violence, and frenetic gameplay, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is definitely a fun, if monotonous, experience; it’s probably the best and most accurate videogame portrayal of Wolverine ever made and is worth a play if only to see him hack up enemies and be stripped to his metal skeleton but there’s not a lot in terms of replayability and will probably be a mediocre distraction for fans of the hack-and-slash genre.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Are you a fan of the videogame adaptation of X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Did you prefer it to the movie? How do you feel it compares to other hack-and-slash videogames? Were you a fan of the gratuitous violence and gore? What did you think to the game’s interpretation of the film’s plot; were you also a bit perturbed by the truncated narrative or did you prefer the alterations presented in the game? Which of the bosses was your favourite or most frustrating? Which of Wolverine’s costumes was your default? Which X-Men or Wolverine videogame is your favourite and why? How are you celebrating Wolverine’s debut this month? Whatever your thoughts on X-Men Origins: Wolverine, or Wolverine and the X-Men in general, drop a comment down below.
In September 1961, DC Comics published “Flash of Two Worlds” (Fox, et al), a landmark story that brought together two generations of the Flash: the Golden Age Jay Garrick and the Silver Age Barry Allen thanks to the concept of the multiverse, an infinite number of parallel universes that allowed any and all stories and characters to co-exist and interact. Marvel Comics would also adopt this concept and, to celebrate the release of this very film, I’ve been both celebrating the Master of the Mystic Arts and exploring the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) equivalent of the multiverse every Sunday of May.
Released: 6 May 2022 Director: Sam Raimi Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Budget: $200 million Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Xochitl Gomez, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, and Chiwetel Ejiofor,
The Plot: Following a number of reality-altered events, Doctor Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) is unexpectedly thrown into a fight not just for his life, but for the fate of the entire multiverse when a girl with the power to traverse alternate dimensions is threatened by a corrupted force seeking to take her power for her own.
The Background: Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’sbizarre creation, Dr. Strange, has undoubtedly become one of Marvel’s most pivotal figureheads since his unimpressive debut and has had a storied history with adaptation. After an ill-fated live-action film in the seventies, a number of animated ventures, and a long period of Development Hell, Marvel’s Master of the Mystic Arts finally made his big-screen debut as part of the MCU to both universal praise and incredible financial success. Development of a sequel began in 2016, with director Scott Derrickson eager to incorporate the villain Nightmare and really delve into Dr. Strange’s weirder aspects. MCU producer and figurehead Kevin Feige saw Dr. Strange as the linchpin on the MCU’s fourth phase, which would expand upon the multiversal aspects of their successful franchise, while Derrickson initially aimed to introduce more horror elements to the sequel. This caused some creative differences between the two parties, and led to Derrickson stepping down and Sam Raimi being brought in as the director and injecting his own blend of horror to the script after delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After attempting to introduce the character in previous MCU projects, Feige finally found an avenue to bring in America Chavez, and the script was rewritten to both play to Raimi’s strengths as a director and to further expand on Wanda Maximoff’s (Olsen) character growth from WandaVision (Shakman, 2021). Seeking to infuse a horror vibe to the MCU and explore the consequences of dabbling in black magic and the multiverse, the film also ended up including a number of cameo appearances from iconic actors and fan casted characters to tease towards even bigger things for the MCU. Despite the film not seeing a release in LGTBQ+-intolerant countries, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness amassed a worldwide gross of $955.8 million and was met by widely positive reviews; critics praised its harrowing tale of grief and desperation, the unique horror slant, and the visual spectacle on offer, though some found it to be a bit formulaic and bloated at times.
The Review: Right off the bat I have to say that I’m not actually the biggest fan of comic book movies delving into the multiverse concept. It’s a strange opinion to have given I regularly celebrate the trope and have enjoyed a lot of multiversal stories in comics, but I’m having a lot of difficulty reconciling that audiences aren’t more confused by it all. I’m a lifetime comic book fan and even I struggle with it a bit and, as much as I enjoyed Spider-Man: No Way Home (Webb, 2021) and Alfred Molina’s portrayal of Doctor Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus, I can’t help but wonder if bringing that version of that villain back cost us seeing a new actor’s take on the character. I give Marvel a lot of leeway, though; after ten-plus years of building up their cinematic universe, exploring science, the cosmos, time and space, I think they’re in a far better position to start exploring beyond the confines of their singular reality. It’s not like, say, the DC Extended Universe, which jumped into alternate versions, timelines, and multiverse shenanigans just a few years after their first movie, to the point where they’re already having to rejig their timeline to try and make sense of it all. I feel Marvel’s execution so far has been very respectful and very exciting for us die-hard fans of the comics and movies, and also suspect that this phase of bringing back popular actors in their iconic superhero roles may soon pass as we head towards whatever the culmination of Phase Four really is.
With the world still reeling from the Blip, Dr. Strange is thrust into the chaotic multiverse.
Still, if you’re going to explore the multiverse, what better character than the Master of the Mystic Arts himself? When the movie begins, Dr. Strange is still guarding the Sanctum Sanctorum in New York City but, thanks to being dusted during the Blip, is also still no longer the Sorcerer Supreme, with those duties now being fulfilled by Wong (Wong). Their relationship isn’t one of master and servant, but more one of bickering peers; there’s a recurring gag that Dr. Strange refuses to bow to Wong since he’s still a bit annoyed at having lost his lofty position but, despite this, he remains a dedicated and powerful spellcaster since Wong’s duties are more focused on training sorcerers at Kamar-Taj. Dr. Strange is, however, facing a bit of a personal crisis; his dedication to his newfound lifestyle, and having been gone for five years, means that he’s missed out on the girl. Doctor Christine Palmer (McAdams) has not only met someone else, but is getting married to him, and he’s plagued by doubts concerning his decision to surrender the Time Stone to the Mad Titan, Thanos (Josh Brolin), which saved the lives of billions but also disrupted the lives of countless others, including his former colleague, Doctor Nicodemus West (Michael Stuhlbarg), who questions Dr. Strange’s actions. Strange remains justified, however, as he acted out of the greater good, having viewed millions of potential timelines, but these doubts over his character and motivation continue to surface throughout the film when he learns from America Chavez (Gomez) that his alternative selves have been so focused on the big picture that they’ve been driven to unspeakable acts, such as attempting to take America’s power for his own and even being corrupted by the forbidden magical tome, the Darkhold. Since she’s being pursued by forces far beyond her power, and is unable to control her dimension-hopping abilities, America has little choice but to trust Dr. Strange to protect her, but both her and the alternate versions of Christine have reservations about Strange’s character after seeing the lengths his other selves have gone to to keep the vast multiverse safe.
Devastated at losing her kids, Wanda covets America’s power and wages all-out war as the Scarlet Witch.
America is quite the anomaly; in an infinite number of alternate realities, it appears as though there’s only one of her, since she hasn’t encountered a counterpart in all of her random travels throughout the multiverse and she doesn’t dream (the film posits that dreams are a window into the lives of our alternate selves, which is an intriguing concept). Desperate, afraid, and alone, America is carrying a great deal of guilt after her chaotic powers accidentally sucked her mothers to an unknown fate when she was a child. America’s ability to conjure a massive, star-shaped portal to anywhere in the multiverse is triggered by fear and panic, meaning she has little control over her abilities but they offer a wealth of possibilities to more powerful and experienced forces who could absorb her power for their own ends. Dr. Strange first meets America when she’s being pursued by an unspeakable eldritch abomination, which he and Wong recognise to be a creature of witchcraft rather than sorcery, so he seeks out console from Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, hoping to recruit the former Avenger to help protect America. However, Wanda has been so consumed with grief after losing her magically-conjured sons, Billy (Julian Hilliard) and Tommy (Jett Klyne) from the conclusion of WandaVision that she’s turned to the Darkhold to find ways of being reunited with them in an alternate reality. The Darkhold’s dark magic, coupled with the destructive potential of the Scarlet Witch, have driven Wanda into a maniacal obsession with obtaining America’s powers and, when Dr. Strange refuses to hand the girl over peacefully and condemn her to death at the Scarlet Witch’s hands, Wanda launches a brutal all-out assault against Kamar-Taj and, after they’re stranded in the multiverse, to force Wong to take her to the forbidden land of Mount Wundagore, where the Darkhold was transcribed, to both locate them and find the power to “dream walk” into the body of her alternate self to relentlessly pursue them, slaughtering anyone and everyone who gets in her way.
The alternate Mordo brings Dr. Strange before the Illuminati, but Wanda mercilessly slaughters them all.
Since America can’t control or direct her powers, Dr. Strange immediately out his alternative self for help, only to find that he heroically died saving the universe from Thanos and that his former mentor, Baron Karl Mordo (Ejiofor), has taken his place as the Sorcerer Supreme. For those who were hoping for a resolution to Mordo’s vow to hunt down and eliminate sorcerers at the end of Doctor Strange (Derrickson, 2016), you’ll be disappointed to learn that “prime” Mordo (i.e. the one from what the MCU calls “Earth-616”) isn’t actually in this film and his counterpart is a far less antagonistic character…or so it seems. Initially, Mordo is welcoming and courteous but, all too soon, Dr. Strange and America find themselves drugged, fitted with power-dampening restraints, and placed in holding cells under the observation of the alternative Christine to determine whether 6161-Strange is as much of a threat as his counterpart. This leads to Mordo bringing Dr. Strange before the judgement of the “Illuminati”, a panel of superpowered beings who stood against Thanos and executed their version of Dr. Strange after he became corrupted by the Darkhold. Comprised of Mordo, Captain Peggy Carter/Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell), Captain Maria Rambeau/Captain Marvel (Lashana Lynch), Blackagar Boltagon/Black Bolt (Anson Mount), Professor Charles Xavier (Sir Patrick Stewart), and Doctor Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (John Krasinski), the Illuminati underestimate Wanda’s devastating power in favour of focusing on Strange’s potential threat, which ultimately results in all of them being mercilessly slaughtered by the raging Scarlet Witch when she puppets her alternative self right into their chamber. Wanda easily negates Black Bolt’s destructive voice, turning it back on himself so he blows a hole in his head, slices Captain Carter in two with her own shield, crushes Captain Marvel to death, reduces Mr. Fantastic to spaghetti, and snaps Xavier’s neck in a harrowing sequence that’s just one of many allusions to director Sam Raimi’s past as a horror director. Thought assisted by Christine and led towards the Book of Vishanti, which promises the power to oppose Wanda’s black magic, this tome is destroyed, America is captured, and Dr. Strange is forced to turn to another corrupted version of himself, and ultimately the Darkhold, to find the means to keep Wanda from killing America, regardless of the toll such dark magic threatens to extract on his soul.
The Nitty-Gritty: Loneliness, grief, and desperation are core themes in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; Dr. Strange maintains that he’s perfectly happy being the Master of the Mystic Arts and with his newfound purpose in life, but it’s clear that he still has feelings for Christine and regrets losing his chance to be with her. All throughout the film, he’s disturbed (but not surprised) to learn that his alternate selves all fumbled their chance at happiness, though the ramifications of this were far more destructive for his counterparts; similar to Strange Supreme from What If…?(Andrews, 2021), Strange’s corrupted doppelgänger was turned towards dark magic after losing Christine and his focus on trying to scour the multiverse for a world where they could be happy directly led to his universe being torn asunder by an “incursion” event, the very thing the Illuminati feared both their Dr. Strange and 616-Strange would cause if he wasn’t put down ahead of time. America’s fear of her powers and of trusting others is directly tied to that traumatic incident in her childhood where she literally swept her parents away in an accidental outburst, and her reluctance to trust Dr. Strange is based entirely on his alternative self turning on her to keep her powers out of Wanda’s hands, so her character arc isn’t just about learning that the ability to control her powers has been within her all along but also about finding a place to belong in the infinite worlds of the multiverse. Finally, Wanda is so desperate to be reunited with her children that she not only allows the Darkhold to corrupt her vast powers but also attacks friend and foe alike, embracing her destiny as the destructive Scarlet Witch and fully prepared to sacrifice America’s life (and the life of her doppelgänger) to be with her children once more.
The multiverse and all its monstrous potential is vividly brought to life in this visual spectacle.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness takes the rules of magic and the snippet of the multiverse we saw in Doctor Strange and Spider-Man: No Way Home and absolutely runs with it; in the years since his debut movie, Dr. Strange’s power and command over magic has vastly increased, meaning he’s able to do far more than just conjure protective shields or glowing whips. Now, he can summon magical buzz saws, demonic hands, animated musical notes and use them as projectiles, and perform all manner of miraculous and visually entertaining feats. Naturally, this makes him an incredibly over-powered character, but the film goes to great lengths to put him in jeopardy by placing even greater, often more monstrous, threats in his path; when Gargantos attacks America, it takes both Dr. Strange and Wong to put it down, which is a feat in and of itself, but even they and their magical cohorts of Kamar-Taj are no match for the full fury of the Scarlet Witch, who leaves an untold number of charred corpses and ashen remains in her wake as she pursues America. When America transports herself and Dr. Strange through the multiverse, the film really starts to come alive; they are blasted through an animated universe, the Quantum realm, the Dark Dimension, a universe where they’re turned into paint, and one where they’re literally pulled apart into tiny pieces. Eventually dumped in the M. C. Escher-esque void between universes and a desolate universe where a devastating incursion has caused reality and physics to fold in on itself, Dr. Strange’s brief and violent tour of the multiverse sees him travelling to strange worlds where society and history are slightly different, characters are noticeably changed, and even possessing the lifeless body of one of his counterparts in order to oppose Wanda. I can certainly see why Wanda’s turn to the dark side probably rattled a few people; I definitely didn’t expect that to happen (or, at least, I thought maybe the reveal that she was behind it all would happen mid-way through or near the end) and I was doubled surprised by just how many references were made to WandaVision since the MCU has notoriously ignored its TV projects in the past. WandaVision was a startling examination of the destructive power of grief, and I think the idea that someone can just get past the sort of trauma Wanda has been through without lasting repercussions is a bit unlikely, and the film definitely paints her as someone in a great deal of pain and corrupted by the Darkhold’s influence. While seeing her match Dr. Strange blow for blow was a great way to showcase her power, having her tear through the Illuminati was an even greater example of her potential threat to the multiverse.
Dr. Strange is forced to use dark magic to combat the threat Wanda poses to the multiverse.
While it’s clear that many of the Illuminati’s actors weren’t all on set at the same time, it was fun seeing Patrick Stewart back in his iconic role (and accompanied by the nineties cartoon theme, no less) one last time, and to see long-time fan casting John Krasinski portray Mr. Fantastic, but it was Anson Mount returning as Black Bolt which really surprised me as I never thought we’d see the Inhumans referenced or included after their disastrous show. Again, you could argue that these characters were “wasted” but I saw them as fun little bits of fan service for long-time fans; I said up top that I get annoyed at other actors not having a crack in these roles, though, so I am still holding out hope that we see a new actor portray Xavier if and when the X-Men are properly introduced to the MCU. Dr. Strange doesn’t come to this decision lightly; all throughout the film, his goal has been to claim the Book of Vishanti to acquire the power to stop the Scarlet Witch but, when it’s destroyed, he’s left with no choice but to turn to the Darkhold possessed by his corrupt alternate self. Transformed into a three-eyed, monstrous version of himself, this alternate Strange has become as consumed by the Darkhold as Wanda and, after his defeat, the lingering question of how the book will affect 616-Strange hangs in the air for the finale. Thankfully, the alternate Christine is on hand to act as his moral compass, encouraging him to utilise the power of the dark spirits seeking to punish him for desecrating his other self’s body, which is enough for him to save Wong from Wanda’s rock monsters and free America before her power (and life) can be consumed. Finally harnessing her incredible powers, America first lashes out at Wanda and then, when she realises she’s no match for the Scarlet Witch, grants the corrupted Avenger her wish and transports her to her boys, who are naturally terrified of this malevolent version of their loving mother. Devastated at seeing them cower in fear of her, Wanda abandons her crusade and, to atone for her heinous actions, willingly brings Mount Wundagore down around her, presumably killing herself in the process (but we never see a body, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t pop up again in some way, shape, or form). in the aftermath, Wong beings repairing Kamar-Taj and training his students (with America among their number, the implications of which could make her one of the MCU’s most powerful characters ever) and Dr. Strange finds a peace with himself after finally admitting to the alternate Christine that he loves her. However, his jovial mood is immediately shattered when he’s crippled by whispering voices and the emergence of a third eye on his forehead like his corrupted counterpart as a result of the Darkhold’s influence, but even this is instantly swept under the rug when, in a mid-credits sequence, a mysterious woman (apparently Clea (Charlize Theron)) demand she help her repair an incursion in the Dark Dimension…
The Summary: After seeing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, I have to commend Marvel for their marketing strategy; while the trailers hinted at Wanda’s turn to the dark side, nothing was made explicit and even the official blurb was little more than a vague statement about the film, so I was very surprised to see her transform into this malevolent, vindictive witch of incredible power. Wanda’s pain and grief are very real and believable, and I was also surprised that the film didn’t shy away from assuming the audience was familiar with WandaVision as a part of her character arc, and seeing her become this malicious force of darkness definitely raises the stakes for the MCU and means that anything can happen to these characters, no matter how heroic they may be. Dr. Strange also had an intriguing arc in the film; torn between his regrets and his duties, he fully commits to protecting America at all costs, no matter the sacrifice and the lingering question over whether he will also succumb to the darkness helps add a fascinating edge to the character as his concerns must be on a far wider scale at all times, necessitating tough choices and questionable actions. The exploration of the multiverse was great; I definitely think the film has established a short-hand for the concept and that future iterations of it will simply be taken for granted going forward, and I did enjoy seeing some new and old faces appear in cameo roles as the Illuminati, which again hints towards some exciting things in the MCU’s future. The film does suffer a little from some pacing and repetitive issues, however; obviously it can’t be all action all the time, but it does slow down to explain its concepts one time too many, and I found the framing of Dr. Strange’s meeting with the Illuminti jarring as it just highlighted that many of the actors weren’t actually there. Leaving Mordo’s vendetta unresolved was also a bit of a disappointment for me, as was the mid- and post-credits sequences, but I’m interested to see these plot threads resolved in a future film and had a blast with the film’s bizarre visuals and bat-shit-crazy moments. Bolstered by some great horror-themed shots and full of fan service and surreal imagery, the film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was an entertaining thrill-ride and absolutely galvanised Dr. Strange as one of the cornerstones of the MCU and, I hope, has opened the door for new versions of some of Marvel’s most popular characters to join this ever-expanding cinematic universe.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
What did you think to Doctor Strangein the Multiverse of Madness? Are you a fan of the muliverse concept or do you find it a bit too complex? What did you think to Dr. Strange’s character arc and the potential of him turning bad? Were you a fan of America Chavez or do you think she’s a bit too overpowered? What did you think to Wanda’s turn to the dark side and were you disappointed that Mordo was pushed to the side? Which member of the Illuminati surprised you the most and what did you think to their inclusion? Were you a fan of the film’s horror elements? Whatever your thoughts on Doctor Strangein the Multiverse of Madness, sign up to leave your thoughts below or leave a comment on my social media, and thanks for sticking around for Multiverse Madness!
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