REVIEW - Deadpool (360, PS3, PC)

This guest review was written by my friend Sunny. He has the distinction of being the least jaded gamer I know. His continuing enthusiasm for the medium is an inspiration to the rest of us grumpy assholes.

Boobies, Guns, and Chimichangas

Deadpool has had a recent spike in popularity. The “Merc With a mouth” started out as a cult favorite, and has turned into one of the most loved comic characters. Unfortunately, he has never gotten much screen time in any of his appearances. He’s always been a side character, which doesn’t allow for Wade’s whacky personality to shine.

When I heard High Moon Studios was developing a Deadpool game, I was quite excited. High Moon has done great work with the Transformers: Cybertron series. When I heard that it was a budget game that would retail at $50, I started feeling cautiously optimistic. And with good reason; the game is fun, and definitely satisfies the Deadpool fan inside (even overdoses, at times). But the game is incredibly uninspired at times.

The graphics are dated, for the most part. The environments look bland and uninspired, and the average graphical polish definitely doesn’t help. Deadpool even breaks the fourth wall with this flaw when he goes to pick up a book from his bookshelf and lifts the entire shelf with all the books inside and puts the blame on an amateur animator.

The character models of Deadpool, Wolverine, and Cable look quite good, but the rest of the cast looks incredibly mediocre. This brings up one of the few issues that really bothered me: the enemy variety. There really isn’t any. As always, they poke around the trope of having tons of the same enemies by calling them “clones.” It may be funny…but I still have to kill the same guys for hours on end. This is a bit disappointing in the bosses/established villains. Deadpool makes light of having to face “B list villains” as most of the bosses, and it’s true. Mister Sinister is really the only recognizable villain you face.

Even with Deadpool directly making jokes about the uninspired missions, you do still have to trudge through them. Laughing at having to do a sewer level and a turret section is all good and fun…until you have to do them multiple times.

The gameplay is about as “meh” as a hack n’ slash can get. It works. It’s fun. But it does not do anything new. By the time you’re 3/4ths of the way through the game, you’ll be incredibly overpowered with all the power ups you’ll get from the Deadpool coins that litter the maps. Switching between guns and blades is surprisingly quite smooth, though. I found myself using Deadpool’s classic katanas almost all the way through, as the melee combat adds a bit of a challenge.

 

 If you’re here for story, you’ll be disappointed. There literally is no story, as Deadpool receives High Moon’s script for the game and rips it up in the first 5 minutes. He proceeds to write the story as he goes, and spends a good part of the game trying to save Rogue so that she will love him.

The best part of Deadpool is definitely the humor. The interaction with Wolverine, Rogue, and Cable is fantastic. Deadpool’s jokes are hilarious. High Moon studios know how to do fan service very well. The 4th wall is demolished every minute or so in this game; its darn fun to watch Deadpool call Nolan North and get hung up on. Usually having the protagonist talk the entire game constantly gets annoying. Fast. But the writers made it work in this game. It fits Deadpool’s personality, and there is enough variety in the quips.

 Nolan North is the absolute best voice for Deadpool, he has 5 or 6 entirely different Deadpool voices that go on in DP’s head throughout the game. Hearing him bicker with himself is a lot of fun and really brings out just how true the game is to the character. The rest of the voice actors do a well enough job, but North really made me admire his talent. He can go from a “TV Movie Trailer narrator” deep voice, to a squeaky middle school kid talking about boobs [mostly Rogue’s, which I totally understand].

Deadpool is a functional game. The “game” part is lifeless and average, but the fan service and respect for the source material makes this game a “must have” for fans of the character.

For those looking for a great game and are not familiar with DP, the game is a 6.5/10.

For fans of the character that are okay with just watching Wade’s antics, the game is an 8/10.