i didn't really like it and couldn't even be bothered to finish it.
Deadpool - wacky, fun, too short
Game Review | September 2, 2013 8:45 pm
By Meta
Released: June 25th, 2013
Developer: High Moon Studios
Publisher: Activision
Genre: Third person action
Subgenre: Beat ‘em up
Players: 1
Rated: M for Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, mature humor, sexual content, strong language)
Riding a surge in popularity thanks to Marvel’s media blitz, the Merc with a Mouth finally gets his own game.
The good news is that his combat style is captured well—you can flow smoothly from melee combat to shooting and back, and the developers didn’t artificially limit his power set. You can teleport, hurl grenades, and you heal very quickly provided you can stay out of combat for a few seconds.
The bad news is that this game is short. You can expect maybe 10 hours for a playthrough on medium difficulty. The story is surprisingly good, though, and even though there are few enemy types and they are recycled constantly, you’ll be left wanting more after finishing.
For those unfamiliar with the character, Wade Wilson aka Deadpool talks CONSTANTLY. On top of this, the procedures done to him during the Weapon-X project left him batshit crazy which he manifests by breaking the fourth wall—he is quite aware that he is a comic book character and in this game he likes to call and hassle the developers as well as reading the script and doodling on it. He has two extra personalities stuffed away in his noggin, one a childish dude-bro and the other an apologetic pedant, and since the hero is solo most of the game you get to hear the banter between his 3 selves very frequently.
Outside of a few witty puns, most of the humor is aggressively inappropriate and childish, and if you don’t already love how wacky this character is then you will probably hate him and turn the game’s dialogue all the way down (there’s an Achievement for doing this, by the way). I will admit I was already a fan and several parts of the game made me literally laugh out loud, especially an instance where an NPC drones on about your mission and you get the option to shoot yourself in the head to end it.
The game features cameos from Cable, Psylocke, Rogue, Domino, Death and Mr Sinister as well as a few B- and C-list super villains. It also features a brief cameo of Wolverine whom Deadpool loves to talk about. There is a bio section in the main game menu that plays a brief sound clip and shows comic book covers of each character, but these offer little background information and instead usually have Deadpool mentioning how hot the ladies are or how much better he is at everything than the guys.
Over the course of the game, you collect DP points by killing enemies and just picking them up, and these let you purchase and upgrade weapons and abilities. You start the game with pistols and his trademark kitanas, but you can also purchase sai, hammers, SMGs, and pulse rifles. The great thing is that all of the weapons are effective in their own way even before upgrades, they can be quickly swapped, and all of them come in pairs. You can also equip throwable items like flashbangs, frag grenades and oddly effective beartraps.
The game has a few challenge tasks you can do outside of the story, and they are fun but brief and not actually very challenging once you have a good feel for Deadpool’s abilities. There are no real collectibles in the game; instead, you pick up tacos that frequently drop from dead foes and are also sparsely spread around levels. The nice part is that you only need 100 for the related Achievement and you can easily get this within the first couple chapters of the game.
+ Nice character models
+ Intuitive “gun fu” combat
+ No collectibles
+ Deadpool’s sense of humor
- Deadpool’s sense of humor
- Shamelessly repetitive enemies
- Really needs a sprint button
? Why does his healing factor take so long to kick in
Overall I give Deadpool a 7.5—it is a very fun game but too short. I also would have liked to see more “extras” like unlockable costumes or maybe even the ability to play with a different character skin after completing the game once. It would be quite hilarious to listen to Psylocke babbling on in one of Deadpool’s voices and idly scratching her butt.
Achievements are simple and easy in this game. Difficulties stack, but I’d recommend playing through on Easy or Normal first to get a feel for combat and upgrade everything, then playing each mission again on Hard. You will also need to get Gold in 5 of the 8 challenges, but this is more a matter of time than difficulty.
There are no extras, unfortunately. I would have loved to get a Deadpool outfit for my avatar and his swords & guns for a prop.
Rating: 7.5 of 10
Reviewed: Deadpool
Keywords: None
