"X2: Wolverines Revenge... Worth buying?"

Ok. where should I start. Well firstly this is a review to X2 Wolverines Revenge... so if you weren't looking for this, GO AWAY. Ok. Two: I am rating this review 1 to 10, 1 being the DEVIL, evil of all games, or one of the head bad games, and 10 being the holy grail of all games, meaning the game has no flaws. Very hard to give out.
Wolverine- the toughest of the X-men. After all, you have adamantium, an unbreakable mineral, attached to your body, retractable claws, regenerative healing power, making him almost un killable, and wolf like senses.
As the game starts, the first level, you end up in the weapon X compound, in 1968, pummeling baddies. Then you learn you have a virus in you, if you were to rebel. *gasp*. So anyway, the point of the game is to get the cure, while beating up baddies on the way.
This is the basic controls, there's a punch and kick button, then a action button, to open doors and such, jump, unsheathesheath clawsrage mode, stealth and sense button.
Im sure it sounds nice to you already, but before I start dissing this game left and right, im going to acknowledge the good things about this game. Firstly, the graphics are OK. The animations (frame rate) is very acceptable.
Also it has some cool ''gimmicks'' like sence mode, where you can track enemys or spot their location.
Another cool thing, but this really only applies to comic fanboys of X-men, is it has cool cameos of characters, like Beast, Collossus, Rogue, and cool baddies like Wendigo, Juggernaut, Magneto, Omega Red and more. Plus theres good voice acting, by Mark Hamil (you know, that Star Wars guy), Patrick Stewart, and a few more actors. Even though the sound is superb, the overuse of same lines and sound effects gets on your nerves.
Lastly (on the cool thing subject) the game feels like your playing wolverine in a way, not some wannabe, because you can really rip some baddies apart when the appropriate moment comes.
Now, we get to the serious stuff. One, the gameplay is fun at first, but it gets quickly repetitive, after you do the same things over and over again. Like you have to go to kill baddies, get key card, battle some more baddies, meet boss at the end, then you do that at the next level. Another thing, all the levels take place in some narrow corridor ed fortress, where stealth is usually the only option. I want to get my freak on on some evil doers. On boss battles, they are very annoying because this is how it usually gos. The first battle, you try to learn the patterns that the boss does and counter them until you do it three or four times or so and win the battle.
Then theres saving. This really gets me here. The save points on some of the later levels are VERY far apart, and it gets ANNOYING when you make a wrong turn and you die then you need to start all over again.
The healing. This is how it works. You can only heal when your claws are sheathed. This sounds good on paper, but then your waiting for you to heal standing around with your claws sheathed.
Also I dont feel like you can break out your rage mode enough.
The way you advance your skills is through dog tags, you collect enough of them and you get to get new finishing moves. You collect them through, stealth kills, tripple kills, and boss battles.
After you complete the game, you get a few extras like costumes, or info about your enemys and allies, and a challenge mode, but after getting pissed off with the game in story mode, you wont want challenge mode.

Graphics --- 8
Sound --- 6
Gameplay --- 3
Story --- 8
Replay Value --- 4
Overall --- 4

Overall, even though the sound, story and graphics are decent, the gamplay and replay value are what really matter and it really brings down the game. So even for a real fanboy of Wolverine, I recomend a rental and one time through, just to try it out. For the rest of us, hope the next X-men game won't be so bad.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 05/02/03, Updated 05/02/03