X-Men: Wolverine for Wii brings pointless enemies and similar looking stages, making game play boring and repetitive.
I was wrong. Sure, the Wii-mote is used in this game, but not in the way I expected. I assumed Wii-mote and Nunchuk would be used in tandem as the claws of Wolverine. Instead, there are occasional points where you shake the Wii-mote a certain way to do a certain action, be it opening a closed door or lunging from a point. Sure the lunging can seem cool after you do it once, but the Wii-mote controls don't make much sense. The majority of the time they were clunky and very disappointing.
I realize the Wii has become a system meant for all ages to enjoy, so in this version of Wolverine, there is nothing in the way of gore. PS3 allows you to cut off limbs and really shows you the power of Wolverine's claws. In the Wii, you will see a subtle spray or red but it isn't anything a parent would get upset about if their child was playing it.
What caused me the most grief as I played this game, though, was the actual gameplay. You start off in a Canadian forest tracking Victor (Sabretooth) while learning the controls by fighting what I thought was every woodsman in Canada. It seemed as if wave after wave of woodsmen were ready to kill you because you made them look bad... okay, that makes about zero sense but they needed some way to introduce us to the way he controls.
That being said, the game became truly monotonous after about ten minutes behind the controller. I ended being trapped for three hours straight behind the controls, hoping I could get to a point where the game changed its tune and let you do something a little different. Sadly, you find yourself stuck fighting wave after wave of the same enemies and although they will sometimes have different abilities, you'll more or less be fighting the same fight over and over.
The boss battles add some flavor to the otherwise boring trek from same looking room to same looking room, but after five minutes fighting a giant mutant, you'll be asking yourself why the designers made this battle about button mashing for 15 minutes. Frustrating controls make the battles drag on, especially in sections where they try to make you see some exciting visuals and have you do the God of War-esque button press at certain points to see some cool stuff. The unfortunate part of this is if you fail to press a certain button in the half-a-second you have to push it, you immediately get a 'Game Over' and have to start the battle again.
Save points are numerous and automatic so if you ever get a 'Game Over' (which you will) it is easy to pick up where you left off. You will be frustrated and wishing you could set down the controller, though. As I said earlier, I had difficulty walking away just because I wanted to prove I was better than this game and could beat it, but instead it just kept going.
The levels themselves all have a similar feel, and were reminiscent of an old platformer game. There is no real ability to explore as the levels are very much a one-path-you-can-take level and you spend the majority of your time jumping from platform to platform in an attempt to get out.
When I cam across my first puzzle, I was hoping the game was about to redeem itself, but no. The 'puzzles' if you can call them that, are generally able to be solved in under ten seconds. There is no real thought that needs to be put into the game. Just walk and press the attack button.
All in all, this game was a HUGE disappointment after seeing the PS3 version (which was better than movie, although that isn't really a feat). By bringing hours of monotony, poor and clunky controls and a plot line that is unexplained and worse than the movie, Wolverine for Wii is a huge stinker. Don't even take the money to rent this game unless you want to fill your living room with hours of cursing and exclamations like, "How did I die? I pressed the A button!"