X2: Wolverine's Revenge

While most of Revenge’s game play involves turning bad guys into kebab, the game’s strict homage to the comic gives it more depth.

If I had a chance to play this during the years I was a complete Wolverine fanatic I would have passed out from pleasure overload. No kidding... This is the one of the finest comic book games to date.

The game is at its absolute best when subjecting Wolvie to the stealthier, more cerebral challenges of the day and at its worst when challenging him with action-packed triple teams and showers of gunfire.

Controlling Wolverine during combat can prove difficult, especially when there are multiple enemies onscreen simultaneously.

So much more could have been done with this game, but it’s a move in the right direction. I only wish that there had been more involvement the X-Men characters.

A disappointment. Though the gameplay is okay, it's nothing special, and despite the awesome license this game possesses, it’s sure to grate on anyone after a few hours.

X2 has a number of unforgivable problems. Most noticeable of all is the difficulty level, and in turn, the frustrating nature of the gameplay.

The fan in me can't help but like this game. Despite some questionable A.I. and repetitive attack animations (surprisingly brutal for a Teen rating), the Stealth mode (activated by awkwardly holding down L2 - another control issue) presents a genuinely cool graphic effect similar to thermal vision. [June 2003, p.108]

There was a lot of wasted potential here, especially given a character of Wolverine's caliber. [July 2003, p.27]

A game with some promise and some good ideas, but a half-cocked presentation and execution.

I was quickly disappointed when I found out that all those cool combos I had seen were executed by a single press of the button. I wanted the actual combat to be that exciting, but it wasn’t.

Fundamental gameplay mistakes and atrocious designs run rampant through every inch of this miserable PlayStation 2 application. [June 2003, p.104]

There are some good ideas here, but the lack of detail, soft collision (Wolvie sinks ankle-high into any raised surface), murky control and low poly counts make Logan a dull boy. [June 2003, p.58]

The game offers enough playability to keep hardcore fans occupied, but casual players will quickly tire of the sloppy camerawork, repetitive combat, and awkward controls.

It's unnaturally hard, with save points so few and far between, you'll definitely relate to Wolverine when he goes into a Berserker Rage. [July 2003, p.120]

Logan on a measured rampage and many hidden goodies (like our favorite mutant’s true comic book costume) can’t distract players long enough for them not to notice how bland the game’s environments are.

Character animation is fine, but some questionable collision detection and generic explosions rob it of whatever flash it could have had. X2: Wolverine’s Revenge simply doesn’t feel polished—or even complete.

A fair third-person action beat 'em up, like countless others in the genre, but if you take away all the X-Men trappings you'd be left with something much weaker.

At times it's just too frustrating to be described as "fun", and being turned away, a stone's throw from the end of a level, by the Game Over screen just because you didn't understand precisely how to complete a fairly arbitrary objective is enough to saturate you with disbelief like an anvil landing on your face in the middle of a field.

We don't like to say this about an X-Men game, but Wolverine's Revenge is an unplayable beast of a game.

The pacing is sluggish, the gameplay irritating, and ultimately it feels like Wolverine is exacting revenge on the wrong person: the player. [2 May 2003, p.79]

Gamestyle found it laughable that this rogue superhero couldn’t jump onto a small ledge simply because it was deemed unnecessary – each time Wolverine was knocked back by an invisible force.