With the help of Marvel Comics and Activision, High Moon Games brings you The Merc With The Mouth, the ultra-violent and completely insane Deadpool! This game is brimming with profanity, “blue” humor, violence, self-referential jokes, and X-Men cameos.
Deadpool gets to hack, slash, and blast his way through wave after wave of baddies as he hacks, slashes, and blasts his way through the script. Deadpool wants his own video game, and he sent a proposal to High Moon Games for his awesome video game. It gets rejected. So he sends another proposal, this one with some C4 to give it that extra punch, and now he's off in his own game. He starts out being hired to take out a corrupt media mogul who gets mixed up with Mr. Sinister. Sinister ultimately destroys the target so now Deadpool is in hot pursuit. During his campaign of vengeance he crosses paths with some of his former mutant cohorts, including Psylocke, Rouge, Wolverine, and everyone's favorite time-traveler Cable.
The cinematics are over-flowing with the kind of crude humor and overt silliness you've come to expect from this character. The humor bleeds over into the gameplay as well. He quips and wise-cracks his way through slews of baddies. This element of humor and its heavy-handed use help to keep you interested for a while. However, it wears thin as the story fails to unfold. Any time a character begins to explain important plot points Deadpool either interrupts them or just spaces out and ignores them. You honestly never even really find out what Sinister was planning to do. It almost seems arbitrary, just plot devices used to do nothing more than drag Deadpool through the game. Even Deadpool and the voices in his head reiterate that he consciously destroyed the script so now he has no idea why he's doing what he's doing. Fans of Deadpool will follow this simply because it fits in perfectly with the Deadpool sense of humor.
The game follows the modern melee/shooter action game formula. High Moon's mentality was obviously “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”. They use Deadpool's personality and sense of style and humor to appease the player. There is nothing wrong with this approach, it's worked multiple times for multiple studios. However, the first part of the cliché is “If it ain't broke...” and this is definitely “broke”. The combo system feels clunky and often awkward. Looking at other successful games in this same genre the modern combo system is more about accurate timing, tapping not just the correct sequence of buttons but at the correct time. Even forgoing this specific system and opting for a more traditional combo system usually still feels smooth. The combo system just feels like button-mashing, using the evade button to dodge and counter incoming attacks just adds to this disjointed feeling. He doesn't seem to chain attacks so much as ungracefully mash one attack into another. The melee aspect feels like they got it to about 85% of what they wanted it to be and High Moon just polished this incomplete mechanic as well as they could and let it go.
Likewise, the gun-play feels tacked on and incomplete as well. It's the usual aim-with-the-right-shoot-with-the-trigger set up with the ability to lock on to certain enemies. The lock feels fragile. It seems incredibly easy to lose the lock at really inopportune times. In crowded situations you will often lock onto the wrong foe, several times. You can incorporate gun blasts into your melee combos, but this is something else that just feels and looks clumsy, often interrupting what little flow the combos have.
There is an element of stealth that is almost not worth mentioning. There are so few times you can actually use it, and sneaking is automatically triggered with no warning and you can still be easily spotted. If you could actually press a button to engage sneaking it would make it much more useful. As it stands, it feels like it was so little developed that it didn't need to be there. There is one simple short sequence where stealth is mandatory and an earlier one where the stealth kill is only used for an elaborate joke sequence.
The progression system also has the feeling that they just stuck it in the game because it's what everyone else had done. Leveling weapons is actually somewhat difficult. Using the weapons grants them experience points which unlocks your ability to purchase their upgrades. However, the Deadpool points that you earn to purchase the unlocks are often slow in coming and make it feel like too much effort for too little gain. With the melee weapons you have the balanced swords, the combo-friendly (because they're quick but don't hit very hard) sais, and a giant pair of hammers. The guns are supposed to have similar diversity, but they aren't fully realized, either. Usually when you buy the first damage upgrade for any gun it now hits significantly harder than the next weapon you can buy. This adds a slight level of frustration to the mechanics.
As the game progresses the number of foes the game throws at you increases exponentially. This helps expose most of the real short-comings. In certain environments you will watch as enemies phase through walls and pillars. This is where the button-mashing and ungraceful feeling of the combo system also smack you full in the face. You will find yourself over-whelmed by enemies and you have to find your way to safety to regenerate your health. Meanwhile, you continue smacking buttons to smash enemy after enemy.
You've heard the expression “Ten pounds of sh!t in a five pound bag”, referring to what happens when the grand ideas of a project are hampered by the availability of resources. This game feels like the polar opposite: “Five pounds of sh!t in a ten pound bag”. It feels like they could have made a much greater game than what they made, but they opted for a “safe” plan and made a lack-luster action game.
The mechanical problems with this game don't make it unplayable by any means, so fans of Deadpool will definitely find more than enough to love in this game. However, I temper my review scores with the real-world factor of how much I paid for the game. In this case, I paid $20. The story-telling and sense of humor throughout make this game worth $20. However, if I had encountered these mechanical issues and uninspired design in a game I coughed up $60 I would have absolutely panned this title.
Again, Deadpool fans will find more than enough to enjoy in this game as long as they can find it in a bargain bin. Hardcore action game fans, I have to encourage you to look elsewhere for your fix.